The Quarterback (The Team, #2)

by Tal Bauer

There was nothing he cherished more than being Justin’s father. Hopefully he wouldn’t screw it up this time.

Terrible foreshadowing

Would have tried to let Justin know, even if he had to take him by the shoulders and force his chin to raise, that there was nothing, not a single thing in the whole world that would end his love for his son.

“This is so wild, isn’t it?” The voice came from behind Nick. It was deep, but with a young man’s cadence. He turned and saw Colton Hall, the Texas quarterback and Wes’s best friend. Now, too, Justin’s good friend, after a shaky start.

Hi baby

“He deserves this. All of it.” “Justin?” Nick asked, sipping his beer. “Uh, I mean, of course, him, too.” Nick smiled as Colton stuttered, flushing.

“Where’s your date? Who’s here with you?” “No one.” Colton shrugged. “I’m not dating anyone. And my mom couldn’t make it up. She’s a lawyer, and she’s got some big case to prepare for. What about you? Where’s your date?” Nick felt his smile fall short of his eyes. “No date for me, either.”

Colton raised his beer bottle for another toast. “Bachelor life. Right on.” He clinked, and then they fell silent, watching Wes and Justin on the dance floor.

Hehe

It was the betrayal that hit him hardest: the betrayal of who he’d thought Cynthia was as a person. He’d thought there was no way she could ever choose anything or anyone over her son. That she could never look at Justin and think he wasn’t wonderful, the best parts of the two of them combined.

Nick is such a great dad

There was nothing in his entire life that matched the stab to his heart when Cynthia told him she thought their son was broken and needed to be fixed.

He loved Justin exactly as he was. Cynthia didn’t. And he wasn’t willing to share his life with someone who didn’t accept Justin.

“I won the Sugar Land Elementary All-Fifth-Grade Swing Championship,” Colton bragged. “You can’t top that.” Nick set his beer down behind him and held out his hand. “Put your money where your mouth is, and show me those skills.”

2% in and I'm already feral

And there was a difference between supporting your best friend on the field and on ESPN and by standing beside him at banquets, and taking the hand of another man and dancing with him in public.

What was a simple, lighthearted, and friendly joke to Nick could be gasoline on the flames that consumed Colton’s reputation.

“Sorry,” he said, pulling his hand back. He shook his head, smiling an apology. “I was playing around, and I didn’t think that through. Maybe I’ve had one too many beers.”

“Let’s do it,” he said. “Fuck ’em.” “Colton, I don’t want—” Colton waggled his hand in front of Nick. “Fuck the haters. It’s just for fun. And I’ve got my fifth-grade reputation to uphold.”

Wes spun Nick outward, and he passed Justin in a blur of smiles, ending up back in Colton’s embrace. Colton pulled him close as the trumpets blared, and then Colton dipped Nick on the final beat of the song.

He felt Colton’s deep breaths, Colton’s chest moving against his own. Felt Colton’s thigh bracing his as the moment, the world, seemed to still.

“To you guys.” He nodded to Colton, too. “To your guys’ future.”

My company always has interns over the summer. I can easily set you up as my intern in the Austin office. I can show you what sales is like.” Colton’s eyes bulged. “Seriously?” “Why not? You’d be great at sales. All sales is is personality.”

I could be worse off looking at the draft next year.” Colton blew out a huge sigh. “Or a bunch of things could happen,” Wes said. “Things you can’t even imagine right now.

Hell, you could be outed by a national news network on the morning of the biggest game of the year.”

Don't threaten him with a good time

He’d screamed down to Austin in his Porsche when Justin had called him sobbing, saying Wes was beaten and bloody and barely breathing.

<3

Sometimes a year changed a man in ways that couldn’t be measured in hours and days and weeks. Sometimes a year became the cornerstone of a life.

Unlike Wes, football was his life. Nick knew that, even before he’d met Colton. He’d known, watching Colton mature into the Texas quarterback role through the seasons, and that knowledge had been front and center in his mind when he threw Colton against the wall in the jock house.

Still so hot

“I don’t want to leave yet,” Colton breathed. His head tilted, and he squinted at Nick. “You can really hook me up with an internship?” “Absolutely. Say the word, and I’ll have my assistant start setting it up tomorrow.”

The NFL was a business, not a passion, and you were a commodity, only as valuable as what you brought to the league.

That reporter had used Wes’s love for Justin like cheap bullets fired at the rest of the team. And they’d crumbled, destroyed by what felt like betrayal—but it hadn’t been, not at all.

Wes had given up everything in his life for the team time and again, but Justin was the only thing he couldn’t give up.

The secret to why Wes had leveled the fuck up last season wasn’t protein powder or special supplements or a new training regimen. He was in love, head over heels, and he played his heart out for Justin each week.

A hundred crumblings, a hundred scared boys who had pretended to be men, who didn’t know how to stand up next to Wes and be the men he needed in that moment.

And if he’d been nervous about befriending Justin, uncertain whether there was a place for Colton in Wes’s new life next to the man he’d given his heart to, well, Justin had helped put that fear to rest. Colton liked Justin a lot, more than he thought he would.

Was there something about building a life with another person that made you change, broadened and deepened your perspectives in life, made you aware of the larger, fuller picture of the world?

What would his own life be like if he weren’t thinking about whether the NFL draft was the right choice for him alone? What if he were making a decision for we instead of me?

There was something more he wanted, but he wasn’t quite sure what it was yet. He couldn’t name it, couldn’t put words to it, but it felt like something that moved inside him when he was in the locker room, or when the team was practicing, or when everyone was smiling after a great practice. The buzz he got in his veins when he and Wes and Justin and even Nick all went out on Thursday nights. It was the way the world seemed perfect when he wasn’t alone. When he felt like he was part of something wonderful.

Leave Wes? Now, when he’d finally really met him? And Justin? No, there was more here. He was sure of it. More to find, more to become.

Colton hung back, rubbing his cleats on the lawn. Sometimes he didn’t know whether he was welcome when Justin and Wes got like this.

Wes was his best friend, and Justin had quickly become one of his closest buddies, too, but three was still an odd number.

“Hey, Colton.” He looked over, and there was Nick, a few feet down from Justin and Wes. Nick was laughing under his breath. “Only have eyes for each other, huh?” “Sometimes.” Colton shrugged. Smiled at Nick and passed him the ball.

“You guys here for the scrimmage, or just coming by to say hi?” “Here for the scrimmage.” Nick palmed the football, running his hand over the laces. “I’m heading out of town to...

“Beers tonight?” Colton caught Nick’s pass in the center of his chest. Nick could throw a football better than some of the guys on the team. He sent the ball back to Nick as Wes stood on his tiptoes and kissed Justin over the railing. Beers tonight had become their short...

Colton understood that bone-deep yearning for a father, the poignant prickling of pain when you wanted and hoped and tried so hard, but all you heard was silence. His dad had walked away when Colton was five years old.

Daddy issues. Makes sense

Colton used to imagine that, thanks to his name being all over ESPN, his dad would show up out of the blue one day, appear in the stands at a game, as proud and happy as Nick or Wes’s dad was, a little boy’s fairy tale come true.

Colton had woken up on Nick’s couch to find Justin and Wes cooking in the kitchen and Nick handing him a cup of black coffee more than a handful of times.

Maybe they made a weird foursome of friends. Wes and Justin, Colton the third wheel, Nick the dad. If Nick had been boring or a douche, it wouldn’t have worked. But he was surprisingly easy to be with.

Why wouldn’t Colton like Nick if he liked Justin, he’d said once when Orlando asked him why Justin’s dad hung out with them so often. “He’s cool. It works, man.”

Wes and Justin broke apart, Wes jogging backward as he said something to Justin in French, who winked and replied in kind. Nick and Colton shared a grin and a tiny eye roll, and then Colton ran after Wes, grappling him from behind and forcing him to turn around.

Colton looked back, too, and saw Justin watching them both, waving to Wes as Nick settled into the bleachers.

The thud that hit Colton was harder than it should be.

Unbalanced, Colton twisted, reaching out with both arms to break his fall as he headed for the grass. Pain. Something wrenched loose in his shoulder when he hit the ground. Something that used to be whole ripped, and his whole arm went limp like boiled spaghetti.

“Get the fuck off the field!” he heard Wes roar. “You’re off the fucking team!”

Hands on him, rolling him to his back. His right arm stayed on the grass. Like it wasn’t attached to him. “Colton—” Wes was beside him, kneeling down.