Southern Hotshot (North Carolina Highlands 2)

“Fine. You reminded me how to do it because somewhere along the way I’d forgotten.”

“That’s really cool of you to say,” she replies, looking up. She pats the hearth beside her. “So talk to me.”

I sit, careful to keep a good twelve inches or so between us, and talk.

The truth comes out in a torrent. How Olly Welch played the part of supportive teammate as second-string quarterback after Carolina drafted him five years into my career. He was wet behind the ears, but he was hungry, and he worked hard, and he took a real interest in learning what I had to teach him. He reminded me a lot of myself at his age.

We also shared an agent, so it wasn’t long before Olly and I became friends. When a torn ACL sidelined me halfway through my fifth season in Carolina, Olly checked in on me daily. He was great. He sent me food and kept me smiling with texts and calls.

I tried to hurry back to the team, speed up whatever I could in my recovery. Fans—and coaches and owners—have a short memory. I was hell-bent on getting back in the game as soon as possible. My dad never missed a game in his twelve-year career, and I hated that I wouldn’t be sharing that statistic.

I also hated the idea of being forgotten. Eclipsed. Olly was starting games while I was out, and he began playing really fucking well. He knew it, I knew it, the organization knew it.

Still, when I got back, everyone assured me I’d start again. Olly most of all.

“He looked me in the eye and said he had my back one hundred percent,” I tell Emma. “Little did I know he’d end up stabbing me there instead.”

Emma gasps, hand going to her mouth. “Oh my God, Samuel, what happened?”

“It turns out, Olly was playing games behind my back with my agent, Lina,” I reply grimly. “Apparently he told Lina that I told him my heart wasn’t in the game anymore. He said to her, ‘hey, the docs say Samuel will be cleared, but he’s still in a lot of pain and he told me point-blank he doesn’t want to start anymore. He doesn’t even want to come back at all.’ Olly told her I didn’t want to go through all that again if I got injured a second time—the surgery, the rehab. Said it ‘took too much out of me.’ He also told her not to tell me that I shared everything with him.”

Emma furrows her brow. “Why?”

“Because I was”—air quotes—“‘brokenhearted,’ and I was ashamed over losing my love for the game. I’d rather be asked to leave than publicly admit I didn’t want to play anymore. He claimed I felt like I’d be letting the team down, like I was a coward. So Olly pushed her to take the information to our coaching staff without saying a word to me.”

“Oh my God, Samuel.”

“No kidding.”

“I don’t know the world of pro sports that well, but isn’t that illegal? At the very least, it has to be a serious breach of ethics.”

“Absolutely.” I nod. “Didn’t stop it from happening, though. I walk into training camp my first day back, and Coach pulls me aside. Says the team will be okay without me, and that they were ‘moving in a different direction’ with their new starting quarterback, Olly Welch.”

Emma gasps. “Wow. I googled you, obviously, before I met you. I read a much different version of this story—”

“The PR people fed the media that bullshit about the team and I ‘amicably’ parting ways. I rode the bench for another year to the end of my contract. And then…yeah. My career in the pros was over.”

Emma is shaking her head. “But what about Lina? What about the rest of the people working for you?”

“I went right to my manager after my conversation with Coach. And he said he’d been told that Lina was working hard to help me retire from football, and that thanks to Olly, they both knew that’s what I wanted.”

“Holy shit.” She’s still shaking her head. “But you fought it, right?”

I shrug. “I did for a little while. I was angry. But the wheels were already in motion, and Olly was playing so fucking well. He took the team far that year.” I swallow. “At the time, it was devastating. Football had been my life for so long. But by then Beau had retired, and he’d started putting his plans in motion to develop Blue Mountain. My siblings and I, we’d always planned to come back to the farm one day and make it the place it was always meant to be. Beau asked me if I was ready to lend a hand, and, well…seemed like the fresh start I needed. The way things ended in Carolina made me hate the sport for a while there.”