AllFreeNovel
Share Us
So when Jack appears in my doorway, he glances around with a look of curiosity on his face. “Why’s it so dark in here?”
I glance up at him. “I closed the blinds.”
He sighs as he walks in, and he opens my blinds, not that I asked him to. The sunshine streams in, and I squint as my eyes try to adjust to the change.
“Why aren’t you down at practice?” he asks. He doesn’t sit, instead gripping the back of one of the chairs across from my desk as he leans forward on it.
“I’m giving my coordinators a chance to coordinate,” I say dryly.
“Look, Lincoln. I get it. I’ve been there myself.”
“Been where?” I ask—as if I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about.
He ignores my question. “It’s dark. It’s lonely. And, if we’re being honest, it hurts. Badly. But there’s light on the other side.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Too fucking bad,” he says, and though his words are harsh, his tone is gentle. “If it’s affecting how you do your job, you need to fix it.”
He’s right, and I know that…but I have no idea how to fix any of this.
“It’s not affecting my job.” It’s a total lie.
“If it wasn’t affecting your job, you’d be down on that goddamn field.” He lets go of his grip on the chair and steps around it to sit. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“My father intentionally hurt Joseph Bailey two decades ago in order to protect me. He made me end things with the only girl I ever loved, and then twenty years later, we reconnected, she found out I knew what my father had done, and she ended things with me. The end.”
He sighs. “So you’re just rolling over and dying?”
I shake my head as I shrug. “What the fuck else is there to do? She won’t answer me. She’s rightfully upset, and she told me she’d never be able to trust me. And honestly? I’m not really sure I blame her for that. I wouldn’t trust me, either. I haven’t given her any reason to.”
He nods. “Well, okay. I guess it didn’t really mean as much as you’re saying it did if you just want to give up.”
“Of course it did, but what choice do I have?”
He slams a palm on the desk. “You fight, Nash. I didn’t hire some quitter. I hired a goddamn fighter. So you fight.”
“How?” I ask.
“That’s for you to figure out. But I don’t see any fire in you at all right now, and that’s not like you.”
I nod. “I know. It’s just…there’s a kid involved, too, and I grew attached to him, and I lost my father on top of it. It’s too much all at once, and my mother is moving back to New York and Asher is suspended for a year. I just, fuck…I don’t want to mess anything else up.”
Jack sighs. “Sounds like there isn’t much else to mess up, man. I’m sorry you’re going through a rough patch, and I won’t sit here and lecture you on how the team needs to come first. You’re here, so you know that. But I will tell you that you need to get your shit together, and I am here to help you.”
“Then help me figure out how the fuck I win her back,” I mutter.
“Will winning her back solve all your problems?” he asks.
I contemplate that. It won’t mend the relationship with my dad. It won’t fix what happened with Asher. It won’t bring my mom back to Vegas.
But those aren’t my problems.
“Yes,” I finally admit.
He leans in like he’s about to let me in on a little secret, and I find myself leaning forward to listen to it.
“Then you figure out what means the most to her, and you use that to fight like hell to prove she can trust you.”
