“So up until this happened, you feel you were doing well?” she asks.
“Yeah. I was. There are still things that bother me, but I handle them. I’ve put the accident in the past.”
“Hmmm.”
What does that mean?
“You’ve done very well with your life,” Roberta says. “I’m happy to see it. You’ve overcome so much. You have the career you always wanted. You had the courage to go after it and do it.”
I swallow. “Unless I’ve messed things up now. Again.”
“You’re worried that you’ve repeated what happened in the past?”
I nod. “Yeah.” My chest is tight, my gut churning.
“It’s human nature to hold on to what we know. Change is threatening. But the thing about trauma is that’s it’s part of your life forever. You say you’ve put the accident in the past, and that’s where it is. But it still has power over you.”
I slowly lift my chin in acknowledgement.
“If you try to deny that…if you try to bury it or ignore it…it can have even more power over you.”
I gaze at her, trying to absorb her words and their meaning. “Are you saying that because I don’t want to play with those guys, it’s having even more of an effect on me?”
She gives a half-smile. “What do you think?”
I think…oh Christ. I think she’s right. I close my eyes and relive my conversations with Kate, my protests that seeing them would affect my mental health. Meanwhile, I’m a fucking mess.
“Okay,” I say hoarsely. “Yeah.”
“Past trauma has a way of inserting itself into your future, whether you want that or not. But if you’re willing to face it, you may find yourself open to the possibility of growth that brings.”
Face it. Goddammit.
She continues. “The more comfortable you are bringing your past into your present, the less control it has over your life. I believe you have to honor and respect what brought you to this point of your life. At the same time, you have to create space to grow into where you are going. Staying where you are isn’t growing.”
I nod again, turning her words over in my head.
“If you sit with the discomfort instead of ignoring it, you can tap into a deep wisdom inside you that will help deal with uncertainty. There’s a quote I often tell people, from an English author and spiritualist, Jeff Foster: ‘True healing is not the fixing of the broken, but the rediscovery of the unbroken.’ You feel you’re broken…and that trauma will always be a part of you. But there is much of you that is unbroken. Those are the things you need to rediscover. To embrace. What you’ve done to get you to this point in your life is admirable. But it might not be enough to get you to where you want to go now. You might need to dig a little deeper.”
I clear my throat. “There’s also…one more, er, problem.”
She tilts her head slightly. “What is that?”
“I’ve fallen in love with my agent. And I think I screwed that up too.”
21
Kate
This is a shitastrophe.
My client has disappeared. I’m trying to hold off three different teams who want to meet him and want an answer. I told them Hunter had a family emergency in Calgary and would be back soon, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen. I’ve texted him a couple of times and haven’t had a reply, so I have no idea what’s going on.
I have other clients who need my attention. It doesn’t take Philadelphia long to want to sign Van, who they indeed drafted as the number one pick. We’ve now inked a three-year entry-level contract, standard salary but with the potential for up to two million dollars in bonuses each season. He’s thrilled and so am I.
I’m working on a couple of other negotiations as well, as well as a partnership with Nike for Van and a little issue Callum got himself into in Las Vegas. But…I didn’t get on a plane and fly there to get him off the hook. I calmly gave him advice on how to handle it.
But I keep thinking about Hunter.
I swing wildly between furious and heartbroken. Also worried and frustrated. Damn him.
After a workout, Soledad and I head out for drinks.
“What the hell is with you?” she asks as we settle in at a table. “I thought you were going to have a heart attack you were pushing it so hard.”
“Ha ha. That’d be just my luck right now.” I sigh, then smile at the waitress. I need more than a beer tonight. “What’s a good strong cocktail?”
“Do you like martinis?”
I wrinkle my nose.
“Okay, then I’d suggest an Angel Face,” she says. “Calvados, which is an apple liqueur, apricot brandy, and gin.”
“That sounds perfect.”
The waitress looks to Soledad.
“Uh…I’ll try that too.”
“Of course.”
“I’m a little scared of that drink,” Soledad says when she’s gone. “So, what is up?”
I fill her in on some of what’s happened, as usual careful about personal details about Hunter.
“Your job is stressful,” she comments. “But I’ve never seen you this stressed.”
I look down at the drink the waitress served while I was talking, a martini glass with a little twist of lemon rind on the rim. “That’s because I’ve never fallen for a client before.”
Soledad nods and sips her drink. “This is delicious.”
“I thought that would get more of a reaction from you.”
She grins. “I’m not surprised, hon. The way you talk about him…the way you look at him. It was obvious to me.”
I pout. “Not to me. I guess it should have been.”
“So what’s the problem? You two have been spending a lot of time together the last couple of months.”
“He’s pissed at me for trying to do my job.” When I put it that way, his behavior seems ridiculous. “Because there’s a team he doesn’t want to play for, and I talked to them.”
“Oh.”
“I shouldn’t have talked to them.”
“Why did you?”
“I wanted to get the best deal for him. It’s everything he wanted. But I should have respected his wishes. Now I’ve ruined everything.” I sigh and take a big gulp of my cocktail. It warms a path all the way down to my belly.
“Why doesn’t he want to play for that team?” Her forehead furrows.
“He has his reasons. Something in his past.” Again, I don’t feel comfortable sharing Hunter’s story.
She purses her lips. “Huh. You’d think a few million bucks might help.”
I give a dry laugh. “It doesn’t work that way.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. He left town. Went home to Calgary. And he’s not answering my texts.”
“Yikes.”
“I know.” I press the heel of my hand to my forehead. “Damn.”
“If it’s something in his past…well, you can’t change the past.”