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The spray pelting his face and muscles felt incredible, but he kept replaying the last several seconds of the phone call as he scrubbed and rinsed. Something had gone wrong. Tyler would tell him the next time they talked.

Chapter Eighteen

TYLER KNEW he should have come clean to Josh, tried to explain at least, but he’d spent the past week carefully bluffing and dodging the topic every time they spoke. And then for the past two days, they hadn’t spoken more than a few minutes.

Now he stood on the field at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas, his eyes narrowing as he took in the taunts from the opposing team. The Dallas Cowboys were a force to be reckoned with, and they made sure Tyler knew it.

“Better watch that heart, Fantana!” one of the Cowboys jeered, smirking as he passed by. “Wouldn’t want you to keel over on us.”

“Seriously,” another chimed in, “you got life insurance?”

Tyler clenched his jaw but kept silent, focusing on surviving today’s game. During the warmup, McBride only let him participate in about half of the position drills, conserving his energy for the real battle ahead. The rest of the time, Tyler got sent to sign jerseys and snap selfies with the fans. At about thirty minutes out, the guys were limbered up and the slow sizzle of aggression had taken root all around him. Kickers practiced their moves while small clusters of Swells and Cowboys players drifted to the sides to sign autographs.

Tyler glanced up at the boxes. Somewhere up there Boris and the other VIPs were going to be watching his every move. What happened today would determine if he stayed or got traded. Keeping up a long-distance relationship between San Diego and Cinnamar was bad enough, but cross-country might be more than even Josh could bear.

I hope he isn’t flipping out, Tyler thought. Josh might not even be indoors today. They’d chatted briefly this morning, a stilted, strained conversation that left him uneasy. As they’d ended the call, he had made a point of saying, “I love you.”

Just in case.

A sharp pang of missing Josh made his knees buckle for a moment. Part of him wished Josh was up there in the box with Boris and the team families, but another part prayed that Josh wasn’t watching at all—that he was mowing the yard, vegging out on cartoons, or taking Nadia for tamales.

No chance. Josh would watch. He had been determined to come in person, but Tyler had asked him to wait. He didn’t know if that was better or worse. He should have told Josh a bunch of stuff, but by then it had been too late to say anything.

How did Dumas put it? “Love is the most selfish of all the passions.”

He pushed away the pang of guilt and the petty thirst for approval. None of that crap was useful to him right now. He needed to focus on the game; if he made it out the other end in one piece, he’d have plenty of time afterward to explain it all to Josh.

Tyler’s hands were shaking again, so he took a swig of Gatorade and almost gagged at the sweetness. He took another run through the bad pass drills.

“Stop it,” he muttered to himself. He hadn’t told Josh about the risks he was taking or the decisions before him. They had enough trouble without him piling on his own ego. He twisted to stretch his back, using his breath to expand the fascia gently, the way Josh had taught him.

Raised voices drew his attention, so he straightened and turned.

Near the fifty, one of the Swells linemen had gotten into a chummy scrap with a Cowboys rookie with an exaggerated Spartan beard and a tribal scalp tattoo. Both of them looked young and sprung until coaches from both teams stepped in to defuse the drama. “Save it for the gridiron, boys.”

Fifteen minutes out and the air crackled with a wild charge. Smack talk flew between the two teams as they crossed paths, each attempting to rattle the other. It was all part of the game, but for Tyler, the stakes felt deadly.

The hostility of the Cowboy fans drifted over the field like a low storm cloud, and Tyler felt the weight of the other team’s disgruntlement. Even warming up, the Cowboys seemed grumpy in general, even sour, which was out of character. Then again, Tyler had gotten a lot of glowing puff pieces in the national press the past month, so maybe the Cowboys offense planned to make him pay dearly for the tacky charm offensive.

Ten minutes before kickoff, the referees and the chain gang took their positions on the sidelines. Cheerleaders began pumping up the crowd, and news crews captured final thoughts from the players. As the teams left the warm-up, Tyler flashed a big thumbs-up to the cameras, knowing Nadia would be watching with Josh back home in Cinnamar—worrying about him, no doubt. As the noise of the crowd swelled around him, Tyler steeled himself for the game, stretching properly just in case Josh was keeping tabs.

“Head in the game, Fantana,” he muttered to himself, remembering Josh’s steady voice in his ear, urging him forward. Like a musketeer surrounded by his fellow fighters: “He who chases the eagle takes no heed of the sparrow.”

He missed Josh. He missed his sister. He needed to be home but wanted to be here. Conflicting fears dueled inside his mind, but he refused to let them show—or slow him down. Today, he would prove himself on this field once more, even if it killed him.

McBride and the other coaches signaled them back into the locker room to suit up. Tyler gripped the turf beneath him, then pressed himself to his feet, feeling the weight of the moment and the challenge ahead. The Cowboys were formidable opponents, but Tyler loved the fight. With every jeer and taunt, he steeled himself further, determined to rise above it all and emerge victorious—for himself, for his team, and for Josh, who’d known him before America’s Tightest End even existed.

“Let’s do this.”

In the locker room, Tyler’s teammates buzzed with excitement and anticipation as they began to gear up for the game. Surrounded by the Swells players, he too focused on getting dressed and ready. Nervousness and determination surged within him as he prepared to step onto the field for his first NFL game since… everything.

On their home turf, the Cowboys always wore their white jerseys, so the Swells had to wear their home uniforms too: teal up top and white pants. Tyler had always nursed a secret superstition that their teal jerseys made defense harder because it drew the other team’s eyes. Still, they were visiting, and one more crappy bit of news wasn’t going to change much.

As he pulled on his socks, snapped in his cup, and strapped on his pads, Tyler couldn’t help but flash back to his earliest games. The first time he’d put on pads, he felt invincible. Nothing could hurt him like this. He’d started playing football out of desperation—first to placate his abusive father, and then to avoid his rages, and later to escape the mess he’d left behind. Those old wounds still ached under the scar tissue, yet they also reminded Tyler of how far he’d come and just what he was fighting for today.

“Hey, Fantana,” Calvin called out, breaking into his thoughts. “You look like you seen a ghost. Nerves at eleven?” The others laughed, but Tyler could see the concern hidden behind the affectionate smack talk. They knew, as he did, that this game would be a test of their bonds, as well as his own questionable fitness.

“If you really want to know, I was thinking about the barbecue we got last time we played here. Hutchin’s? Something like that. There’s an old smokehouse out in Plano that does the best ribs in Texas,” Tyler replied with a grin, trying to hide his own fears. “We win today, I say we go buy everything they got in the smoker and haul it back to the suites. My treat.”