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I run my tongue over my busted lip, wincing slightly from the sting. “I threw high.”
“Why?”
“The receiver hurt Bex. He’s her ex, the one I told you about.”
He breathes in sharply, his nostrils flaring. “How?”
“He—fuck, he forced her into a kiss. And then bragged about it while calling her a slut.” I look down at my hands. “I found out during halftime.”
“So you lost the fucking game? On purpose?”
“He terrified her.”
“And what does that have to do with the game?”
“Everything,” I grind out. “I didn’t give a shit about the game when she was hurting.”
He looks out the window. “You know I had a terrible rookie season.”
“Yeah.”
“So, I came into my second year determined to do better. I wanted to win, to prove I deserved to be there as a starting quarterback. But the third week of the season, your mother got into a car accident. T-boned at an intersection.”
I’m so taken aback by his words that it takes me a moment to respond. “How come I don’t know this?”
He looks back at me, working his jaw. “It happened so long ago, before you were born. I suppose we don’t think about it much anymore. But it was a bad accident, and she needed a lot of support in the aftermath. Spent a couple weeks in the hospital. All I wanted to do was be by her side, helping her however I could.”
“Of course.”
“And I didn’t do that.”
“Dad,” I say. “What—”
“The best thing I could do, then, was my job,” he says, stopping me mid-sentence. “If I was focused on doing well, I was helping build the future we were going to have when she got better. I was building stability for her. Wealth. The team was paying me a hell of a lot of money, and I had a responsibility to them as well as her. The game isn’t everything, but it’s the key to your future.” He huffs out a breath. “I thought you understood what you needed to do. I’m sorry he hurt her, and I hope she’s okay, but James, look at yourself. Losing your head again over a girl.”
I swallow hard. “She’s not just a girl. You know how I feel about her.”
“I do. And you ought to have handled this issue off the field, after, instead of bringing it into the game. When you’re being paid millions of dollars to perform, you can’t just shut that off, no matter what’s going on in your personal life. What did you accomplish, besides making the guy hate you forever and lose the game for your teammates?”
His words feel like a strike to the face, and it hurts worse than Darryl’s actual punches or my conversation with Coach Gomez. “You said something to her.”
“Excuse me?”
“We talked after the game, and she mentioned you. What did you tell her?”
He sighs. “I reminded her that you have this tendency and told her not to create a situation where you’d choose her to the detriment of everything else.”
“She thought she had to keep this from me because of you.”
“Clearly she didn’t,” he says dryly.
“Only because I overheard him bragging about it and went to find her!” I make a fist, hitting my thigh. “What the hell, Dad? You can’t go behind my back like that!”
“And clearly the better thing would have been for you to find out about it later.”
The car slows as we approach the hotel. As soon as it stops, I jump out, grabbing my duffel before the driver can and hurrying inside. My brothers are in the lobby, clearly waiting for me because they look up as soon as the doors slide open.
“Is she gone?” I ask.
