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People think I’m only here because my brother got me here. I intend to prove them wrong, and I will do that by working my ass off to show that I belong here.
One more win and we’d be playing in two weeks at the big game. Instead, we’ll be sipping mai tais on a beach somewhere…or something along those lines. I guess we’ve all got different plans for the offseason.
Mine is to duck out of town for a few weeks, and then…I’m not sure.
But maybe my offseason will include more playbook memorization than I’d been planning since someone new will swoop in with his ideas. Maybe he’ll be good enough to lead us past the conference championship game next year. Time will tell.
“It’s been an honor being your head coach for a second straight season, and I pledge to all of you here with us today that with Jack and Steve’s help, we will find the best replacement for Coach Sharp that we can possibly find,” Lincoln says, naming the team owner and the general manager. “We’ll find someone that’ll help guide us past the conference championship so we can contend for a ring.”
My brother’s impassioned speech is met with cheers all around as he makes the claim that was in my head.
We might all feel a sense of disappointment in the end of a season, but Linc’s great at leaving us with thatthere’s always next yearfeeling. We made it far, and there’s no shame or disappointment in that.
I glance around at everyone gathered here. This meeting room won’t look the same come July’s training camp. The people will change. Moves are yet to be made in the offseason, and apparently the OC was the first.
“You throw any money on this game?” Austin Graham asks me once the meeting’s over. He’s bitter because he’s also a tight end who isn’t as good as me, and so he spends more time on the sidelines than on the field, but he likes to think it’s because our head coach is related to me rather than the difference in our skill set.
I’m about to open my mouth to defend myself when my other brother, Grayson, walks by. “Fuck off with that shit, Graham.” Grayson isn’t a fan of Austin, either. I guess he hit on Gray’s girl a while back. It’s complicated, but I don’t need my brother sticking up for me.
“I can handle it,” I mutter to Grayson, but the truth is that I was suspended my first season here in Vegas for betting on the outcome of gamesfor my dad, and even though I served my punishment, I’m still paying for the sin.
I’m not sure I’ll ever live it down, but I intend to make a new name for myself.
I worked hard this season to rise above the gossip and shed the reputation that I walked in here with before last season even got underway, but it looks like it didn’t matter since a year and a half after the offense, it’s still being thrown in my face.
I guess that means I still have work to do.
I kept my nose clean this season. I ditched the wild, unpredictable nature I’ve always had and forced my spontaneity into a box. I put my full focus into the season, and now that I have an entire one under my belt with the Aces, I’ll work on stepping up into leadership roles wherever I can—provided it doesn’t look like my brother is giving me preferential treatment.
Playing for Lincoln was too good to be true. Hindsight tells me that now.
I never should’ve agreed to come here. Even without the scandal of getting caught betting on games when I was betting for us to win and in no way threw games in either direction, I never had a chance to make a name for myself that wasn’t going to be overshadowed by the fact that two of the Nash brothers were on the same team for the first time. Add Grayson into the mix as another Nash brother on the same team, and I don’t even get the chance to stand up for myself to assholes like Austin.
Hindsight also tells me that I can’t win no matter what I do. If I play like shit, I don’t deserve to be here. If I play well, I got lucky.
At least in Indy, I could be a leader without people thinking it’s because I have aninwith the coach. I was never deemed old enough to be a leader back then, but now I’m twenty-eight. I’ve been playing in the league since I was twenty-two, barring that one season I was forced to sit out.
But nothing I do on that field is ever chalked up to my own skills. It’s always because of my goddamn last name.
I can’t change my name, though, and I learned that a long time ago. Rather than try to change it, I’ll do what I can to live up to it.
And now that the offseason has officially begun, maybe it’s time to go back to wild, unpredictable, spontaneous Asher Nash. I fucking love that guy.
Chapter 2: Desiree Dixon
All the Things Vegas Doesn’t Have
“When I got to that last page and the rock star was on top of herin his own brother’s bed, I literally threw the book across the room,” Chloe says. “And then I glared at the book and shook my finger at it when I walked by. That’ll teach it.”
I giggle. “Good thing it was a book and not a TV show.”
“And good thing the next book is already out,” Addy adds. “I already downloaded it. I’m actually on book three now.” She makes a cringy face of apology.
“God, you read fast,” Lauren says.
And that’s it—the four of us who make up our little book club.
We meet every other week and rotate who’s hosting, and this week it happens to be me. We’re at the apartment I share with Addy, the girl who has been my roommate and best friend since our freshman year of college, and this week we’re talking about the juicy first book in a love triangle trilogy.
