Shit.
I know that face.
Everyoneat Sparkks Sports knows that face.
It’s been on billboards and magazine covers and ESPN specials for years — first as a CU Buffaloes legend, then as a Denver Broncos wide receiver, and now,now, as the CEO of the goddamn company.
The man I’ve hoped I’d run into in the hallways because he’s hotter than the sun.
And a living legend.
Grayson Sparkks.
He’s taller than I expected, well over six feet, and broader, too. His hair is dark, threaded through with streaks of silver from age, short at the sides and longer at the top. His jaw is tight, stronger than usual, and his dark green eyes are fixed on me with an expression I can’t for the life of me interpret.
My brain just… stops working.
This will be how I get fired.
This will be how my life gets worse — somehow, impossibly, worse than it already is.
This will be my rock bottom.
Chapter 4
Grayson
I killthe engine in the private underground parking at work and sit there for a second, staring at the concrete wall in front of the hood.
The big S logo is painted there in bright orange and blue, the same colors that used to be on my jersey.
I remember standing on an actual field with eighty thousand people screaming my name.
Now my name’s painted on a building, sewn into the waistband of compression shorts, stamped on tags and shipping crates.
High school valedictorian. Full-ride to CU Boulder. Four years as a starting wide receiver for the Buffaloes, then four seasons with the Denver Broncos.
The ACL tear happened two weeks before preseason practice year five.
That was the end of that chapter of my life.
But then I built Sparkks Sports from a custom-training-gear idea in my garage into a multi-million-dollar brand. On paper, itlooks like a clean, upward trajectory. Win after win. It’s odd how success feels a lot like exhaustion when it piles up high enough.
I grab my gym bag from the passenger seat, shrug into my coat, and head for the elevator.
The underground level is quiet at this hour, just the echo of my footsteps and the faint thrum of ventilation.
I punch the button for the ground floor, hoping to get a coffee from the cafe before I have to be a human, run my hand through my hair, and mentally start shifting from dad-mode to work-mode.
I need to meet with product development about the new fabric samples. Legal wants me to sign off on the language in the NFL proposal. The board wants reassurances about timelines. And I need to talk to design.
More specifically, I need to talk to her.
Carly Drake.
She landed fully on my radar from the board meeting last week.
Brunette hair up in a messy knot that somehow looked intentional, likely half my age, sitting halfway down the table while the head of design held court at the front. He’d stood there with a stack of mock-ups and a clicker, talking the board through “Carly Drake’s new concepts” while he pointed to slides of pieces she’d drawn.
