Sacked (The Alpha Ballers#2) (13 page)

After a couple hours of post game review I just turned off the TV and turned my head to the side, looking out the window at the fading Foxboro afternoon as the sun went down. Charlotte got up and left.

Neither of us had said a word in hours.

The next morning Coach Armstrong came to see me, freshly back from the game in Buffalo. I sat up a little in my bed, but Coach didn’t seem to notice, standing right next to me. “Good morning, Coach.”

“What’s good about it?” Normally when someone said that there was a chance they were joking. There was no chance Coach Armstrong was joking. Coach Armstrong probably didn’t know what joking meant.

“Well, the weather seems pretty nice today,” I said, pointing at the window where the sun came through.

Coach Armstrong grunted. “Saw the game last night?”

“Yes, sir,” I nodded toward the TV on the opposite wall. “Nearly had it there, Lee just kept trying to force it a bit too hard.”

Coach Armstrong grimaced. “That’s an understatement, alright.”

“What can I do for you, Coach?” As much as I loved and respected Coach Armstrong for the opportunity he had given me and the things I had learned about football from him, he wasn’t exactly the most fun person to talk to, and I couldn’t exactly walk away from this conversation whenever I wanted. My knee was getting better slowly, but it wasn’t at that level yet where I could run away from my head coach.

“I’m here to check on your progress.” Coach Armstrong didn’t really need to do that, the training and medical staff was for sure giving him updates every day or so on my recovery.

I tapped my knee lightly with my right hand. “It’s definitely feeling better, sir. I haven’t tried putting too much weight on it yet, but I’m optimistic.”

“Optimism is for people who aren’t prepared nearly well enough.” Coach Armstrong had dozens of sayings like that, but unlike others who could come up with profound-sounding statements, Coach Armstrong lived and coached by them.

I wiped the smile off my face. “I’ll be ready to go as soon as I can, Coach. I can’t wait to get back on the field.”

“Good. We’ll need you. But before then I have another thing I need from you.”

My ears pricked up. “Su-sure, Coach, anything, what can I do for you?”

“I’m going to send Oliver Lee around here to come and see you.”

I had expected Coach Armstrong to tell me to be nicer to Charlotte more than what he’d actually said. “Why’s that, Coach?” I asked when I’d grabbed hold of my senses again.

“Kid needs a little guidance. It’s not easy to be the starting qb just after you’ve been drafted.”

“I know the feeling.”

“Exactly. So give him a few pointers, make him feel like the world isn’t ending every time he throws a bad pass.”

“It does, mean, though, that our playoff window is closing.”

“You let me worry about that. Just make sure the kid’s head is screwed on straight.”

I really didn’t know what to say. I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t do that. “Sure, Coach, I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

Coach Armstrong straightened up. “Good man.” He turned toward the door before looking back at me. “Glad you’re on the team, Parker,” he said softly, and then was gone.

I pressed by head back into the pillow below me.

Shit. This was bad. I didn’t want to help Oliver Lee do anything except be my backup. How could Coach Armstrong expect me to help a guy steal my job from me? It made no sense!

I had to get out of this bed asap and get back onto the field. This just made things that much worse, that much more urgent.

I thought about pushing the button to call Charlotte and tell her all about what had just happened, and I even picked up the dongle and started to push the button before I stopped. No, I didn’t want to get her involved with this.

Not when something could go wrong, I didn’t want her to get in trouble.

I knew who I could call. Hud would help me out, I knew it. I pulled out my phone and texted him. Hud responded almost immediately and 10 minutes later he was sneaking into my room. “Hey bro, I came as quick as I could. What’s up?”

“I gotta get out of here, Hud, I gotta get back on the field before Lee steals my spot.”

Hud nodded slowly in sympathy. “Fuck yes, that’s what I want to hear, my man. How can I help?”

“Is the coast clear?” I nodded to the door behind Hud. He smiled and peeked out the door, looking from left to right before turning back.

“Yeah, looks like it. I think Charlotte might be out getting something to eat.”

“Quick, man, help me into the wheelchair.”

Hud came around and got the wheelchair. I pulled the blankets off and Hud helped me into the chair. “Let’s go, before she comes back.”

Hud checked the door one more time and then opened it, wheeling me down the hall, both of us smiling and giggling like schoolgirls.

It felt exhilarating to be out of that bed and that room. We roamed the halls, trying to avoid any team personnel we could find. Hud took me out to one of the smaller practice fields.

After a couple minutes we located a ball and started playing catch, me sitting in my wheelchair and Hud first 10 feet away. After I completed 5 passes, Hud would take a few steps back and we’d continue.

It felt so good to be out there and feel the wind in my hair again, the sun on my shoulders. It was starting to cool down in Massachusetts as the leaves turned brown and fall really started to settle in, but I couldn’t feel any of the biting cold on me, I was having too much fun.

After a few misses when Hud got really far away he jogged back toward me. “Feeling pretty good, yeah? Looks like you’ve kept up your strength despite no time in the weight room.”

“I could still take you down, big fella.”

Hud laughed out loud, echoing across the practice field. “That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!” He kept guffawing till I started laughing too. I was no wimp; I was a professional athlete, but Hud made me look like a small child. The man turned heads with his muscles just walking down the street. He had to get all his clothes custom made, much to his chagrin.

“What do we do next, Lance?” Hud asked when he’d finally calmed down.

“Same thing again.” I said, with a spark in my eye. “But this time…” I got up, out of the wheelchair, resting on my own two feet on the grass outdoors for the first time since I could remember.

It felt perfect. The only way it could have been better was if Charlotte were here, I realized right then, instead of us having to avoid her stern gaze.

I looked across at Hud for the first time in weeks, at the grin that broke his genial face in two, and we both laughed. Hud tossed me the ball and we started our game of increasingly-distant catch all over again.

It was a really good exercise for a quarterback, making it easy to pinpoint the distance where accuracy problems came in. It was also great for a defensive player like Hud, who used it to practice his intercepting skills.

I didn’t put too much weight on my right leg, but as I started turning into my throws as Hud got further and further away, I noticed none of the pain I had felt immediately after the injury.

Maybe just a few weeks of Charlotte’s care and I was back to normal already? Maybe I could get back on the field this week and get my job back before Oliver Lee got too comfortable?

Just the thought of doing so lifted my spirits even further. I needed this.

And then Charlotte appeared. I don’t know how she found me, found us, but just as Hud and I were starting to really get far apart, Charlotte appeared at the side of the field and stood there, watching us.
 

She had her hands on her waist and even from here I could see the disapproving look on her face, her head shaking slowly as she watched us.

She looked so perfect outside - all I could remember of her by now was seeing her in my room or in the quarterbacks’ training room deep in the bowels of the facility. Seeing her outside took the vision of her beauty to another level, I could barely contain myself.

I waved after a particularly long throw and pointed to my knee, a big smile on my face, and I could see Charlotte’s face soften even from this distance. I knew I would catch hell for this from her when I came back in, but for now I was just having way too much fun to stop.

It felt good to move again, to stretch dormant muscles and push them tentatively at first toward their limits. This was what I did for a living; this was who I am. If I wasn’t exercising, pushing my body every day to do just a little bit more, I wasn’t alive anymore.

And now that Charlotte was watching me again, it was even better. Yeah, things were finally starting to look up again.

Hud took another step back and threw me the ball, a little off, but I only had to lean over a little bit to make the catch. I took a big step back then eyed the distance between us. I could definitely make this.

I looked back at Charlotte on the sideline before I threw and I could see her shaking her head again, but this time she was smiling. I knew she thought I was showing off, and I totally was showing off, but I’d never let her know that.

I thought the throw went off clean, but as I was entering my customary follow through, one I had done literally tens of thousands of times in my life, I felt a wrenching from my right knee and I crumpled to the ground, just barely getting my hands down fast enough to avoid taking a face full of dirt. As I went down I could see Hud and Charlotte both running toward me already.

I lay there on the ground, trying not to move. I was angry already, angry at myself for not taking things slower and angry that two of my favorite people in the whole world were going to see me helpless like this.

“Lance, are you alright? Where does it hurt?” Charlotte had reached me first, but I heard Hud huffing right behind her as he caught up.

“Same knee, right knee,” I said, and started to roll myself over onto my back. Hud reached down and helped me out, and I lay on the ground staring up at Charlotte’s worried face.

“Hey there, Charlotte,” I whispered to her. “You’re looking mighty-fine today, girl, where you been keeping yourself.”

Charlotte held up a finger. “Don’t pull that crap with me, Lance Parker, not now.” She got down on her knees and started feeling around my knee with her practiced hands. “You didn’t break anything, you probably just twisted it around again.”

That didn’t sound good, but at least nothing was broken. I almost choked up as I asked, “Will it slow me down? I was feeling really good out there.”

Charlotte looked back at me like she was trying to decide what to say, or how to break it to me. “Yes, Lance, I think it might slow you down a bit. I can’t believe you snuck out and came here of all places.”

I looked at her like she didn’t understand me at all. “It was the place I wanted to be most in the world.”

“The field?”

“Hell yeah, the field. Out here and tossing a ball back and forth. This is who I am, Charlotte. If I’m not out here, or getting ready to be out here, I don’t really exist, I don’t really matter anymore.”

Charlotte stared at me like she was weighing whether to argue the point with me or not, but she decided not to in the end. She looked up at Hud, towering above us, clearly not knowing what to do. “Help me get him back in the wheelchair, Hud. We gotta get him back to his room before anyone figures out what happened.”

Hud sprang into action, racing over to the wheelchair and bringing it over. With Charlotte’s direction, Hud helped me up and soon I was safe and back in the seat. A couple minutes later and I was back in my room in the medical wing. After they had helped me back into my bed, Hud excused himself sheepishly, telling me he’d text me later.

That left me and Charlotte alone in the room. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

That clearly wasn’t good enough for Charlotte. She whipped around as she checked the room and my leg. “How could you do that unsupervised, Lance? Do you know how much you could have hurt yourself out there?”

I cocked an eye at her. “More than I actually did?”

“Don’t get glib with me. That was a really dumb thing you just did. I can’t believe you didn’t ask me first.”

I looked at her like she’d grown another head. “Because I wanted to avoid a conversation like this, duh.”

She crossed her arms under her amazing chest and sighed, shaking her head. “Well, would you rather have gotten just the talking to, and not re-aggravated your injury, or does this present situation feel better to you?”

“Fine, fine, thank you very much.” I said, staring down at my knee. She was right, though. I shouldn’t have gone outside yet. “I just, I just…I just needed to get out there, Charlotte.”

“I know you did. But you didn’t need to take things so far so fast.”

“I know. Think it’ll really set the recovery back?”

She held her hands up. “I have no idea, we’ll have to run some tests.”

“Will you tell anyone what I did?”

“Since you two were somehow crafty enough not to get caught by anyone else, perhaps not.”

“Perhaps not?”

“I could be persuaded not to spill the beans, is all I’m saying.”

I sighed. “What’s this gonna cost me?”

“Oh not too much,” Charlotte said sweetly, batting her eyes at me in a super fake way.

“Let it out, Charlotte, I’m ready for it.”

“Services to be named later.”

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“Just what it says on the box, Lance Parker. I’ll decide just what it is at a later date.”

“You’re gonna hold this over me forever, aren’t you?”

Charlotte came in close, leaning over the bed. I could smell her; it wasn’t perfume - as a medical professional, as a rule she didn’t wear any while working, but it was her strong and sexy scent. “Wouldn’t you just love that?”

I couldn’t help it. Rule be damned, I just needed to touch her. I reached my hand up and into her hair, coiling some of it around my fingers at the roots and gently pulled her head down. Charlotte must have wanted me to do just that, because she leaned forward easily, perfectly balanced.

Her wide-eyed face was right in front of mine. It was simple enough to lean forward and kiss her right there. She pushed into our kiss and we stuck there for a long moment, tasting each other for the first time in what felt like forever.