Page 1 of Penalty Kick

PROLOGUE

Hector “Dash” Lazaro felt the buzz of his phone against his thigh and he knew. He couldn’t explain how, but he knew.

It was his mother.

“Hola, Mamá,” he answered, careful not to let his voice give anything away. Slamming his car door shut behind him, he slowly walked toward the state-of-the-art training center for the Atlanta Rising Football Club, a new wave of dread washing over him.

“Oh, Dios mío…”

Mierda…

The lead rock that had formed in his gut sometime last night already felt like it was never going to disappear, and hearing his mother’s voice was doing nothing to solve that. If anything, said rock was starting to feel even heavier.

“Hector David,” she continued in their native Spanish, using his full name. He knew he was in trouble by her tone alone, but his full name? He was in deep. “I’m going to give you one chance to tell me that what I am looking at on the twitters is not you. That it is some other young man with a lion tattoo on his thigh and a heart-shaped birthmark on his right cheek, dancing down the street in Las Vegas. Because I know no son of mine would do such a thing.”

Busted…

“It is not what you think.”

“I am not sure there is a lot of room for interpretation here, Hector. This is not the young man that I raised.”

Dash sighed. Her words were like a punch to the gut. A gut that was already in knots. He had worked so hard to get here, to be the star player on the hottest new professional football team in America. America. A country he’d dreamed about since he was a kid. Things had been perfect. Until whatever had happened in Vegas.

Which he still didn’t remember.

“Mamá,” he started.

“Don’t you mamá me, Hector. How could you? I’m so embarrassed. You better hope that Maria doesn’t see this. She is so proud of you. Tells all her friends that her brother is a football star in America. And now this.”

Dash bit back a groan, a new emotion taking over. Now it was guilt. Why did she have to bring up his sister? He knew why—because Maria was a soft spot. They both were. Taking care of the women in his life and making them proud is all he’d ever wanted to do. Well, that and play football. Two things he thought he’d been succeeding at. Until this past weekend.

Fuck, he really wished he remembered.

“I do not remember what happened that night,” he told her. He had a feeling he was going to be saying that a lot. Which was only making him feel worse. Who didn’t remember this kind of thing?

“You don’t remember? That is not helping your case.”

I know…

Crossing the wide-open lobby of the training center, he scaled the stairs two at a time. It was his usual pace, despite how much he didn’t want to deal with what came next. He simply didn’t have a choice.

“Mamá, I have to go,” he told her. It was the truth. He didn’t want to be having this conversation with her, but he really did need to go. He was due in his boss’s office now. And he was not about to leave him waiting. “I will call you later. Promise.”

She huffed out a sigh, letting him know that she was not happy. No shit. No one seemed to be happy with him right now. He just needed to figure out how to make it right.

Knocking on the door, Dash sucked in a deep breath, as if the extra oxygen was somehow going to make this easier. Truth was, nothing was going to make this easier. It didn’t matter how much he didn’t remember what had gone down, there was a video. No, videos. Multiple people had caught the incident with their phones and posted it online. He could only deny it so much—which really was not at all.

He'd watched some of them last night after they’d arrived back home in Atlanta. It was not pretty. Apparently, his mother had also watched them. That thought was enough to make him want to puke. Who knows how many millions of other people had seen it.

“Come in,” the booming voice of Britt “Cowboy” Callahan, Technical Director for the Atlanta Rising and Dash’s boss, called.

Dash did as he was told, slipping into the room, letting the door fall closed behind him. Cowboy was sitting behind his desk, an angry look on his face. Next to him was his best friend and the coach of the Rising, Gunnar Gracin, looking equally pissed off. It was early enough in the morning that normally he would make a joke about them needing their coffee, but the tension in the air was oppressive, making even the slightest joke seems like a really, really bad idea.

“Sit,” Gunnar said, features unchanged.

Carefully lowering himself into one of the large leather guest chairs, Dash nodded, his heart racing. Everything was on the line. His job, his future as a professional player, his reputation. All of it.

“Let’s recap, shall we?” Cowboy said.