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“Jesus, a fucking trophy and ring weren’t enough for you today?” Cullen joked.
“Nope. Wasn’t complete until now,” Tucker hollered back, then gave him the bird as he turned back and kissed me.
“Next time, we’ll be celebrating your ring,” he said, speaking low in my ear.
Maybe that would come to pass, or maybe it wouldn’t, but I had everything that truly mattered to me already, my heart so full I could barely stand it.
I didn’t need anything else.
EPILOGUE
TUCKER
Five years later
“The most important lessons that you can take home from the Dream Big program are that hard work and dedication pay off, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish if you put your mind to it, and probably the most important lesson of all is never listen to Coach Tucker,” Patrick said to the group of one hundred high school football players.
“Or Garrett!” Ramsey added.
“Count Cullen in that, too,” Houston tacked on at the end. The players laughed the way they were supposed to, and I rolled my eyes.
“Clearly, you can tell which of the coaches will be the most fun,” I added. “And I’ll give you a hint: it’s not Whitt, Ramsey, or the Senior McRae.”
“I hate it when you call me that. I’m not old.” It was a new nickname for Houston that had recently started making rounds. We had to have some way of distinguishing them, and Baby G wasn’t so much of a baby anymore.
There was another round of laughter, energy, and excitement pumping through the air. This was the second summer for Dream Big, the football program we’d started with the McRae brothers, Rams, and Atwood. We’d started planning it while Atwood was still in the league. He and Baby G played longer than the rest of us.
Right now, Garrett was the only one still in the league, but I wasn’t sure how much longer that would last. He’d really fallen in love with the camp like the rest of us had, the group taking a page out of Houston’s love for teaching football to the next generation.
Patrick and I had played one more season after the Rush won our ring. That’s how long we’d each had in our contract, and at the time, neither of us had been ready to let football go. Plus, Patrick had wanted his championship and to break Deion Sanders’ record. While I’d wanted him to have one, I couldn’t pretend it wouldn’t have been cool to win again myself. Patrick had won on both accounts—the Royals going all the way and smashing Deion’s record. The only time I had seen him happier was our wedding day.
While we had both gotten offers to play again after the Royals’ win—not just from our current team but others —we’d decided to walk away together and on top. We weren’t cut out for that long-distance thing. We were too needy for each other all of the time and didn’t care who knew it.
“So, everyone has their room assignments. You have free time until tomorrow morning. We start at seven o’clock on the dot. Anyone not on the field by 6:55 is late and will spend the morning running gassers,” Houston threatened.
“See what I have to deal with?” Cullen joked as the kids dispersed to enjoy themselves before we made them question why they loved football so much. All in good fun, of course.
“Anything we need to know?” I asked. We already had the schedule set, all of us knowing our responsibilities for the following days.
“Not anything pressing, but we should all be thinking about how we plan to spend that donation from Whitt’s parents. I think more scholarship programs are a good way to go. It’s a lot of money, though, so we’ll have some left.” Ramsey crossed his arms. He was the numbers guy and did a lot of the financing.
While we had high hopes for the Whitt family after the conference finals game they’d gone to, things didn’t go as well as we’d wished. They definitely tried, but the truth was, they were just built differently. Writing a check was easier for them than the consistency of being in someone’s life on a day-to-day basis. Unless you were working for them. Their business was their world, and while Patrick knew he was loved, they would never see football as important as we did.
When we’d retired and had decided to just enjoy our lives without much responsibility before starting Dream Big, there had been a whole new discussion over Patrick going to work for his family. It wasn’t what he wanted, what he would ever want, which had created a new ripple of tension between them. They accepted it now, and Patrick had learned to be okay with yearly visits and random phone calls.
“Strippers and booze?” Atwood suggested.
“I second that,” Baby G added.
We all ignored them. It was par for the course by now. “We’ll figure it out. The money isn’t going anywhere. For now, we should probably make sure these kids don’t set the place on fire, and then I’d like to disappear into our cabin with my husband before this camp kicks our asses and we’re too exhausted for sex,” I teased. Patrick and I had gotten married the summer after our last season in the league before he had moved to Denver for good. Dream Big was located here, too, which made it easier.
Garrett clapped Patrick on the shoulder. “Yikes. Sorry about your luck, bro. The rest of us don’t have that problem.”
“Ha-ha.” I gave him the finger.
It was a few hours before lights-out, and we took shifts keeping an eye on things. Patrick and I headed back to our cabin first because we had a video call scheduled with Mom and my sisters back home in Florida.
Kayla had a son who was a year old, named Steven after our dad, and the little shit was obsessed with my husband. “You’re not supposed to love Uncle Patrick more than me,” I told him when he started clapping and reaching for Patrick like he could grab him through the computer screen.
