And why couldn’t she bring herself to leave the field when he was still there?
* * *
JONAS CHECKED HIS watch and then quickened his pace. It was just before seven on the third day of the camp and so far he had the track to himself. The boys would start wandering out of the dorms soon, and he wanted to get another mile in before they did. Even if his shoulder wasn’t one hundred percent by the time training camp began in a few weeks, the rest of him would be in top form.
He heard another set of pounding feet and turned his head to find Mark, a boy who had kept his distance from the rest of the guys so far, pacing him.
“Good morning.”
“Yeah,” the kid said. Sweat left darker streaks in the kid’s brown hair, and his face was red as if he’d been running much longer than the minute or so it would have taken him to catch up with Jonas from the dorm area, and the track had been empty when he pulled up.
“You left the campus this morning or are you just getting back in?”
Mark shot him a sidelong look. “That grounds for sending me home?”
Jonas was no psychologist, but he would swear there was hope in the question. As if the kid wanted to be sent home. Not surprising, given how standoffish he’d been for the past two days. “Not unless you left to buy alcohol or drugs.” Jonas slowed his pace slightly and Mark fell in beside him as if he didn’t notice the change. “You didn’t, did you?”
“I’m not an idiot.”
“So where did you go and when?”
“For a run. This morning.”
“You could have run the track.”
“I like to get somewhere when I run. Staying on this track is too much like running on a treadmill.”
He had a point. It was always harder to hit the three-mile mark on a track than if he set off down the road at his house in the country or one of the trails the previous owners had created to exercise their horses. “As long as you’re just running I don’t see a problem with you leaving the campus. Maybe you could lead a group of the guys on a morning run tomorrow. You can’t be the only one who would prefer to go somewhere on a run.”
“Don’t think so.”
Jonas waited for the kid to speed up, leaving him behind and cutting off the conversation as he’d done so many times over the past couple of days, but he didn’t. They rounded the track and Mark kept pace whether Jonas sped up or slowed down.
“You don’t want to lead a run. You don’t take part in the drills. You barely speak to anyone here. You do realize this camp is voluntary, don’t you?”
Mark blew out a breath. “Not where I come from.”
“Where are you from?”
He named a town on the eastern edge of Kentucky and Jonas suddenly understood what was holding the kid back. “You’re the one.” He’d insisted on not going over all of the applications that came in because he wanted everyone who came to the camp to have the same chances, to be judged on their performance at the camp rather than what they did with their teams at home. Still, the director told him one of the boys was the survivor of a car crash that had killed two of his teammates and paralyzed another. He’d walked away with a broken arm and a few cuts and bruises after the driver of the car lost control on a gravel road and went over an embankment.
“Like you didn’t know that already.”
“I knew about the accident. I didn’t know you were the survivor. I’m sorry about your friends.” Jonas slowed to a walk and so did Mark. He decided to let the boy lead the way. Obviously he sought out Jonas for a reason.
“I didn’t want to come.”
“I gathered.”
“My dad wouldn’t let up. As soon as the cast came off he tried to get me throwing again, running drills. He’d wake me up at five in the morning to go for a training run. Five miles every freaking morning and all I wanted was to sleep.” He stopped walking so Jonas stopped. “Now I can’t sleep past five. I got tired of staring at the ceiling in the dorm so I decided to go for a run. I told myself to just keep running, keep going. No one would be able to find me if I just kept going.” Mark bent to pick up a rock. He tossed it from hand to hand.
“How far did you get?”
“Past the stadium.”
A fourteen-mile round trip in two hours. No wonder the kid was drenched in sweat.
“What made you turn around?”
He shrugged.
“I know what it’s like. A little bit,” Jonas added hurriedly when Mark squinted his eyes at him. “By the end of my first season in the pros, I’d lost my whole team. No one joked in the locker room. We didn’t work together on the field or off it. It’s hard losing your grip on the thing that makes the most sense to you.”
“Teammates being assholes to each other isn’t the same as teammates...” He trailed off and refused to look at Jonas.
“I know. Your friends are gone. Mine are still here.”
“It’s like—” Mark stopped himself. He folded his arms across his chest and scuffed his foot against the cinders on the track. “Why should I be able to play when they can’t?” Jonas didn’t have an answer to the question, and he didn’t think Mark expected one. “My dad says I should be playing for them. Play for Phillip and Jonathan and Arnett. Make them proud. What he really means is if I play well enough maybe no one will remember that I was the one who walked away from a car crash that killed two of my best friends and paralyzed another one. No one cares that I can’t forget. Not when I’m home. Not when I’m at school.”
“Whether you play again or not, you’ll always remember them.”
“I’m sick of remembering.”
Jonas was quiet for a long moment, trying to figure out what to say to this boy who was hurting so badly. “When I was drafted by the Kentuckians, all I could think about was turning the franchise around. Playing with a few of my idols, building something important. What I found was that I wasn’t enough. Winning a national championship in college isn’t the same as winning a Super Bowl as a professional. I stopped being the championship player I was in college and I tried to be what my team needed. I told myself I was building up their morale, that it would help us meld together as a team. In reality, I had my head in the sand. Partying on a yacht in the Caribbean has zero to do with making a game-winning touchdown on Sunday in December.”
They made their way to a bench at the side of the field. Sunlight peeked over the tops of the tall oak trees on the other side of the parking lot, but the early morning was still blessedly cool.
“So you’re out here running before seven in the morning so you won’t remember living it up with all those Hollywood girls on a yacht in the Bahamas? Cry me a river.” The kid shook his head from side to side.
“No. I’m out here running because I want to remember. I want to remember how it felt to be a winner. I want my teammates to remember what it meant to work hard and get knocked down and to claw your way back to the surface. And I may not get to.”
“The Kentuckians going to trade you for someone better?”
Jonas shrugged. “So far they haven’t, but you never know what they’ll decide. The fact is I haven’t performed at the level I was capable of because I let what I wanted get lost in what I thought my team needed.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Fresh start and all.”
“Where would you go, if you could have a fresh start?”
“Somewhere they don’t know about football.”
Jonas eyed the kid for a long moment. He’d picked up a football from beside the bench and squeezed it in his hands. His legs moved as if he was running through a play.
“Somewhere they don’t know football or just somewhere they don’t know you?”
Mark squeezed the football again. Finally he looked at Jonas. “Both?”
Jonas nodded. He picked up a ball a
nd squeezed it in his hands. Yeah. As much as he loved football, as much as he wanted to come back, to change his legacy, he understood the kid. Walking away, seeing what he was off a football field, with zero expectations based on what he’d once done between those line markers, was interesting. Challenging.
“You could do that. Walk away. You’re still in high school. You could choose a college where no one knows your reputation. Major in finance, start your own business. No one would ever have to know you were once a talented football player.”
“Maybe you could tell that to my dad.”
“Maybe.” Jonas shrugged. “The problem is, even if you found that college and had that great job and even if you never even watched a football game on TV, you’d still know. You’d be in a meeting somewhere and you’d catch the scent of the field on a Friday night in September or pick up your briefcase and remember how the leather of a football felt in your hands just before you threw a perfect pass. You can leave football behind. No one here will make you take in the drills, and if you talked to your dad he might just surprise you, too. But football will still be there. You can’t erase the memories, as much as it hurts to remember them.”
“So you think I should play again.”
“I think you have to figure out a way to let go of what happened that night. Football didn’t cause the accident. You didn’t cause the accident. It just happened, and punishing yourself for it won’t change what happened that night. It will only tear you up inside.”
“It was my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“I should have been the one driving. Arnett didn’t know how to drive a stick shift, and the roads were unfamiliar. If I’d been driving...I talked them into going out that night.” The boy’s shoulders began to shake, and a single sob seemed to tear from his chest. Jonas leaned his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands together, unsure what he was supposed to do now. “It was all me.”
“It was an accident, Mark. It was no one’s fault.” Mark’s shoulders shook harder. Jonas put an arm around the boy’s shoulders and squeezed. “You can’t punish yourself by taking away football.”
Gradually the shaking stopped. Mark took a steadying breath and Jonas clasped his hands between his knees again. “How—how is it fair to them if I play when they can’t?”
“How is it fair to you if you give it up? Not playing football won’t bring your friends back. And maybe it isn’t about giving up something you want as a punishment. Maybe it’s about honoring your friends and their memory by allowing yourself to move forward. On the football field or off it.”
The two of them sat quietly for a long moment. As the sun broke over the top of the bleachers, Mark stood. “Guess I should hit the showers,” he said, and trotted off to the dorms.
Jonas knew he should, too, but he didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to think about the words he’d said. He wanted to honor football. Desperately. Football made him feel as if he could do anything. What if he couldn’t capture that magic again?
What if football was over? What would he have to offer anyone then?
* * *
BROOKS STEPPED BACK QUIETLY, trying not to disturb either Jonas or the boy on the bench. They didn’t notice when she arrived to set up the camera, and she probably should have walked away when she realized the depth of their conversation. She swiped at her eyes, calling herself a fool to be so affected by what Jonas said to the kid. She’d been frozen, worried that if she moved a muscle either Jonas or the boy would notice and stop the conversation. Obviously the kid needed someone to talk with—she wouldn’t take that away from him.
And that was only part of it. She wanted to know what Jonas had to say. Wondered if he’d only been talking to the young boy or if part of what he said was to himself.
He knew what to say, although usually he quipped and flirted. She thought back, but couldn’t recall a single time he’d been as serious in front of the cameras as he’d been just now. In Jonas’s defense, though, most of the questions he was asked were about what he was wearing or who he was dating and not about life and death.
She took a seat on the bleachers a few yards away and watched as a few of the camp kids wandered out of the dorms and started throwing balls on the sidelines. For all she knew he was only spouting pop psychology to the kid. Brooks bit her lower lip. He’d sounded sincere, though. What other reason would he have for taking almost complete responsibility for the Kentuckians’ poor performance over the past few years? Using what he’d experienced and relating it to a boy who had gone through a huge trauma. That seemed...responsible. Caring.
Very unlike the image he’d presented to the media over the past few years.
Which begged the question: Which was the real Jonas Nash? The caring, empathetic man who offered comfort to a child? Or the playboy who was more concerned with playing the field than supporting his team?
A few more kids drifted onto the field, and the players Jonas had enlisted to help began arriving. Jonas and the boy from the bench exited the dorm area with bowls of cereal in their hands. A pass from another boy went wide, heading straight for their breakfast bowls, and the boy lifted his hand at just the right moment, catching the ball in his hand and saving their food. Jonas grinned and the kid grinned back as he one-armed a pass back to the other boys.
Brooks forgot to breathe for a long moment as she watched him interact with the teen. He was interested, truly interested, in the kid’s well-being. She wanted him to be this empathetic, heroic football player, Brooks realized, and not because it was the kind of hero these boys needed to look up to, but because that was the kind of man she wanted.
CHAPTER FIVE
“SO IT ISN’T so much about what you can lift or pull and push,” Tom said as four muscle-bound teens each struggled to turn the oversize tractor tire before them over. One of the kids, a massive defensive lineman that would probably have college scouts salivating in the fall, stepped away from his tire. “These guys are the biggest and strongest guys in the camp. They’re no good on their own.”
The kid walked around the outside of his tire, hands on hips, pushing against the hardened rubber with his foot a few times, trying to find a weakness. Tom continued talking, about how sometimes a single task could become so huge it seemed insurmountable. Jonas knew what came next: the teamwork aspect. The part he was trying to change in his own life, because being the happy-go-lucky, party-at-my-place guy hadn’t served him well at all. It had made him friends—friends who’d avoided him throughout this off-season—but it hadn’t done anything for the team.
They’d been the loudest guys at the football party for nearly five years, and that was all they had been. He had done nothing to stop it.
Had, instead, done everything in his power to keep the party going. God, he’d been a fool.
Jonas watched the group of boys, wondering which one would be the first to offer another solution. He could see the wheels turning in their minds, but so far no one had spoken up. The lineman moved from his tire to the next, and surveyed it as closely as he’d surveyed his own. When he was sure the two were identical he went back to his tire and walked around again.
“Can’t be done,” he finally said. “Maybe some steroid-pumping, strongman, competitor dude could lift it, but that’s not me.” The kid sat on the grass with a few of his buddies.
“I think it can be done,” Tom said.
“No freakin’ way,” the kid argued. “That sucker weighs a few hundred pounds and it’s awkward as all hell. No way one person can flip it over.”
“Who said anything about one person flipping the tire?”
“You did, boss.”
“No. I picked five of you to demonstrate.”
“And we’ve tried. None of us moved it an inch.”
Another kid, this one a wide receiver, seemed to catch on to the real exe
rcise and motioned to his teammates. Five of them gathered in a semicircle around one tire and tried to move it. They managed to get it a few inches off the ground and then it fell back, making fine dust lift into the sweltering air.
“Told you it can’t be done,” the kid grumbled.
“It can be done—” Tom began, but another kid interrupted.
“You need the strongest guys at the corners.” It was Mark who spoke.
“What corners, fool? Circles don’t have corners.” It was the defender again, refusing to believe brute strength couldn’t move the obstacle before him.
“Think of it like a pie,” Mark said, somewhat reluctantly. “You put your four strongest people at the edges where you cut the crust.” He positioned the wide receiver and three of his friends around one of the tires at the four points, and then moved the kid on the far side of the tire to the near side to help lift. “You leave the far side on the ground, using it as leverage. Lift and push.”
The four kids tried to lift the tire, but it was still too heavy.
“Still ain’t workin’.”
“We fill in the gaps.” Mark pointed at a few of the other guys, and they joined the first group at the tire. Jonas couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. Mark was taking charge. He caught Tom’s eye and Tom gave him a thumbs up.
Ten kids now stood in a half circle around the massive tire.
“Okay, guys, we’re going to lift up and over. Ready?” Mark looked around the group. A few of the boys shrugged. “On three. One... Two... Three.”
As one, the kids lifted the tire an inch, then two, off the ground.
Tom stopped them when each of the five tires had been flipped twice. “As I was saying, it’s not about what you—” he pointed to a few of the guys individually “—can lift or push or pull. Even the biggest and the strongest have their limits. It’s about what you’re willing to give up as an individual to help your team along.” A few of the boys nodded. “Okay, half-hour break. Get some water, grab a snack from the food tent. We’ll head inside for some film dissection for the rest of the afternoon.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 84
