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My smirk drops.
They wouldn’t.
“I had a group call with them earlier to explain the situation and get their input. Turns out they side with me and think it’s time you get back to work. So Jamal instructed I read you this note from him if you resist.” She pulls a piece of paper from her back pocket and shakes it out like it’s an old-fashioned newspaper.“Derek, you’re the biggest dipshit I’ve ever met if you thought we wouldn’t use this against you. Get your ass on that plane or I’ll tell her what we found.”
I groan because that’s all the response I can manage right now. Needing space, I pace the floor once and turn back sharply to Nora. “Did they already tell you what it was they found?”
“No. Although—I’m very intrigued. It must be really embarrassing to get a reaction like this. I think as your agent I should know—”
“Absolutely not.”
She licks her lips on a smile and steps even closer, tilting her chin up and angling those perfect lips at me. “Does that mean you’re coming with me to Vegas?”
Nora is chipper and basking in the glow of a solid win. But I’m not.
I push my hand through my hair and pace away from her. “You shouldn’t have done this, Nora. This was too far.”
Her gaze cuts through me. “Is it really? You’ve been hazing me for two weeks, and you just expect me to sit back and let you miss out on huge career opportunities because of something that happened between us in college? No more. From now on, we’re taking the deals. You’re giving the interviews.”
I should keep my mouth shut. Should let her think that all of this avoidance is only because of her. But suddenly I feel like I’m in a runaway car I can’t get control of. Panic wells in my chest at the thought of putting myself out there with so much on the line. Without permission, my mind replays the announcers on sport talk radio and ESPN saying there’s no way I’ll bounce back. That they’ve seen plenty of athletes fall to this sort of injury and it’s going to be sad to watch it happen to me. I’ll be a spectacle.
Everything swirls endlessly around me. My breathing goes shallow. Sweat gathers on my neck. And suddenly, I’m back in elementary school standing in the front of the class watching them all laugh mercilessly at me when I couldn’t get through the passage I was asked to read.
And that’s when I snap. “It’s not about you, Nora!”
She doesn’t flinch at my raised voice. She looks relieved. “Then what is it about? Tell me, Derek, or I can’t fix it.”
My hands clench at my sides. “I don’t want to go off and act like some hotshot for a designer when there’s a big chance I’m going to get cut before the season even starts! Everyone—and I do mean everyone, thinks that the Sharks are going to give my position to Abbot, and when that happens, I’ll look like the idiot who didn’t realize he had egg on his face. Dapper—and anyone else you’ve made deals with—will come back and dissolve our contract. So no thank you. I prefer to keep laying low and focusing on my game andnothing else. I won’t get distracted, and I won’t preen around in a suit when I might not even have a job this year!”
Nora blinks, the energy my outburst shot into the room fading. And then she frowns. “So…all the hazing…all the keeping me from doing any real work…it was because of this? Because you’re scared you’re going to fail and look silly trying?”
I sigh, finding it impossible to fully explain how I never again want to feel like the kid whose supposed failure was everyone else’s entertainment, without telling her the truth of my past and my recent diagnosis. “Yes and no. I guess…you were a good excuse to put a pause on all the outside stuff so I could just lay low and train. So please…call and cancel the deal. I don’t want to do it.”
Silence blankets the room for a minute, and I really think I’ve gotten through to Nora. But then her eyes flash. If I thought she looked determined before…
“You know what, Derek? That makes me angrier than a hornet stuck in a sweaty person’s shirt. I wish it had been that you just wanted to make me miserable. But throwing your career away because you’re afraid of what people might think if you try really hard and still fail?” She walks closer and pokes me in the chest like she’s someone my size rather than almost a foot shorter. “That breaks my heart, and I’m not going to allow it. You deserve good things no matter the outcome of your injury. You’ve worked hard your entire career and earned it. And you know what else? Not everyone thinks your position is going to go to Abbot. I believe in you.I do,Derek.” She presses a hand firmly to her chest.
Intensity rolls off her in waves. “I know what you are like when you put your mind to something—evidence being the way you’ve committed fully to my misery. And beyond that, I’ve been the one sitting in on all of your workouts these weeks. You’re not washed up.You’re not rusty. You’re a freaking ox, Derek, but you have to believe in yourself too or no one else is going to.”
She pauses long enough to take a breath. “Get your muscled ass out there and bet on yourself. Take the endorsement deals. Do some interviews. Post your training content that shows you working hard and crushing it. Don’t give up just because a few narrow-minded people say you should! Andstopusing my career that I’ve worked my ass off for as a play toy. It’s not fair to me and frankly it’s beneath you.”
I can hardly breathe my chest is so tight. I can’t decide if I’m pissed, sad, embarrassed, or encouraged. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” She pokes me again, but this time in the center of my chin. “You don’t smile enough anymore.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” she says like a bite, but there’s no teeth to it. Her eyes soften. “You used to smile all the time—and you never do now. I thought in the beginning it was because you hated me, but you don’t smile at anyone else either. I miss it, that smile. It was so warm I would feel it all the way in my toes.”
I stare down at Nora—amillion questions and apologies swirling in my head, but I can’t pick a single one over the big one I’ve avoided for so long. “I’m ready to know what happened,” I say quietly—no fire left in my veins.
I’ve spent long enough telling myself that I didn’t care. That she broke it off and she didn’t love me anymore and that’s all there was to it. I didn’t need details or even want them. Because any explanation she would give me would hurt too much, and I was already hurting so much I thought I’d break.
But now, I have to know. Because something about how she just described the way I’ve basically given up on my career out of fearresonated with another area of my life too. Nora might have been the one who walked away from us, but I let her. I didn’t fight for her even once because I was afraid I genuinely wasn’t enough for her.
Nora stares at me in shock. “Wh—what?”
“What happened back then? To us,” I ask slowly and carefully in case I spook her away. “What made you end it? And end it so damn coldly. What did I do wrong, Nora?”
