The Quarterback (The Team, #2)

by Tal Bauer

Someone bumped his shoulder. Colton roared, screaming so deep and loud he felt his body lift from the field. He bellowed and grabbed Wes with his left hand, fingers gripping the collar of his jersey, the edge of his pads.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel anything but this fucking pain, and every dream he’d ever had, from when he was six years old up until ten minutes ago, when all he wanted was one more damn year with his brothers and his best friend, flashed before him and vanished.

“Colton,” Wes whispered, his face suddenly close, pressed right up against Colton’s face mask. “Breathe, breathe—”

Torn ligaments. His throwing arm. His million-dollar arm. His shoulder that carried every one of his hopes and dreams. Colton squeezed his eyes closed. It was just a nightmare, and he’d wake up soon. He’d wake up. He would.

“On three, I’m going to shift it back, okay? One—” He yanked before three. False start, Colton wanted to shout. False fucking start, ten yards and a fucking punch to the face.

That made me giggle

He opened his eyes, and Wes and Justin and Nick were there, bunched in the corner and talking softly.

She’d been concerned, but when he asked if she could drive up from Houston, she’d said she had three huge days of trial coming up and couldn’t make it on such short notice. But she’d try to get up after.

So fucked

Justin slid his fingers through Wes’s, and for a moment, they were lost in each other’s eyes—like they were all the time, but this time, it slammed into Colton’s heart, a sudden, overwhelming surge of loneliness scraping his insides raw and leaving him empty.

A man sitting in the chair beside his bed, reading a magazine. The man’s face wouldn’t come into focus, and Colton groaned as he tried to reach toward him, needing to touch him to know he was really there and not a figment of his imagination. The man took Colton’s hand and placed it back on the bed but kept his own palm on top of Colton’s.

“Hey.” The voice came in waves, like a speaker warbling before snapping into place. “How are you feeling?” Not Wes. The voice was deep, but it wasn’t Wes’s rumbling twang. This was more suburban, polished. He blinked, and slowly, Nick’s face appeared.

“What are you doing here?” he blurted out. “Surgery took a little longer than everyone thought. Wes is at practice and Justin has his hospital shift, but they didn’t want you to be alone wh...

“You said you were going out of town…” That was yesterday, right? Nick had said he was leaving in the morning. They were supposed to get beers together the night before. Was it only yesterday? “I canceled my trip. I did what I needed to over the phone.” He squeezed Colton’s hand and let go, s...

“You didn’t have to do that.” His voice was still slow, the words an effort to push out of his mouth. He felt the shape of them before they left, like he was rolling each one around on his tongue. “I didn’t want you to be alone. Ju...

She loved her job and loved being single, and, Colton suspected, she especially loved not needing to support a kid anymore. She was in charge of her own life again, and he couldn’t really fault her for that. Colton hadn’t been in her life plans twenty-two years ago, but she’d done a decent job with a kid she didn’t really want at first.

Colton had made the circuit of the room, meeting everyone, shaking hands, smiling wide and laughing as loud as he could to try to cover up that he, out of everyone there, had been alone.

Whatever it was that passed over his face, Nick saw it, and his forehead creased as a mixture of sadness and surprise filled his eyes.

Nick’s hand appeared on top of his again.

“Are you Colton’s dad?” “No. I’m a friend.” Nick sat back and crossed his legs. Surprise lit up the doc’s face, and he looked from Nick to Colton and back again.

Colton felt the distance opening between him and Nick like a canyon, the loss of Nick’s touch like the loss of the sun. He’s not your dad. You don’t have a dad. His

Nick took over, asking the questions Colton should be asking. He asked about Colton’s physical therapy and when he would begin, how often he would go, what kinds of things he could do on his own once he started.

Nick talked to the doctor for him again, more questions that blurred in Colton’s mind.

He stared at Nick, the world watery and prismatic on the edges. Nick didn’t try to sugarcoat anything, and he didn’t bother with platitudes. He gave Colton a small, sad smile and reached for his hand again, squeezing. Colton grabbed Nick’s hand and curled sideways, slumping over as his heart, with all his fears inside it, fractured.

Nick brought Colton to the jock house when the hospital released him.

Nick swiped pillows from Justin and Wes’s bedroom and from the couch downstairs, and he made a nest for Colton to lean against and prop his arm on.

Nick waited in Colton’s bedroom until Wes and Justin came home. He filled them in privately, giving them the rundown of the doctor’s warnings and his slow, open-ended timetable for recovery.

Nick ended up staying longer than he probably should have, the three of them filling up Colton’s bedroom with soft conversation as the quarterback lay motionless and pale and small-looking in the center of his big bed.

It left Nick feeling like an outsider. He was, of course, in their little foursome. He was the dad, the old guy, the odd one out.

Twenty-one years separated him from the boys, along with half a lifetime of experience.

But he liked Wes and Colton, a lot, and he was happy with the odd friendship they’d built.

His first real friends in he couldn’t remember how long were his son, his son’s boyfriend, and their best friend, and that sounded like a midlife crisis in the making. So he didn’t think about it.

He’d moved to be close to Justin, and, well, this was what that looked like. It worked, and he was happy, and Justin was happy. That was all that mattered.

Their odd friendship, and the way Colton meant something he couldn’t define, brought him back to the jock house, day after day after day, to see Colton. He wouldn’t be forgetting the lost-little-boy look Colton had given him after the doctor had left his hospi...

The first day, he dropped by during his lunch hour, using the key Justin had loaned him to deliver lunch and see whether Colton needed anything. It took him less than three minutes to realize Colton was alone, in mountains of pain, and staring at his busted arm in the old, empty house fro...

Lunch turned into the rest of the afternoon spent in Colton’s bedroom. They talked for hours, about everything and nothing. Colton’s classes and his outrageous ergonomics projects, his time playing high school football. Colton asked about Nick’s job, and that led to them talking about...

“I can rearrange the schedule if you want.” “No. I need to get out of here. I need something to look forward to,” Colton said. And that little-boy look was back, Colton’s eyes big and wide and scared. Nick saw Colton’s isolation in his bedroom for what it could become if Colton wasn’t careful: depression...

“Two weeks it is.” Colton’s phone buzzed with dozens of texts while Nick was there, but Colto...

“You don’t have anyone else visiting you? No girlfriend to come and wait on your every whim?” Colton laughed and looked away. “Haven’t had a girl in a while.” He picked at blanket fuzz and shrugged. “And...

“What’s your number? I don’t think I have it.” What was weirder: that he, a grown man, didn’t have the phone number of a twenty-two-year-old friend of his son, or that he now would?

Now he could bother Colton with texts he’d ignore, too.

Or maybe he was only ignoring everyone because Nick was there and he was being polite. Did he want Nick to go? When he asked if Colton wanted him to head out, those big, scared eyes reappeared, the look there and gone again so fast Nick wondered if he’d imagined it.

“If you have to go, yeah, of course, do what you gotta do. I’ll be fine,” Colton said. “But you don’t have to leave if you don’t want to.” So he stayed. He stayed, in fact, until Wes got home, followed by the rest of the team. He stayed until Justin got home late, bringing Colton a milkshake and Wes a s...

He showed up the next day, too, texting Colton to ask what he wanted for lunch be...

“Justin didn’t get your modesty. At all.” “I may not have been modest at his age, either, but that was so long ago I don’t remember. Besides, he doesn’t have much to be modest about.” He winked. Colton’s eyes flashed, something crawling across them before he said, “Hashtag proud dad moment.” “Guilty. Absolutely guilty.”

You can start reading everything while you’re bumming around with nothing to do.” “I’m not bumming around.” Colton pretended to pout, but there was an edge to it, like he really was hurt. “I’m healing. It’s important.” He rolled his eyes after he spoke. “It is important, and you’re right. I’m sorry. You are healing. And you’re doing very well so far. Your doctor is going to be proud.”

I showered today because you were coming, and that’s… all I have to look forward to, you know? You coming over was the only thing that got me to move today. So, you know. Thanks. I know you’ve got a shit ton of stuff to do—” “I’ll come see you every day, Colton.” “No, jeez, you don’t have to. I wasn’t trying to guilt you into—” “I want to come see you. I’m happy to.”

Colton was quiet. He fiddled with one of the Velcro straps on his sling. “I mean,” he finally said, his voice soft. “I’m not going to say no, don’t come. I’d love it if you did.” Nick smiled.

“You’re pretty cool,” Colton said in a rush. “Like, I know you’re Justin’s dad, but you’re also more than ...

Colton slumped back on the couch, peering sideways at Nick. “Well, when you first barged into the house, you weren’t so cool. Not just ’cause you were beefing all over our place. You were sporting major dad fashion—”

He’d decided on divorce that afternoon but had told himself to wait. Calm down. Think things through. Twenty years of marriage didn’t get thrown away in a day. Yeah, it did, he discovered.

He’d realized he was wrong about thirty seconds after throwing Colton against the wall, when something in Colton’s eyes had fractured at the news that Wes in the hospital. Nick had backed off from threatening to kick Colton’s ass—which had been pure rage, not a lot of thought.