PROLOGUE
DREW
I PULL MY HELMET OFF, lean my face up to the sky, and welcome the cool air against the sweat plastering my hair to my head.
And really, I’m just buying time. Giving myself a minute to still my nerves that have been humming beneath the surface for the past few hours. Allowing myself a moment for this to sink in.
That I’m here at the NFL Scouting Combine, and I just gave the performance I needed to give.
“That was one incredible show.”
I turn to face the man with the slightly southern accent who’s bearing down on me. He’s tall with broad shoulders and a double chin, but his eyes are the same as the younger version of him I saw in picture after picture from my youth. And he’s wearing a polo shirt with an emblem on the left breast that would make any football player salivate.
The Tennessee Tigers.
Super Bowl champions four out of the last eight years. One of the most loved, and therefore often hated, teams in the NFL.
Of all the coaches in this damn Combine. Of course, he’s the first to seek me out.
Goddamn fate.
“Thank you.” I nod. “I got lucky today.”
The man—Roger Molleman—barks out a laugh. “Seems to me someone might be lying through his teeth, because that’s a talent that’s hard to hide.”
“Thank you,” I repeat as he stops a few feet from me and angles his head to the side as our eyes meet—hold.
“Your name again?” he asks, despite knowing damn well it’s written on the sheets pinned to the clipboard he has sandwiched between his arm and torso.
And everything I’ve worked for over my short lifetime comes down to this one moment. To selling this one lie.
“Drew Hemmings.” The name still feels foreign on my tongue all these years later. “Or Drewski. I answer to just about anything.”
“Where’d you go to school?” he asks. “It says something on the stat sheet but—”
“Butler University.”
“Can’t say that I’ve ever heard of anyone going pro who played at that college. Hell, I don’t even have the slightest idea of where it is. But by golly, son, why haven’t we heard about you? Why haven’t you been playing at a PAC-12? How do I know the numbers you gave today weren’t flukes?”
“You don’t.” I shrug.
“For a man trying to get drafted by the NFL, I don’t see you trying to sell yourself.”
“I’m confident in my abilities. Someone will pick me up.”
He laughs again and looks around at the five other coaches standing about ten feet away, arms crossed over their chests, and apparently waiting to talk to me.
My pulse races at the sight, but all Roger sees is cool, calm, and unaffected.
“You’re cocky. I like cocky.”
“Quarterbacks have to be.”
He angles his head to the side and studies me with a quiet scrutiny. “The way you play . . . you remind me of someone, and I can’t seem to put my finger on it.”
Do you know you held me when I was a baby?
Do you remember the man you used to call a best friend was my father?
But none of that matters.
The only thing that does is that I’m here now and I’m going to capitalize on any opportunity I’m given.
That’s my father’s past.
This is my future.
“Doesn’t every player remind someone of somebody?” I ask to divert his attention.
“True.” He glances over his shoulder again to the other coaches waiting. “Do you have some kind of pitch you want to make to me? Something for me to take away so on draft night I say your name instead of one of the other quarterbacks out there?”
My dad’s advice runs through my head. Roger doesn’t like kiss-asses. He likes aloof confidence. He likes to answer the questions himself. He has to be the one in control.
“Nope. Nothing to say. Your team and its record speak for itself just as my stats and performance today does.” I set my helmet down on the bench. “Thank you for your time.”
I reach a hand out to shake his and he stares at it for a beat before reaching out and shaking it. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’ve got nothing else to say?”
My smile is slow and steady as I meet his eyes again. “Like I said, I like to leave it all on the field. That should be proof enough.”
He stares at me with an incredulity I love. That means I’ll be memorable. That means I did my job.
“We’ll be in touch,” he says, hands in his pockets as he rocks back on his heels.
“I look forward to it.”
And those five words are the only inkling I give him that I’m interested in playing for the Tigers.
The only inkling at all.
And when all is said and done—when I’ve spoken to coaches and chatted with other players I’ve previously admired from afar—I take a seat in the stands of Lucas Oil Stadium and look around.
I take in the rise of the seats around me, the rows going up one after another until they become huge walls that form an oval around us. I can imagine what a packed crowd sounds like. I picture being on the middle of the field with cameras flashing and fans cheering so loud that I have to shout the cadence before the snap—and even then, I doubt my offensive line would hear me.
There would be adrenaline. A rush that edges on what I’d assume getting high would feel like . . . and even then, it couldn’t rival the feeling of sixty thousand people cheering or booing you and your team.
How could he have walked away from this without a fight?
But as I sit down on the bench and breathe it all in, I know my secret must keep. I fear if all is found out, the one thing I want the most, might all come tumbling down.
When it comes to athletes, fans and history remember two types: the undeniable stars and the ones who caused scandals.
I could be the first one.
But my fear is that the second one will rob me of that possibility.
They say the sins of the fathers are to be laid upon the children.
For my sake, let’s hope that’s not true.
CHAPTER ONE
BREXTON
“SO I’M THE REASON YOU’VE been hanging around,” Justin Hobbs says with a half-cocked smirk before readjusting the towel that covers his freshly showered lower half.
“I have lots of reasons for hanging around, one of which was to watch the scrimmage this afternoon,” I say of the last preseason game the Raptors had before the season goes into full swing.
I take him in. Typical quarterback’s body. Lean and tone with not too much excess, say like an offensive lineman, who has to throw his weight around. Handsome in a dime a dozen way. He looks like any Midwest boy raised on beef and beer, complete with the farmer’s tan evident because of his shirtless torso.
The difference is he’s from California, has a cannon for an arm, and an ego to match.
I’d been warned ahead of time.
“And?” he asks.
“And, the team played well. It was preseason but if it’s any indication of what the upcoming season’s going to look like, I’d say you’re in great shape.”
“I know I am. Thanks.”