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"Fuck," he breathes, as I collapse against his side and pull him against my chest.
"Shhh," I whisper. "Sleep."
"I was sleeping," he whispers, laughing drowsily.
"Stay with me for Thanksgiving break," I say, digging myself a little deeper into this hole. It's just a couple of days. We have our last regular season game a few days after Thanksgiving, and then we'll be in playoffs mode.
"Okay."
"Great game tonight, Coach." The dean reaches down from his seat to shake my hand.
"Thank you, sir. They played well."
"Exceptionally well, especially that Jack Perry fellow. You talk him into sticking around yet?"
"Not just yet, sir. We've been in full training mode. We've got a bowl game coming up, and then the playoffs."
"Hmmm. Well, you've got most of the month off before the bowl game. I expect you'll find time." The dean gives me a leering grin that turns my stomach. I know that grin. It means he’ll find a way to get what he wants, whatever it takes. What he doesn't understand is that, while I don’t have enough self-preservation instincts not to fight back, I won’t let him try to ruin Jack’s future to benefit himself.
With an understanding nod in his direction, I jog off the field behind the team. The dean can threaten me all he wants. It won't change a thing. I can placate him for now and we’ll win this championship. And then after, with the way I've turned this team around, I'm sure I won't have a problem finding another coaching position.
Jack is waiting just outside the tunnel entrance to the locker rooms.
"What was that about?"
"Nothing important," I say, because that's the truth of it. I won't be asking him to stay. I've already started the process of doing exactly what I promised Jack I would. Neither Jack or the dean know it , but there were some rather important scouts in the crowd tonight. "Before you head into the locker room, I have a surprise for you," I say, steering him down the hall instead of following the rest of the team.
"Oh, really?" He says suggestively, but I nip that shit in the bud.
"Down, boy," I mutter under my breath. "Not that kind of surprise."
He has the nerve to bark a little, and I smile despite myself. "Would you fucking behave?" I scold him, but it's not convincing to either of us. I love playful Jack.
I love Jack.
Fuck.
I lead him to one of the conference rooms on the opposite side of the sports complex, where three of the most important contacts he will meet are waiting to shake his hand and fawn over him.
I lead him to his future… away from me.
CHAPTER 27
JACK
I leave the sports complex feeling dazed, but also excited. I’m fucking pumped.
This is really happening. I just shook hands with scouts that represent some big teams, including my first hopeful—The Carolina Panthers. They've got the first-round draft pick this year, and they're fucking interested in me. Really interested. As in six-point-nine million dollars a year and a thirty fucking million dollar signing bonus interested.
Thirty. Fucking. Million.
I know I come off cocky, but something about actually achieving my dreams, and having the finish line so fucking close, has made me realize I didn’t think I’d ever actually get here.
I'm a bastard child from the boonies, the off-shoot of a drunken one-night stand with a rando my mother never even got the name of. I'd have been aborted if she’d realized she was pregnant before she was too far along. Considering she drank well into her sixth month, and I was born prematurely, I'm probably lucky to be alive and as healthy as I am.
I'm a nobody from nowhere. Who really would have expected me to amount to anything? My anger at the world and chronic boredom have always gotten me in trouble, and I've always been too stupid to get out of my own way. For all my big dreams about playing in the Superdome someday, I never honestly believed I'd make it. I assumed I'd end up working at the power plant, or moving stolen electronics from warehouse to warehouse. That's just what the future held for me. It was predetermined.
Until Groveton. Until Bryant.
