Flash Burned (Burned 2)

I stared quizzically at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Patient confidentiality. She won’t give up any of your secrets, Ari.”

“What does that have to do with your stint?”

“She didn’t give up any of mine, either.”

“Kyle. You’re being way too vague.”

With a frustrated sigh, he explained, “Since I was a kid playing Pop Warner, I wanted a football career. I wanted to play pro and I put everything I had into making it happen. I was good enough to earn a full-ride scholarship to Arizona State University and broke a few records. All I wanted was to be the best damn quarterback I could be.”

Over six feet and solid muscle, I guessed he wasn’t too off the mark size-wise, and obviously not talent-wise, since he’d landed a scholarship to ASU.

“So what happened?” I asked. This was not a topic we’d broached before and my curiosity suddenly burned to know more about his past.

“Got hurt.” He seemed to grind over this a few moments. I didn’t press. Eventually, he told me, “We had a shitty first season and my offensive line couldn’t protect me well enough to not take a number of sacks. My left knee seemed to be the biggest target. Finally blew the fucker out on a play where I ran the ball for thirty yards before getting tackled.”

“Wow, thirty yards. That’s amazing for a quarterback.” Then I said, “But damn. Your knee.”

“Yeah. I spent the summer here in rehab. Quietly. No one knew. By the time I made it back for the start of practice my second year, I was feeling pretty good. Moving like nothing had ever happened.”

“Oh, God,” I said, a dismal feeling sweeping through me. “You got hit again.”

“Same goddamn knee.”

“Christ, Kyle. I’m so sorry.” I patted his jean-clad thigh.

“Bad news was that I couldn’t come up here during the season to work on it. Man, it sucks to blow out a knee. I had a boatload of cortisone injections, rehab in the off-seasons, knee braces year-round, just to protect it as best as I could. I pretended it didn’t hurt like hell. I…” He shook his head as his thought trailed off.

“You, what?”

“Nothing. Look, the thing is, when I could be here, it helped immensely.”

I was interested in all that he clearly wasn’t telling me but didn’t pry. Just said, “I don’t doubt it. And I’m sure your entire family rallied around you and—”

“No.” His jaw set again. There was definitely a lot of angst built around his college football career. “Mom was busy with Shell, and Dad … Well. When you have a road-warrior, salesman father whose sole excitement when he returns home is reliving his glory days by challenging his son on the front lawn for the neighbors to see—and said son being superprotective of his knee so that he doesn’t do any further damage, thereby not really bringing his A game … Dad always thought I was mocking him by holding back.”

I winced. “That must have made for some pretty tense times.”

“By a lot.” He shrugged again. “Whatever. Anyway, point being, this is a great place to recover and readjust. I had a couple of awesome seasons following the first two crappy ones. Because of Aunt Macy and her staff.”

“So, then you could have gone pro?”

“I was part of the draft. Put serious thought into what I really wanted to do at that juncture in my life.”

I didn’t miss the pain that tinged his voice as he added, “But really, I had to face facts. I could play without telling anyone how agonizing it was when I just tweaked my knee the wrong way. But I knew in the back of my mind that I could be out for an entire season if I got hit hard enough in the right spot. I was twenty-one and thinking I should be invincible. I wasn’t. And what would I be like when I was thirty if I kept taking blow after blow? Crippled?”

I stared at him, seeing the disappointment in his decision—or in himself. For being human. Fallible. Breakable.

“Kyle.” I covered his hand with mine as we sat on the sofa, no one else paying attention. “You think you sold yourself short? Took the easy way out?”

He didn’t speak for a while, and I didn’t push.

A few minutes ticked by. Then he finally said, “I didn’t want to end up like my dad. He wasn’t good enough for pro for no reason other than he didn’t possess enough talent. He was good, but not worthy of a team picking him up. It pissed him off. Stayed with him. Made him pretty damn bitter.” Kyle shook his head. “To this day, I think one of the reasons he’s so into his job is because he’s a rock-star salesman, making some serious coin. But he takes every trip he can to avoid being at home, especially when there are family events—and you know, all the relatives get a little tipsy and start making comparisons about who’s the better football player of the family.”

I wasn’t exactly knowledgeable when it came to this testosterone-riddled behavior, but I could at least empathize because of the fact that my father had suffered greatly with a bad shoulder that had jacked his own professional career.

“So,” I ventured, “the Jennses aren’t akin to the Brady Bunch?”