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I shook my head. “It’s not her.”
Crawling out of bed this morning seemed like it happened a week ago. I had left the girl sleeping while I dressed for work. I was never late to practice. It was an old military habit I couldn’t break.
It was ingrained in my character. Late meant disrespect. Late meant you didn’t give a shit about yourself. It didn’t matter how hot the girl was I left under my sheets—she didn’t mean more than my character and reputation.
I was here on time like I was every day.
“Then what is it?” Dylan looked confused. He had taken a blonde home from the bar. He drank until he didn’t remember her name. And like always, he was the last one at practice.
I turned toward my best friend. I held my phone toward his face. “Read it.” He leaned forward.
His eyes darted back and forth, scanning the team alert text.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Is this for real?”
I nodded. “I guess so. It’s from HR. They wouldn’t pull a prank like this. No way.”
Sure, it was from the official Warriors office, but someone should have walked down here and told us in person. I looked around. Some guys were still in the showers. Most were walking around in towels. A few hadn’t bothered to put on a damn shred of clothing. I waited for it to happen. I waited for the news to break. I waited for the jokes to stop. For the banter to cease. In seconds, they wouldn’t care what happened at practice today. They wouldn’t care they were still sweating.
It was as if someone had a bat and started taking swings through the locker room. The rowdy bullshit quieted down as everyone checked their phones.
I saw it. The domino effect was happening.
Dylan’s eyes pinched together. “I hadn’t heard he was sick.”
“Me either.” I was too busy learning plays and winning games. I also didn’t follow the McCade headlines.
“I don’t know if this is good or bad.”
We watched as the others reacted. There weren’t any tears. There weren’t going to be any. We stood in a place the man had built and left to fall down around us. There was anger in the air. It dripped off my teammates just like the sweat did.
I heard someone slam their hand into the wall.
I sat on the bench in front of my locker. I didn’t like change. I never had. I was the kind of man who ate the same thing for breakfast. I ran the same routes around the city every day. I had a favorite white T-shirt, and a favorite black one. I had the same game-day ritual no matter what city we played in. I drank the same Texas beer. Listened to the same stations.
I didn’t like change. I liked consistency. I counted on it.
And this was a big one. The kind of news that had the potential to turn everything on its head. Worse than a sack that knocked the wind out of you for days. This was chaos. The kind of shakeup that could ruin the season. Destroy the team. Pit us against each other in the worst fucking way.
The owner of the Warriors was dead.
Two
Vanessa
Two Weeks Later
I sat in the family box every Sunday. I had for the past twenty-six years. Each and every weekend of the entire football season was planned for me. I was either in Warrior Stadium or on the road wherever the team traveled. It never occurred to me that there might be something else I could do with my time on game day. I’d never had the option.
That's what it meant to be a McCade. Football was the family life. The family dynasty. It was what kept us together. At least that’s what we wanted people in this town to think. The McCade bloodline breathed nothing but football.
It ran through our pores, pulsing in our veins as if it kept us alive as oxygen. It was the dominant gene that separated McCades from everyone else.
But all that changed the night my grandfather died. Everything changed with one final heartbeat.
I couldn’t let myself relive those moments. The world was watching me. Waiting to see how I handled the next step as if it was the fourth quarter and the Warriors were down by three. The problem was I wasn’t a quarterback. I wasn’t trained to deal with intense pressure and stress. I didn’t feel like someone had handed me the ball in a well-drawn out play with instructions. Instead, I felt as if I was at the bottom of a pile and the weight of twenty men was crushing the air from my lungs.
I walked into his office. It was the corner room of the executive level in the Warriors’ suite. I remembered when I used to play on the floor as a child. My grandfather didn't want to be bothered with me so he would shoo me into a corner with a box of Warriors’ stationary and tell me to keep quiet during his meetings.
