Page 75 of Ruff and Tumble

Nowshe drew close enough for him to kiss, but it was obvious from her expression that she was in no mood for romance. “They should hear it from you instead of a press release,” she said. “And the sooner, the better. You’re only building up false hopes by pretending you can recover from this. It tookmeseveral days to get over the shock, and I’m not personally invested in your career. I can’t imagine what it’s going to do to them.”

Cole could. He could picture the exact look on his dad’s face—disappointment and dismay, the crushing loss of everything he’d worked toward. His mom would try to hide it, but that would be worse. She’d smile and make everyone dinner and tactfully refrain from mentioning football for the rest of her life.

And Regina, well. Regina would start making plans. Marketing plans and financial plans. Lists of sponsors who might be interested in an overpriced former football star. Ways he could eke out his fame so that the light stayed bright and focused overhead, so that the name Cole Bennettmeantsomething.

Until she realized that his name was useless and she stopped.

Even though he knew this day had been coming—had wished for it, even—he wasn’t sure he had it in him to crush his entire family’s dreams.

What kind of man did? What kind ofson?

“You have to tell them, Cole,” Hailey said when he hesitated too long over his response. She tilted her face up to his, her eyes narrowed as she took in each exhausted line, every strained nerve. “I know it’s going to be awful, but they’re your parents.”

That truth—so simply uttered and so much more direct than any of the other criticisms Hailey had leveled at him—hit Cole much harder than he’d expected.

“Awful” didn’t even begin to cover it. Didn’t she realize? She could critique his game play and laugh at his faults for an eternity without hurting him, but this was the one thing that had the power totrulybreak him.

“Exactly,” he said, feeling the cold sensation of dread and a deep, abiding fear clamp on his heart. “They’re my parents. Not yours.”

She blinked, clearly taken aback by his response. So was Philip, who renewed his bid for attention. He pawed at Cole’s leg and nudged the football closer.

“Notnow, Philip.”

“Don’t take your bad mood out on your puppy.” Hailey picked up Philip’s football and tossed it across the white marbled floor. Her aim sucked and her technique was deplorable, but that didn’t stop the puppy from bounding happily after it. She took one look at Cole’s expression and added, “And don’t take it out on me either. I get it… It sucks to get pulled from the roster this close to the Kickoff Cup. It’s not how you’d have chosen to end your career. You wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. But it’s not as if you didn’t know this was coming. It’s not as if you thought you could keep this up forever.”

Everything Hailey said was absolutely true. Itdidsuck not to finish the season out, and he would have preferred to retire on his own terms. He wanted to play in a Kickoff Cup game and—yes—maybe even win it. And this career always had an expiration date—that was a thing every football player knew, or if they didn’t, they learned it as soon as that first concussion hit.

But if she thought for one second that it was thegloryhe was pining for, if his hesitation came from not getting to ride on the shoulders of the adoring crowds any longer, then she didn’t know him at all.

“This has nothing to do with the Kickoff Cup,” he said.

Her look of disbelief spoke volumes.

“Okay, maybe a little of it does,” he admitted. Even in his present state, his stomach in knots and his heart heavy, he could recognize just how far he’d gone in the name of the sport. The puppies, the press, the fact that Hailey was in his life at all… Why had he done any of it if not for his team? “But that’s not the real reason I don’t want to talk to my parents. You’ve seen them, Hailey. You’ve spent time with them. Don’t you know by now that this news is going to kill them?”

“Your dad will be fine.” She reached out and touched his arm. It was just a light press of her fingers, but he felt as though he was being held down by a rock. “I know you worry about him, but he has your mom and sister to help look after him, and the doctors—”

“You don’t understand,” Cole protested. “Everything he has, everything he is, is wrapped up in my football career. He and my mom both, not to mention Regina and Mia. This doesn’t just mean the end for me. It’s the end for all of us.”

She offered him a wry smile and took her hand back. She placed it on Philip’s head instead, running her finger up and down the velvety length of his nose. “I think you’ll survive. No offense, but if the five of you have blown through your entire salary already, you need to rethink your long-term financial plans.”

“Money?” The word came out in a rush of breath and bitter laughter. “You think this is about money?”

“Isn’t it?”

It wasn’t. Not even remotely. He’d give up every penny he had if it meant he could avoid the heartache—the absolute upending of everything he knew to be true—that this news would cause his family.

“My dad has been molding me into a football player since the moment I was born,” he said. He barely recognized the sound of his own voice, but he pushed on anyway. He needed to say this. He needed for someone else toknow. “Everything I ate and played and did was to make me a better quarterback. Nothing was too good for me, nothing too much—provided, of course, that it pushed me closer to the end zone. The cookies my mom baked had protein powder ground into them. They tasted like paste, but that was too bad. My development came first.

“I only got football gear for every single birthday and Christmas, no matter how much I wanted a remote-controlled car or a puppy. I didn’t have friends; I had teammates. Even my own sister wasn’t allowed to play with me—not in any way that counted. We didn’t fight over Monopoly or take turns playingSuper Mario. She fetched the footballs I threw through a tire in the backyard, ran me through sprinting drills and timed my progress.”

“Poor Reggie,” Hailey murmured.

“Yes,” Cole agreed, jumping at this opportunity. “Itwashard on her—harder, probably, than it was on me. She didn’t get a childhood of her own, was never given a chance to be anything other than my manager. My dad is a quarterback’s father. My mom is a quarterback’s mother. Regina is a quarterback’s sister. And me, well, I’m a quarterback. Period. Full stop.”

“That’s not true, Cole, and if you’d just—”

Cole didn’t let her finish. “It’s all any of us ever were. It’s all any of us will ever be. Don’t you get it? When I leave the Lumberjacks, I’m not just ending a job. I’m ending an entire way of life. I’m ending my family. Without football to bind us, I don’t know what we’re supposed to be. I don’t know what we’ll have.”