Tackled (Alpha Ballers #1) (2 page)

And that wasn’t all. Drake and I had a history together, if you could call it that. Nothing too big, of course, just the source of all my fantasies since we had met in college. I still remembered how that one kiss felt to me, even if Drake didn’t.

Why was he even here? Unquestionably, Drake Rollins had the talent to be here. Every scouting report I had seen gave him a first round grade. But the big news of the day was that the league had uninvited him from the green room and the draft entirely, over his latest legal issues. He wasn’t supposed to be here.

How did he not know that?

What a shame.

CHAPTER 02 - DRAKE

Draft day, 3pm

So this was fucking draft. Not bad. Not as big as I had expected, not from watching on TV all these years. But it was alright. Not a bad place to kick off my career.

I’ve never been inside Radio City Music Hall before. They held big-time concerts and performances in here, stuff I had never been able to afford, and stuff I didn’t have time for either.

The room seemed a little small, though. Like you could contain all my greatness just a room this big. I shook my head, laughing to myself. I better not get drafted by a team that plays in a dome. Not only was that only pretend football, no dome could contain me.

I walked in like I owned the place, because soon I would own the place. I looked over the team area, seeing the 32 team setting up the tables. One of those teams would soon be smart enough to draft me, and their fortunes would change forever. That team’s fans would get tired of having a Super Bowl parade every single year.

Next stop, green room. I passed by the media section, nodding and smiling at everyone that I met. Even if I never saw these people again, it never hurt for people to remember me as a cool guy, a nice guy. A couple of the on-air talent recognized me and raise their eyebrows at me, which was kind of strange, but I let it slide. They were probably nervous about spending all that time on TV today.

One of the reporters, a guy I’d talked to a few times when game day coverage had come to Cal, waved at me. I stopped and he came over. “Hey, Drake,” he said, not nearly as happily as I expected him to be.

“Hey, Rich, nice to see you.” I looked out at the crowd in the balcony. “Nice turnout today, yeah?”

Rich looked confused for a moment, which wasn’t like him. “Yeah, Drake, big turnout. Lotta teams gonna be very happy with their draft class today.”

“And then of course there’s the Jets, right?” Rich was from New York and a big Jets fan and I’d ribbed him about it endlessly. Every few years the Jets showed a few signs they were a serious team, then inevitably they’d collapse and leave each of their fans tearing their hair out wondering where they’d gone wrong.

Rich didn’t have much hair left as it was, so he couldn’t afford to act like a regular Jets fan. Still, I had heard that being in the media and covering football for so long made it easy to forget your childhood team allegiance.
 

Me, I had never really had an allegiance to a particular team. Football was just something I was good at, and that was all the allegiance I needed. My teammates and coaches didn’t seem to mind as long as I showed up to practice and showed up to the games. I liked it that way, kept things simple.

“Right, Right,” Rich said, the smile disappearing. ‘Listen, Drake, what’re you -“

I cut him off in mid sentence. “I gotta go, Rich, things getting started soon, and I gotta get in my spot, you know?”

Rich just stared at me, his mouth moving but the words not coming out. I had never seen Rich at a loss for words before - this was actually really funny, and I wish I had had more time to stop and appreciate it. I didn’t, though; it was getting to be game time and I had somewhere else to be.

“Ye-yeah, Drake, you gotta get moving,” Rich finally spoke when he found the right words. “I hope you have a good day today.”

I flashed him my biggest smile. “Of course I will, Rich, it’s draft day! This is just the beginning.”

“Yeah. Good luck.” This time Rich was much shorter with me. I wonder what had gotten into him? Usually he was always good for some joking around, even during 20 or 30 second breaks from doing TV. The man was a pro and really good at holding his composure. He’d been covering the draft for the league’s own TV network for years now, so I really didn’t know what had spooked him like that.

Oh well, to each their own. I shook Rich’s hand and kept moving toward the green room. Along the way I ran into a few more reporters gathered around talking shop. I checked my watch; I had about 60 seconds to kill before I really needed to get a move on, so I clapped one them on the shoulder and joined in the group.

“What’s the good word, fellas?” I broke in, showing off just how jazzed I was to be there.

“Oh, hey, Drake,” one of them replied, a look of confusion on his face. The rest of them were silent.

I got a weird vibe from the whole thing and decided to make my exit. “Just wanted to say hi, guys, happy draft day and all, I’ll see you after the festivities. Be sure and get my good side when that phone call shot comes up, yeah?” I laughed as I walked away. “Oh yeah, both sides are my good side!”

It was good to be on top. Those guys must have just been a little surprised to see me in their huddle so close to the draft. They probably figured I’d be in the green room already. I was Drake Rollins, though, I still had time to kiss babies and glad hand the common folk. I would never give that up - my adoring public needed me.

As I walked away from them I heard them talk about me. That was more like it.

I checked my watch again, and I needed to book it to get to the green room entrance before the cutoff. The league liked to keep things running as efficiently as possible especially on draft day, and I wasn’t about to be the loose cog that slowed everything down. That was no way for one of the league’s soon-to-be-biggest stars to start his career off, was it?

Everyone was acting a little strange around me, and I didn’t know why. I tried to shrug it off as best I could as I walked towards the green room, but there was a voice in the back of my head I was telling me that something was wrong. And it wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard I tried to silence it.

The green room entrance was a regular double door, with two security guards standing in front of it. Big guys, bigger than me. Guys that could play on the offensive or defensive line, and probably had in high school and college. They each had earpieces in, and wore suits.

I rolled up, gave them the Drake Rollins smile. “Drake Rollins, here for the draft. Let’s get our green room on.” I waited for them to open the door.

The security guards cocked their heads to the side, and each one of them put a finger to their ear piece, as if pressing it into here better above loud noise of the crowd in the huge hall. They listened for a few moments, and I tapped my foot against the floor. I didn’t have time for this. I need to be inside there with the cameras and the lights, so that people around the world could put a face to the name.

Football wasn’t like basketball or baseball. We wore helmets almost all the time that people saw us, so draft day was the first time that most of these people would learn what I looked like. When I got my endorsement deals, I wouldn’t be wearing my helmet, so it was important that they started to recognize me soon as possible.

These are all things I had learned in that public relations class I took back at Cal, and from all the different brand managers and endorsement dealers that my agent’d had me meet over the last few months. Everybody wanted to be in the business of Drake Rollins. As long as that made me money I was okay with it. A rising tide lifted all boats, and I was the biggest rising tide in town.

“Sorry, Mr. Rollins, we can’t let you in.” The two security guards said in unison. If they had said anything else, I would’ve laughed, the way they were so well coordinated.

“Excuse me? Let me in. I’m on the list.” Drake Rollins was always on the list. No matter what list, if you wanted to be on it, I was on it.

“That is not the information were getting, sir. You’ll have to move along.”

What the fuck was going on here? I had been invited to the green room at the draft this year. There was no way the league was keep the leading receiver two years running out the green room on fucking draft day. This made no sense.

“I’m going in there, fellas. This was a funny joke, but I’m going in there.” I stepped toward security guards, intending to rush by them and get inside the green room, but they form the wall in front of me, immovable, and pushed me back.

“We’re sorry, Mr. Rollins, but you can’t come in. You’ll have to move along, or we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“What the fuck, guys?” I was starting to get mad, and my voice showed it. “I was invited to the green room. I am on the list. Check the list.”

“The list has changed.”

 
“Change it again. I need to fucking get inside the room. the draft is about to begin.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I can’t help you. Please move along.”

“Move along, move along, you keep fucking saying that. Where the fuck am I supposed to go?!”

“I don’t know that, sir, but you can’t stay here. This area is for invited players and their families only.”

“And I’m telling you fuckers, I am an invited player! Why is this so hard to understand?”

“Because you no longer invited,” Adam said.

I whipped around, still livid, to see Adam Snyder, my agent, standing behind me.

“Adam! Thank fuck you’re here. These suckers won’t let me in, and the draft’s about to start. I need to get inside.”

Adam was a shark of an agent, one of the best in the business. He was old school, didn’t get with any of the new fangled technology that most people use these days, but when you had his kind a roster of talent, and his skills at negotiating, you could dictate your own rules. Adam Snyder got the job done, and there was no one I would rather have as my agent.

He put his arm on my shoulder, pulling me toward him. He was a good 4 inches shorter than me, but he carried himself like a man who was 7 feet tall, and the rest of the world treated him like it, myself included. “You haven’t checked your messages, have you?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been a little busy today. Why, what’s going on?”

Adam shook his head, exasperated. He looked like he wanted to yell at me. He’d yelled at me before, and I had taken it without firing him, because he was Adam Snyder, and even though I was going to be the hottest thing on the field since sliced bread, I still listened to him. “You idiot, you’re not supposed to be here today.”

“Adam, I got the invitation. You gave it to me.”

“Things have changed, your latest stunt last week got everyone talking, and this morning the league decided it would be best for them and everyone involved if you didn’t show up today.”

“What the fuck? I never got charged with anything.”

“Yeah, thanks to me, asshole. I had to stick my neck out for you, farther than I ever have before for anyone else.”

“And you did that because you know I’m gonna make you bank - contracts, endorsements, you know it.”

Adam looked at me and I could see the familiarity and whatever bond between us slowly disappear. “That doesn’t look likely if you don’t get drafted, now doesn’t it?”

What. The. Fuck.

Not get drafted?

“Adam…what are you saying?”

He pulled me in closer. “This is what I’m saying, try and get it through your thick skull for once. You may be smart, Drake. Fuck it, you’re not just smart, you’re brilliant. And you can play football. But all that extra shit you keep doing just got you kicked out of the draft.”

Shit.
 

I tried to wrap my head around this bombshell. It wasn’t easy. This was supposed to be the best day of my life until I caught my first professional touchdown, and then my first Super Bowl winning touchdown. “But…I’m still gonna get drafted, right?” I didn’t really need to be here as long as a team took me on.

And every team that could have picked me up before the one that finally did, I’d write down their name and make sure to burn them every time we played my entire career. Because fuck those guys.

My off the field shit wasn’t that bad. So I partied hard and slept around. That’s what worked for me, and I was always there when the game started. Wasn’t that all that mattered?

Adam pulled back. “I don’t know if you’ll get drafted. None of the teams will want to take a chance on someone with your character concerns.”

“Character concerns!? I fucking graduated from college early! I have an engineering degree and a 3.6 GPA on top of football at one of the best universities on fucking planet!”

“And yet when you arrive at the party things always get out of hand and the police get called. And you always seem to wake up with someone important’s 19 year old daughter in your bed.”

I couldn’t really argue with that. I breathed in deep, shutting my eyes, still unable to handle all of this. “What’re my options?”

“Go home, kid. Don’t watch the draft. I’ll call you and let know what happens.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Think about what you’ve done and see if maybe, maybe, if a team gives you a shot, that you’ll consider cleaning up your life and giving the media no reason to pay attention to you for just a year.”

“This is fucking bullshit, Adam.”

“You’re telling me.” And with that, Adam, nodded to the security, who stepped aside and let him into the green room. Of course, Adam was allowed to go in. He had a bunch of other clients in there, and I’m sure all of them had put him on the list as one of their allowed guests.

“Fuck this shit!” I yelled after Adam as the door closed. I tried to push my way into the room, past the two security guards, but they must have seen me coming because they closed up right behind Adam and I didn’t get more than a hand on the door before they’d shoved me back.

“Mr. Rollins, we’ll have to ask you to leave peacefully, or we’ll be forced to call the police.”

“Alright, alright,” I yelled back, holding up my hands before I straightened my suit. “I’ll go, I’ll go.”