Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 62972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62972 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 315(@200wpm)___ 252(@250wpm)___ 210(@300wpm)
“Car wreck?” He leans on the doorjamb and gives me a concerned once-over. He’s our quarterback, a big dude with a heart of gold, and he knows the fucked-up childhood I lived through.
I nod quickly. “Every time February rolls around, it brings it all back. It’s like I’m in the dream and I keep thinking I can stop it from happening, but I never do.”
He nods, studying my face. “It doesn’t help that you’re worried about Raven. Your dad needs to get his shit straight.”
A muscle ticks in my jaw. Just thinking about him makes my blood boil. He’s lost his latest job as a mechanic…again.
“How’s she doing?” he asks me.
“As best she can.”
A sigh comes from him, and I know he’s got an opinion. “You’re wearing yourself out going to see her every afternoon. Hell, it was midnight before you got in last night. Between practice and her…something’s got to give.”
My mouth compresses. “I don’t have a choice.”
Raven suffered a traumatic brain injury, also known as a TBI, in the accident. Now, at nineteen, she drags her right leg and has speech issues, and don’t even get me started on the loss of cognitive ability and emotional outbursts. Worry tugs at me as I think about everything she’s lost.
Everything I lost.
She’s been staying with my dad temporarily for the past few weeks since we removed her from the state-funded group home where she’d lived since the car wreck three years ago.
I never liked the home with its tiny rooms and smell of death, and when she showed up with unexplained bruises on her skin a few weeks ago, I knew right away that I had to get her out of there. I removed her and placed her with my dad, but she needs somewhere besides his trailer. She needs stability and a routine and a regular nursing staff to check on her every single day, not just the one her disability helps pay for that only comes out three days a week.
If only I had known about the abuse before I’d signed the paperwork to not go into the draft early. I let out a deep breath. Now it’s too late, and I have to wait until next year.
“You should talk to Coach Al—maybe he can help.” He’s saying what he always does, but Ryker doesn’t get it. No one does.
“Help with what?” I can’t help but be annoyed with him. “Going out to my dad’s trailer and cooking dinner? Helping her get in the shower? Getting her ready for bed? Get real, man. I need money, and no one affiliated with football or Waylon can do that because it would be an infraction with the NCAA. I can’t accept any compensation or donations, remember? Coach can’t even buy me a fucking candy bar. If they think any kind of money or benefits changed hands—for anything—I’ll be out of a career in the NFL. Those are the goddamn rules.”
“Stupid rules,” he mutters. “If you weren’t such a damn fine player…”
Yeah, tell me about it.
“I’m cool, okay. Things will work out,” I say with a lightness I’m not feeling, playing off my worry. I show him my fists, which are rough and red from hitting the punching bag at Carson’s Gym, an off-campus facility I’ve been sparring at for extra cardio. “I work out my frustrations this way.”
He shakes his head. “You always get all squirrely on me this time of year. Do me a favor and get laid, or ask that girl out.”
“What girl?”
He sends me an are you kidding me? look. “Dude, don’t even pretend.”
I ignore him, grab my socks out of the drawer, and slide them on while he watches me like a mother hen.
“And we need to talk about this fight thing, man. I’m worried.” His voice has lowered and he’s whispering, and I assume he doesn’t want the chick in his bedroom to hear.
I pause. I confessed to him last week that a casino owner, Leslie Brock, was at the gym where I spar and offered me a flat fee if I would box another college football player at his casino. No one would ever know, and it would be enough money to get Raven set up somewhere.
“If anyone finds out, that will ruin your fucking career. Look at Michael Vick—went to jail just for financing a dog fighting ring.”
I groan. We’ve had this conversation. “No one’s getting arrested, and Vick was running a million-dollar operation with illegal gambling, plus he killed the dogs that refused to fight. I’m not gambling or killing animals for sport. I’d just be fighting for money.”
That said, it is risky as hell, and I haven’t decided if I’m going through with it.
His lips flatten. “You really don’t know what this guy is planning. Who the hell knows if it’s even legal? I can see it now: you’ll be wearing an orange jumpsuit and taking it up the ass.”