I smirked. “Can you hold the phone up to her ear?”
Mom let me know when she had, and I let out a low whistle before putting my phone down in my lap long enough to slow clap. “Damn, sis,” I said when I picked it back up. “I guess you got tired of owning all those newbs onApex Legendsand had to give yourself a real challenge, huh?”
Just wait. I’ll be at level twelve by the end of next month.
“I don’t doubt it,” I replied to the artificial voice. I wished I could hear hers, wished more than anything that I could give up my own ability to speak if it meant she could get her voice back. I wondered what she’d sound like now, as a young woman instead of a little girl. It killed me that I couldn’t even remember her voice before she lost the ability to use it, that the memory had been stolen from me over time.
I’d trade it all for her if I could — the money, the fame, the high of playing a game in a sold-out stadium.
But the universe, or God, or whoever was running this show didn’t present that as an offer, no matter how hard I prayed for it.
Ginny was eight years old when she was diagnosed with acute flaccid myelitis. It was Labor Day weekend, and what had just seemed like a cold quickly turned into a respiratory illness, and then into something none of us could have ever prepared for.
My sister went from a kid with a cough to almost completely paralyzed in the span of hours, a three-letter acronym for a neurological disease hitting our family like a semi-truck.
I was fourteen.
The year following had been a blur of hospital stays and rehab, and we learned the hard-to-swallow truth.
There was no cure.
Our way of life changed so drastically I couldn’t even remember what it was like before. Mom quit her job as an administrative assistant to be a full-time caretaker for Ginny. Dad picked up a second job to make ends meet, balancing as best he could between his nine-to-five insurance gig and bartending in the evenings. And still, even with insurance, the medical bills piled up.
I felt helpless.
But that was my freshman year of high school. That was the year I started playing football seriously, not just for fun. And when my coach saw how much playing saved my mental health, he threw his all into me just like I threw my all into the team.
And I made a vow to myself and to my family that year.
I vowed that I’d work my ass off to be not just good at football, but great. I promised I would play in college, get Name, Image, and Likeness deals, and one day sign a contract with a team in the NFL.
I would help my family. I would make it so a medical bill wouldn’t be the source of my mom’s tears, so that we’d never have to worry about Ginny’s care. It would be the best care money could buy, I’d make sure of it.
And I had.
I transferred to North Boston University my sophomore year of college and immediately made a name for myself. Ever since then, I’d been sending nearly every penny I earned to my parents.
Including my signing bonus last year.
It wasn’t as flashy as my friends’ had been. Holden, Clay, Kyle, Leo… they all went within the first two rounds to teams willing to pay. I was a later round draft, but I’d made it — and that three-million dollars had felt life changing when I took it.
Something they don’t tell you, though, is that the number on that check isn’t exactly what you get.
There are taxes, agent fees, union dues, and more fine line items that slowly drain that money before you even get the chance to cash the check. I paid off my parents’ house, made sure medical bills for Ginny were covered for a couple years, and then took what I had left and hired a financial advisor to help me invest it.
Every rookie drafted into the NFL got a four-year contract, so I was set with a salary for at least three more seasons. But after that, the money a team would pay for me would all depend on how I played these next few years.
I had a lot to prove — and I’d do it.
I’d do anything to make sure my family never had to worry again.
Mom, Ginny, and I talked on the phone while Sebastian played until I knew it was close to dinner time and I needed to get himhome. He was wound up in the car, still buzzing off the new friends he’d made, and he barreled inside the house as soon as we pulled up.
Kyle had purchased a massive, stunning mansion in Magnolia with a view of the water and city that couldn’t be beat. The old him probably would have turned it into a party house, but as it was, I walked in to find Sebastian cooing over his new baby sister in his mom’s arms, Kyle watching over it all like a proud papa bear.
“She sleeps a lot,” Sebastian remarked of Raven, the tiny little bundle of human being wrapped in a blanket.
“Can you believeyouused to be this little?” Madelyn asked Sebastian.
