The Quarterback by Tal Bauer
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Something buzzedon the mattress beside Colton’s head. Wes groaned like a bear and rolled over, taking half of Colton’s blanket with him when he did.
Colton glared at Wes and then his phone. It was facedown next to his pillow, dancing across the sheets like it was being paid to. He flipped it over and squinted at it. Night had fallen, pitch black shrouding his bedroom, and the glow of the screen was like an ice pick to his brain.
Five missed calls, all from the same number. He frowned. He didn’t recognize the caller.
His phone rang again in his hand, that same number. He swiped to answer and shoved the phone against his ear as Wes started to snore. “Hello?”
“Is this Colton?”
“Yeah. Who is this?”
“Do you know a Clarence Hobbs?”
Fuck. He wanted to throw the phone across the room, pretend he never got the call. “Yeah…”
The voice on the other end sounded pissed off, which was rich, considering he was calling Colton at just after midnight. “I’m the bar manager at the Broken Spur, and I’ve got your guy Clarence in here and he says I need to call you. I don’t know how good of friends you are, but if you’re not gonna come and pick him up, I’m going to call the cops.”
Colton scrubbed his face with one hand and groaned as the bar manager said, “Are you coming to get him, or what?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Fuck, okay, yeah, I’ll be there. Where are you?”
The bar manager snapped out an address as Colton stumbled out of bed. He was still wrapped in the towel Justin had given him after his and Wes’s ice bath. He balled it up and chucked it at Wes’s lump beneath his blanket before opening drawers and rummaging for clothes. Most of the things he usually wore had been taken to Nick’s, then hauled out of there and dumped in the motel. He found a pair of boxers that passed the sniff test, athletic shorts, and a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off.
I don’t think I can accept fashion criticism from a guy who wears basketball shorts and torn T-shirts. Do you dress like that to go to class?
Of course not. I put a hat on, too.
He shook his head clear of the memories as he grabbed his phone and his wallet and his keys and slipped out of his bedroom. The rest of the house was quiet. Everyone had probably cratered into their beds after that group workout.
Were things better between all of them now? Were they cool? Well, that was probably up to him. He’d been the one to pull away first. He’d abandoned those friendships, like he’d abandoned the house and the team.
He slumped down the stairs and out the front door, then remembered his truck was parked at the stadium. Groaning, he turned toward downtown, each step pulling on his aching leg muscles. Damn it, Clarence. What the hell did you do?
He heard the commotion before he arrived at the Broken Spur. He could hear Clarence’s booming voice bellowing for Colton, asking, repeatedly, where he was. Shit. Was he walking into a fight? Walking into a very drunk and pissed-off Clarence? He didn’t know the guy enough to guess.
“Colton!” Clarence roared when he pushed through the door. Three bouncers, two bartenders, and the guy he assumed was the bar manager all glared at Colton. Well, fuck you, too. He could have just not answered, left them to deal with Clarence’s blitzed ass and the cops and that headache on their own.
Clarence stumbled toward him, arms thrown wide. He had a smile on his face, but his eyes were cold, as bitter as ice. The bouncers followed him, herding him toward Colton and the door. Colton grabbed Clarence’s sleeve and dragged him out, then pushed him down the sidewalk.
They made it ten yards before Clarence turned on him. “You,” he growled. He tried to point his finger into Colton’s face. He missed by a foot.
Colton fisted his hands in Clarence’s shirt and shoved him down the alley next to the bar, into the darkness and up against the bricks. “What the hell is your problem?” Colton hissed. “They were going to call the cops on you! Do you want to be thrown in jail for drunk and disorderly? Do you know how Coach handles that kind of shit? He kicks you off the team!”
“Then do it!” Clarence shouted. “I shouldn’t have come to Texas anyway! Biggest mistake I made was saying yes to Coach.”
“Biggest mistake?” Colton drove Clarence against the bricks again. “What’s wrong with you? You’re on the best team in the FBS. Do you know how many kids dream about even having the chance to suit up and walk onto that field? How many kids work their asses off for the chance? And you were asked to come here!”
“Yeah, and you know what I thought?” He shoved Colton off him. Pointed to the sky. “Best team.” He slapped his own chest. “Best player. Easy runway to the NFL, paved in wins. I was supposed to be a star!” he roared. “And you weren’t supposed to be in my way!”
“I’m not in your way! You’re in your own way, Clarence! I’m no threat to you. I’m done. Over. I’m never going into the NFL.”
Clarence stilled. He stared at Colton like Colton had just said he had an inoperable tumor and only days to live.
“I’m not the quarterback anymore. You are, or you’re supposed to be. You could be.” He shoved Clarence’s shoulder. Clarence rocked backward like he weighed nothing.
“Then what the hell was all that shit in the weight room? Why did you show off like that in front of the team? What was the fucking point for you—to make me look bad?”
“I didn’t do that for the team. I did it for you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You’ve got a big fucking problem, Clarence. You’re a damn good football player, and you’re a great athlete, but you’re nothing more than that. You think you’re a quarterback, but you have no idea what that really means. You think it’s all about being the star.” Colton shook his head. “It’s nothing like that.”
Clarence’s chest rose and fell. He stared at Colton, breathing through parted lips.
“When you’re the quarterback—when you’re really the quarterback—you’re the leader. You’re the guy all the players look to, on the field and off. You manage the team, and that doesn’t just include calling plays and taking the glory when it goes right. You manage the team on the field by owning the failures more than you own the successes. It was a great pass? Yeah, your receiver kicked ass. It was a fantastic run play with a good handoff? Damn, your running back is awesome. The play fell apart? Defense stepped up, pushed hard? Man, you didn’t read them right and they got the jump on you.”
Clarence’s eyes narrowed.
“And you manage the team off the field by loving those guys. You sacrifice for them, over and over and over. You’re the first one on the field, and you always work the hardest. You smile the widest. You’re the happiest at practice. You’re the guy they think of when they don’t want to get out of bed, when they don’t want to suit up. And you’re there for them when you’re picking yourself out of the grass and leaping to your feet and showing them that that’s what the fucking point is. That you get up again.” His throat closed around his words, and he turned away, pacing down the dark alley as he ran his hands through his hair. Damn it.
“That’s what you were doing today? Working your ass off so the rest of the team would, too?”
“I’ve done that before.” He turned back to Clarence, sighing. “But no, today was about you. I was trying to show you what it looks like to step up and be a man who doesn’t quit on his team. You can’t quit on them. You can’t ever do that.”
“If you’re so wise, why aren’t you the damn quarterback right now?” Despite his glower, Clarence’s voice trembled. He glared down the alley, eyes trying to set a dumpster on fire.
“Because I did quit, and I don’t deserve to lead the team anymore.”
Clarence’s head whipped around. He stared at Colton, looked him up and down. “You got hurt—”
“And then I didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I didn’t come back all the way, the way I should have.”
“Why? If you’re not supposed to give up on the team, then why did you? You just giving me a bunch of talk that you couldn’t live up to?”
“Because I found something—someone—I loved more than football. More than being a quarterback. More than I loved the team, even. Or I thought I did.”
He didn’t expect to see sympathy in Clarence’s eyes. He’d expected pity, or scorn. Ridicule. But Clarence shook his head as his gaze dropped. “I can’t imagine finding something I love more than this game.” He scuffed his shoe against the cracked pavement. “That’s gotta be a hell of a thing.”
“I thought it was.” Colton shrugged. “Do you love the game, or do you love being a star? You love the crowds, or do you love your team?”
Clarence shook his head. “No one’s ever told me this kind of shit before. It was always ‘You’re the greatest, Clarence,’ and ‘You’re gonna go far, Clarence,’ in high school.”
“You were the big fish in a small pond. The star local player.”
Clarence nodded.
“Everyone playing this game in college was the star player where they’re from. You’re not special on your own anymore. Now, here? You’re special when you work with the team and you guys become something greater together.”
Again, Clarence nodded. He stared at the ground, kicking at a seam with the toe of his shoe. But he was quiet, for the first time ever, and listening to Colton.
“People think you’re a great player, and I think you’ve got the potential to be a hell of a quarterback. But you have to want it, and if you do, you have to start making some changes. You need to be the leader this team deserves. If you don’t want it, then save them the heartache and leave now. It will be better for everyone if you make a clean break. Sometimes things don’t work out.”
“And if I decide I do want it?”
“Then you need to start listening more. Listen to the team. Listen to Coach. Hell, listen to me a little. The people around you want to help you. Everyone wants to help you level up and become more than you are right now, but you’re taking that as some kind of personal insult. Why don’t you want to improve? If you don’t keep learning, you’re going to be exactly the same ball player in five years that you are today. And you know where you’ll be? Playing pickup football in a parking lot and not in the NFL.”
He let Clarence chew on his words. They were still buried in the alley, out of sight from the main street. Groups passed them by, loud voices and braying laughter filtering through the narrow passageway. He should go out there. Find a bar and find a pretty girl to lose the night with. Or, hell, lose an hour with, someone to look at him and smile and think he was all right for just sixty minutes.
He wouldn’t. The thought of touching someone else, of being touched by someone else, sat like a broken music note inside him.
“All right,” Clarence finally said. “All right. What do you want me to do?”
Colton turned away from the street. “Come to practice tomorrow afternoon ready to work. Show up early. Meet me on the field. I’ll show you the drills that helped me the most. We’ll find a package for you to work on every day. And we can do that together.”
Clarence pushed off the bricks. He’d sobered some as they spoke, and he wasn’t stumbling as much as he came toward Colton this time. He held out his hand wide, waiting for Colton to give him a high five. When he did, Clarence pulled him in for a quick, back-slapping hug. “Thanks,” he grunted into Colton’s ear. “You still love them, don’t you?”
“I always will.”
He just loved Nick more. And now that he’d felt what life was like with that one special person, he knew he needed that. Not the crowds, not the fame. Not a million people who didn’t know him.
One person who loved him.
Apparently done with their heart to heart, their little moment, Clarence squeezed Colton’s shoulder and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Coach,” before striding out of the alley with his hands shoved into his pockets. Colton sagged against the bricks as he watched him go.
I found someone I loved more than football.
What he’d said to Justin and Wes in anger and agony came back to him. I wish I didn’t love him. I wish I could close my eyes and forget about him, like he’s forgotten about me.
If he could go back in time and stop himself from kissing Nick… would he? Would he trade every moment they’d shared to be back on the field? If the cost was losing what they’d had, would he give up all their days and nights to suit up in his pads again?
No.
He’d never trade away the taste of Nick’s kiss, or the happiness he’d found with Nick, even if that happiness was only for this summer.
He followed Clarence out of the alley but turned back toward the jock house instead of heading for a bar. One a.m. pressed on him, the last hour of another wild night in a college town. He could hear live music pulsing from the open doors of the bars, mingling with laughter and cheers and roaring applause. Life, and other people’s happiness, filling the air. He kept walking.
Might as well go all the way to the stadium and get his truck. Head back to the motel. He needed time alone. Time to stare at the night and get lost in his memories again. Time to brood, and regret, and wish it was all still happening. That he still had Nick in his arms.
He heard an engine roaring a few streets away. It reminded him of the throaty growl of Nick’s Porsche, especially when he opened it up on the highways. Like when they’d driven up to Dallas or come back from Houston. Or when Colton had taken the wheel and driven Nick out to wine country. Nick had fallen asleep in the passenger seat, and if Colton had been a braver man then, he would have taken Nick’s hand. Maybe they would have had more time together if he’d been bolder sooner.
Tires squealed. He squinted as low headlights swung up the leafy West Campus block he was walking down. Some college kids, driving home a little too wildly? He heard brakes hit hard as an engine dropped out of gear and into neutral. Burning rubber stung his nose. The car was low-slung. Wide wheels. Arched headlights. He turned away. It was too much like—
“Colton!”
He froze like he was caught in a lion’s gaze as a man tore out of the car and left it idling in the middle of the road. Footsteps pounded on pavement. “Colton,” the voice called again, catching in the middle. Fracturing.
In his dreams, he was always running to Nick. Running across the field, or running to catch up to him, or, recently, running to chase him as he slipped away. Always, always him running to Nick, but at one a.m. in the middle of a dark street, Nick ran to him.
He wrapped Colton in his arms, crushing him to his chest—is this real, is this really happening—his lips dancing over Colton’s jaw and his eyelids and the corner of his lips. Nick’s hands were everywhere, running up and over Colton’s arms, down his back, into Colton’s hands as he grabbed on.
“Colton,” Nick pressed their foreheads together, his quivering breath trembling over Colton’s parted lips.
His ears were ringing, and static filled the edges of his vision. The world narrowed to a pinprick. To Nick, standing in front of him, holding him and whispering his name, like he’d begged and pleaded and cried for, every night they’d been apart.
“I love you,” Nick breathed. “Colton, I love you.” His hands were shaking, and he held on to Colton like he thought Colton was going to vanish. His eyes were wide, panicked, all of him vibrating with a fear Colton had never seen in him before. “I fell in love with you so hard it scared me. I didn’t think there was any way you could love me back, not with everything you have in your life. So I tried not to let myself dream of things that would never happen.” His voice broke. “But I can’t stop. I can’t stop loving you. It’s probably impossible, but I have to tell you. I can’t go another day like this. I can’t not tell you that I love you. God, Colton, I love you, and I never want you to leave. I want to be with you, however we can. Whatever that looks like. I’ll do anything.”
“Nick—”
“I’ve been looking for you. Justin said you were at the jock house, but when I got there, no one knew where you were. I woke Wes up, and he said you’d left and that you were staying in a motel somewhere. I drove out on the highway like I could find which one you were at by feel, but—” He shook his head. “I was coming back to the stadium to wait for you. I was going to wait all night, all day. I didn’t care how long it took. I needed to see you again. I needed to tell you the truth: I love you, Colton. And I miss you so damn much.”
He could feel Nick’s heart pounding against his own chest. Could see the flutter of his pulse in his neck. He smelled Irish Spring and felt the tiny scar on Nick’s left index finger, something he said he’d gotten working on his car’s engine years ago. Colton’s dreams were vivid, but never this vivid, and he’d always woken up wanting more, yearning for the reality he didn’t have. What world was this, where Nick ran to him and whispered everything Colton wanted to hear?
“Maybe I’m too late.” Nick’s voice broke on a strangled cry. “I get it. I understand if I’m not your choice, Colton. I never imagined I could compare to your future. Why would you want me when you have the whole world at your fingertips?”
Colton shook his head. “I didn’t want the rest of the world, Nick. I only wanted our world.”
“I want that world, too. I want forever with you.” Nick brushed his nose against Colton’s. Their lips were so close, so fucking close. They were almost kissing, right there on the street. “I love you, and I’ll never stop loving you. I tried not to fall for you, and I fell harder. I tried not to love you, and I tore my own heart out pushing you away. I tried to let you go, and it’s felt like I’ve died a thousand times each day that you’ve been gone—”
Colton crushed his lips to Nick’s as he wrapped him in his arms. Nick clung to him, their bodies aligning and finding all the ways they fit so perfectly together, like they were made for each other: Nick’s body and his, Nick’s heart and his, Nick filling up the empty spaces in his soul like he’d filled up the empty spaces in Nick’s.
Something invisible connected them, a tie that ran from his heart to Nick’s and back. It was battered and frayed now, but still there. Still strong.
“Nick,” he breathed as their lips parted. He pressed their cheeks together and sank his fingers into the hair at the back of Nick’s head. “I love you, too.”
He kissed Nick on the sidewalk, beneath the glow of the stadium and the lights of the city, as Nick’s car idled in the middle of the road, and time spun on and on. The agony of the past two weeks faded, burned away as he held the man he loved and as he was held in return.
He only wanted to be loved, and cherished, and needed by one person in the world.
And he was.
