Linebacker's Second Chance (Bad Boy Ballers) (5 page)

This isn’t a travesty,
I think as I walk out and catch my Uber, bound for Sausalito.
It’s a challenge. And my daddy was always right. And what’s more, Rich is probably right too.
 

I’m the best woman for this job, and Macklin’s going to do everything I say.

I wonder for a second as the car gets onto the Bay Bridge if Mack expects to see me at all, or if he even knows I’m coming.
 

Doesn’t matter. There’s not a damn thing between us anymore.
 

And I’ll do anything to prove it.

“Now, Wingate, I don’t need a damn bit of rebranding.” I say, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in the leather recliner sofa my decorator absolutely insisted I didn’t get. Well, she had another thing coming. I’m a linebacker, not a New York lawyer who wants a goddamn couch with fancy fabric you can’t spill anything on. I wanted a
leather
sectional, with custom-made La-Z-Boy recliners on either side and in the middle too. Makes it easier for me to watch football during the season, and it makes it a damn sight easier to bed a woman when I don’t want to carry her over my shoulder to the California king in the bedroom.
 

That’s the thing with women who come around wanting to get some action with a linebacker. They expect me to carry them everywhere like a caveman. Just because I’m a huge individual doesn’t mean that I need to be tossing women over my shoulders every second of the day. The sofa makes for a perfect sexual alternative. As a bonus, I can look out at the Charlotte skyline when I’ve got a nice looking lady friend bouncing on my lap.
 

That’s what I call interior decorating.

“You
do
need rebranding.” My cousin Wingate Richards replies as he walks back and forth, blocking my view of the TV—and I’ve got college basketball on. Just because I’m a football player doesn’t mean I don’t need to keep up on other sports. Just like he has every day since we were kids, he’s getting on my nerves worrying about things that he doesn’t have any power to change. That’s what makes him a damn good personal manager, but it's also what makes him annoying as shit when it comes to being a cousin and my best bud.

“Get out of the damn way, Wingate.” I turn the volume up to drown out his droning. Carolina would be stupid as shit to get rid of me—I’m their ticket to the Super Bowl if ever there was one. Well, this season I am. Maybe I wasn't last season. Oh well. I've all but put that out of my head, and I'm sure everyone else has too.

Our offensive players don’t hit the other team with near as much of a bang as I do when the other team crosses my line. I’ve got magic feet, magic hands, and I’m a lot more...
elegant
than I look. No one expects fancy footwork from a man with a six and a half foot frame and two-hundred and fifty pounds of muscle. But I deliver every goddamn time.
 

“You listen to me, Mack.” Skinny-ass old Wingate walks up to me and snatches the remote from my hand, his neatly parted blond hair coming undone with anger. “Eddie told me he’s about done with putting up with your behavior. Coach tells him every time you show up late for practice, every time there’s some angry girl coming around insisting that you’re the reason her entire life is ruined, and every damn time you get the whole team drunk at one of your stupid parties. That’s right, Mack. Coach has started tattling on you—and Eddie, the freaking owner of the team, has noticed too—”

“Don’t say
freaking
, Wingate. You’re not twelve. And your mama’s not in the next room listening to us fight.” I look away from Wingate’s icy blue stare. He’s about twelve inches from my face, and his own face is so red it looks like steam’s about to erupt from his nostrils like in the cartoons. Wingate’s tall like I am—but he’s wiry as shit, looks like he hasn’t eaten a sandwich in ten years. Even though he’d blow over in a stiff wind, Wingate is one of the only men in either Carolina that makes me nervous. Those stiff-ass muscles—and the stick up his butt—are like steel, and that sonofabitch could get me in a headlock like none other despite the fact that I could lie down on him and crush him in his sleep.

“You listen to me, cuzzo.” Wingate aims the remote at the TV without looking away from my eyes, turning it off with one click. He then flings the remote on my coffee table, and I cringe as it clatters against the antique wood. If either the remote or my coffee table is damaged, I might have to test out Wingate’s headlock for the first time since I was twelve. My neck hurts just thinking about it.
 

“Hey—” I start. But Wingate has one finger pointed firmly at my chest. “It’s all been downhill since you graduated from college. Everyone in the country sees you as this great hero of football, the man who dances across the field and distracts every offensive line he comes in contact with, blocks every move, has his defensive linemen perfectly coordinated. But I know
better
. I know you’re
more
.” Slowly, Wingate’s finger comes down against my sternum. I bat his hand away, and he blocks me. I half expect him to slap me in the face like he used to when we were kids, and I instinctively flinch away from him. But he just laughs.

“You’re a dickhead, Wingate. No wonder you can’t get a date, even on Grindr.” I look pointedly at him, and he rolls his eyes. Usually that sticks in his craw pretty bad, but he’s determined as balls to get me to listen to him. And that makes me
not
want to listen to him at all.
 

“All the beer and the parties and the women...” Wingate starts on one of his tirades, and I groan, leaning the recliner back so it knocks him in the knees. He kicks at me and then sits down on the opposite end of the sectional, throwing his hands up in what looks like resignation. “There’s more to you than this. I saw you go out there on the field hungover twice last season, and more than once, there’s been some woman in the crowd shouting at you. With every game, you go downhill a little more. You’re the most talented linebacker in the league, and each game, you get very slightly worse. It doesn’t look good. And pretty soon someone’s going to notice.”

I wave my hand at him and stare sullenly at the remote Wingate put down on the coffee table. “I’m doing just as well as I always did. And furthermore, I don’t give a shit about what looks good and what doesn’t look good. It’s 2016, and I can act how I want, date who I want, and throw parties that celebrate my team. Ain’t that what America’s about?”

Wingate snorts. “That has nothing to do with anything. Don’t get me embroiled in a political discussion this early in the day.”

I shrug. Bringing up the election usually works to keep Wingate ranting for at least an hour and a half, particularly when there’s a mention of Governor McCrory and his medieval bathroom garbage. Sometimes I’ll even pretend like I sympathize with our dear idiotic governor or like I’m considering not voting Democrat to get Wingate to leave the room with his fists clenched, shouting about civil rights and the degradation of the American political climate.
Embroiled
. He always uses fifty-cent words when a one-cent word will do just fine. I snicker. “Let’s just put this discussion up on a shelf. It’s the offseason. I have a party tomorrow, and I’m not in the mood for you to talk to me like I’m six years old and you’re the big grown-up who knows more than I do. I know plenty about football, plenty about my career, and plenty about where I’m going with my life.”

Wingate turns and looks at me, his face deadly cold. It’s a little hard to take him seriously with that tidy haircut of his all mussed up, and the button-down shirt he’s wearing that’s just a little too short in the sleeves. “Let me repeat myself and make it very clear what’s happening during this particular offseason, cuz. Eddie Davidson, the owner of the team that pays you millions of dollars each year to throw a ball around—”

“I do more than throw balls around,” I say, reaching forward for the remote. Wingate gets up and lifts his foot up table-height to kick the remote across the room.
 

“I’m not done,” he says. “Listen before you turn that idiot box back on and pick up your phone to answer the twenty-two different texts from the twenty-two different girls banging on your door.”

“There are twenty-two texts?” I grin at Wingate.

“It’s an educated guess. And don’t you reach for your phone if you know what’s good for you. I’m liable to kick that damn thing across the floor too, as much time as you spend glued to it.”
 

“Okay, fine. I’ll attempt to listen for once.” I meet his cold gaze and start to tune myself out, thinking about the party tomorrow. I’ll get that shipment of kegs from the usual place, get the catering from New York—they freeze that shit and put it on a plane these days, so that’ll be a damn fine plan. I click down the list of details in my head from the very beginning of the time Wingate opens his mouth. He rambles on about how I’m giving up my career, about how Eddie’s a lot more conservative than the old owner, about what I used to be capable of when I was playing for Brooks. And there’s more stuff about my image, too. Image this and image that, and what would my mother and father think if they were still around, and what will my aunt and uncle say when we go home for their birthdays at the end of August, and all sorts of bullshit that doesn’t make a damn bit of difference regarding how I play ball.
 

It’s all stuff I’ve heard before, and it turns into an incessant drone that beats against my eardrums in the most horrible way possible. Instead of trying to absorb the repeated words and phrases, I go back to organizing the party in my head. Last time, I had girls wrestle in inflatable kiddie pools full of baby oil, and one thing led to another and... well, that was a fun night. I barely had enough energy for all three of them, but I managed. I give Wingate a lopsided grin thinking about that night and the switching off between girls I had to do to make sure everyone was appropriately satisfied. But Wingate doesn’t notice. He just keeps on keeping on.
 

And then he does it. He mentions a name that I’ve forbidden in this house. That snaps me back to reality. Any thought of
her
snaps me out of whatever I’m thinking about if I’m being perfectly honest.

The thought of
her
comes up a lot more often than I ever intended, but her name—Wingate knows not to cross that line.

But he keeps on.
 

I wonder if we’ll be testing out that headlock real soon here, because I don’t want to
hear
that woman’s name, think about the cascade of her pitch black hair, the curve of her deep-red come-hither smile, or the curve-to-muscle ratio of her astoundingly perfect body.

But he continues, talking about
her
and what she thought of me when I was in school, what she noticed about me when I played, what I’m doing now that’s utterly different—and goddamn, he’s
right
about some of it, though I wouldn’t remember it. She had a better mind for sports than me and Wingate put together.

“... what would
Renata
say about all this, huh, Mack? She had this vision of you as this football superhero, and damned if I didn’t believe every word that woman said. She was
right
about everything. She was a better influence on you than anyone else ever managed to be. She made you into a better player, a better person. And now look at you, sinking down every season, further and further. I’m seeing it now. What will it be in a year? Drugs? Marrying some eighteen year-old girl to get attention when your plays go to shit? Renata was—”

“You don’t mention her, Wingate. Ever.” My voice is as cool as Wingate’s eyes.
 

My cousin looks directly at me and does it again. “
Renata
. You’re going to have to get used to that name again, cuzzo. I’m not pussy-footing around a grown-ass man with hurt feelings. I’m saying
Renata
was right. She was right that you’re a god when it comes to everything that matters in this godforsaken, dangerous sport you love so much. But you’re not treating football like you love it anymore.”

Now I’m listening. Scowling, growing hotter and hotter. I undo the recliner and bring myself to standing, eye to eye with Wingate.

“Don’t say something you’re about to regret, man. You’ve said a lot of things this morning, each one of them more questionable than the last. I’m Big Mack, and if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have a job.”

“You’re
not
treating football like you love it. That’s what I said. It’s gotten to the point where you do need some re-branding,
cuz
.” He says the last word sarcastically like it’s a joke that I’m his cousin at all. “And when I think about it, it’s awfully funny. You loved Renata too, didn’t you?”