Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
For the second time in a month, a lump formed in my throat, and I nodded since I didn’t trust myself to speak.
He grinned and nudged me. “Don’t let Clancy see you like this. He’ll probably ask to use your tears as lube or something.”
After the inquiry was announced, I’d spoken with my parents, and they checked in here and there but mostly left me alone. Maybe because it was what they’d always done or maybe because they were worried I’d reflect badly on them. I had no fucking clue. Candice, however, messaged me daily, telling me to hang in there or sent a stupid meme that never failed to make me smile. I looked forward to those. Not so much the missed call from my dad. As I headed home, I punched the callback, ready to get it over with.
“Patrick,” my dad said in his standard confident businessman tone when I answered. “How’s it going, son?”
I blinked. How’s it going? That wasn’t standard.
“It’s going,” I replied hesitantly. “How’s New York?”
“Smoggy as ever.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I was thinking about this inquiry thing.” Inquiry thing, like it was just a passing gnat and not a hornet’s nest capable of ending mine and Malik’s careers. “It could be worthwhile if we put a little pressure on the inquiry committee. Remind them who we are. We’ve got a lot of lawyer connections, Patrick. A lot of connections, in general. Couldn’t hurt.”
“What?” I spluttered, halfway between a laugh and a groan. “Dad, this isn’t a business deal. That shit doesn’t fly in this world.”
He chuckled. “It flies everywhere. You’d be surprised.”
“No. No fucking way,” I said, and then realized I was shaking my head vehemently while driving alone in my own car. “You want to talk about bad looks, that would be one. Someone runs a story about how the Whitts bribed the NFL? That’s ridiculous.”
“We wouldn’t bribe them. Hell, we could buy the Royals if it came to that.”
Had the man been drinking? Had a stroke? Lost his damn mind? “Not only is that not necessary, but it would just do more damage. They’re not going to find anything. Neither of us were cheating in any way whatsoever. I already told you that.”
“Well, you know how it is with these kinds of things…guilty until proven innocent.”
I gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Thanks, but I’m good. Seriously, don’t get involved; just let me handle it. If this inquiry doesn’t kill my career, that definitely would.”
There were a few beats of silence, and then my dad said quietly, “I don’t want that. I know how important football has always been to you. And I hope you know there’s not a bone in my body, or your mom’s, that thinks you did anything wrong. A bit messy in the execution, perhaps, but…not wrong.”
He’d never spoken to me that way in my life, and while I was tempted to go down a rabbit hole of a thousand things that might have motivated him to say something like that, in the end, I said the only thing I could say. “Thank you.” I meant it.
“He must have been high as fuck,” Tucker said when we hopped on FaceTime later. “That fancy millionaire shit. Probably comes from some private stash grown in a cave on Mt. Olympus.”
“Watered with the tears of virgins.”
“And the blood of third-generation warriors for extra potency.”
We both cracked up, and fuck, just hearing his laughter and seeing his grin caused a pang of longing to run through me.
“What if we meet up tomorrow?” I blurted. We’d sat our first games out in our respective hometowns but had watched them together while FaceTiming. Tucker said his crew had given him no shortage of shit for that, but I knew he’d enjoyed it as much as I had. Made us feel less alone. “We can watch the games together in person.”
Tucker perked a brow. “Where?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Somewhere we can both fly directly to and then disappear for twelve hours?”
Which was how we ended up in a Marriott in Phoenix. Tucker’s flight had gotten in first, so he’d booked the room, and though I wasn’t sure it mattered much now, we still tried to be low-key, so I sauntered in two hours later, dressed down and with a ball cap pulled low like we’d always done.
I’d barely raised my hand to knock on the door when Tucker flung it open with a “Get your ass in here.”
My mouth was on his in an instant, my arms twining around him. I managed to flip the dead bolt on the door behind me and kick the backpack I was carrying out of the way just before we tripped over it on the way to the bed. The weeks that had passed since this fucking disaster had begun had felt like years, and there was a fervency in our movements, a desperate intensity.