Page 47 of Caught Offside

Because the call-up everyone kept not-quite-promising would come from Milwaukee, his dad’s old club. It would put his name on a big-league roster and make his life, finally, his own. A guy with that in front of him didn’t owe anything to a man who’d stopped picking up the phone. The best news of his life doubled as a way out, and he’d known it the second he read the injury feed. He hadn’t taken it. But he’d seen it sitting there, and the fact that he’d looked at all turned his stomach.

He didn’t write it. He sat with his thumb over the empty keys, and what he finally sent wasn’t clever and didn’t protect him at all.

Thinking about you. No pressure, nothing you have to answer. I’m still here.

The read receipt came up inside a minute. The typing indicator didn’t.

Asher set the phone face-down on the nightstand and lay back on the bed in his clothes, the AC grinding, the parking-lot light striped across the ceiling. Everything in him wanted to go quiet, drift off, get out before Patrick could leave him first. He stayed put. Patrick could go as quiet as he wanted, for as long as he wanted. Asher had decided he wasn’t going anywhere.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Marc’s name lit Patrick’s phone too early to be good news. Patrick had been up for hours anyway, on the couch with the laptop open, reading his own name on lists of the players nobody would spend a protection slot to keep. He’d read it four times before the sun cleared the buildings.

He answered.

“I talked to Ostrowski’s office again,” Marc said. “We’re close. We’re not done. They’ll write in the no-move. The fight is the term. You want five years. They’re at three.”

Patrick closed the laptop. “Then get them to five.”

“I’m trying. But they’re nervous, and I understand the nerves. You’re asking them to protect you with a no-move and commit through age thirty-three, on a discount. Their nightmare is year four, you declining, on a contract they legally can’t move. That’s a real fear. Waving it off doesn’t make it go away.”

“This year was the best of my career.”

“It was. And one great year against a no-move that runs past your prime is the exact bet they’re scared to make. So we land in the middle, and we land there before the protection list goes in at the end of the week because after that, there’s no deal left to cut. You’re protected, or you’re gone.”

“I know how it works.”

“Then help me close it. I can get you three years and the no-move. I might squeeze a fourth. What I can’t get you is a decision, and that’s the only thing standing between you and staying.”

Patrick pressed his thumb into the arm of the couch.

“I’ll think about it.”

“That’s what you said last week. They want a yes or a no on a real number, not more thinking.”

“Then they can wait a little longer.”

Marc exhaled. “Okay. But I want you to hear one thing.”

“I’m considering everything.”

“You’re sitting in your apartment considering everything. There’s a difference between considering and circling.” Marc’s voice dropped the agent register. “Have you talked to anyone? Not me. Someone who isn’t on retainer.”

“I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

“I know. That’s exactly what worries me.”

Patrick stood and walked to the window. The lake was a strip of gray between buildings.

“You’ll have an answer before the deadline,” Patrick said. “That’s what I can give you right now.”

Marc accepted it. They discussed a sponsorship renewal and a media request. Patrick listened and responded, his voice even, the answers automatic.

They hung up. The apartment was silent.

He still hadn’t signed, and the term was the only reason he’d given Marc. He hadn’t said the real one aloud to anyone, including himself.

While they were still talking, Asher’s texts had changed in tone over the past few days—the jokes and the riffs gone, short and gentle, like he’d decided Patrick was pulling away and was bracing himself for less. The one at noon was no different.