Page 4 of Under My Skin

“Braden Garrett Hicks, you may be a bigshot professional football player now, but you arestilla member of this family!” she growled at me.

What the hell? It waswaytoo damn early for this, especially before I’d had coffee.

“Whoa. Back up, Mom,” I said as I got out of bed and found some sweats to throw on. “What did I do?”

“How could you?” she sniffled.

“How could I what? Catch me up a little. I’m lost.”

I walked into the bathroom and shut the door so the girl I’d fucked last night didn’t overhear my personal conversation. Even though I’d made her sign an NDA – come on, a dude in my position’s gotta havesomeprotection – that didn’t mean I needed to make it too easy for her to overhear something she shouldn’t.

“How could you miss his funeral?” my mom said, her voice catching in a sob.

All the spinning gears in my head came to a screeching halt as I sank down onto the edge of the tub.Whatwas going on? Who had died, and why hadn’t I been told about it? I might have been an asshole sometimes, but my family, biological and chosen, meant everything to me. I would never have missed a funeral.

“Whose funeral?” I asked quietly.

“Uncle Terry’s,” she sobbed.

No. That wasn’t possible. I’d just messaged with him on Facebook two weeks ago. The last time I’d seen Uncle Terry was right after the draft. He’d seemed perfectly healthy, and he was so excited to see me play my first game. He’d always messaged me after every game, telling me how well I’d played or where I’d fucked up and how I could do better next time.

“What? When? How?” I choked out. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“Don’t pull that shit with me, Braden! Not today!” she spat.

“Mom, when have Ieverlied to you? When have Ievermissed any important family functions?” I reminded her, swallowing the lump that rose in my throat. “I never got a call. I had no idea. When did Uncle Terry die?”

“Jameson called you a week ago,” she insisted. “He said your number went to some PR company, but he left a message with a woman named Vicki.”

Blood boiled in my veins and my free hand clenched into a fist as my sorrow at losing my uncle turned to rage.

My cousin had to have called my old number. At the start of the season, when my phone had started blowing up with calls from newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations asking for interviews or sound bites, I’d gotten a new private number and just given it to family and close friends. But I’d kept my oldnumber and had it forwarded to my publicist so that she could field the interview requests. I’d told her that it used to be my personal number and that I might end up getting some personal calls on it, and I’d asked her nicely to please either give them my new number or pass on any messages to me. Apparently, in this case, she’d done neither. And now I’d missed my favorite uncle’s funeral because she’d flaked.

“I am going tokillher,” I growled.

“What?”

“Vicki’s my publicist. I must have forgotten to give Jay my new number. I fuckingtoldher some personal calls might slip through and asked her to either give the people my new number or pass the messages on to me. She never called me, Mom. I swear to God, she never called me.” My voice broke as the grief started to leak through again. “When did he die?Howdid he die?”

“A week ago today. He had pancreatic cancer,” she sniffled. “He never told anyone except Heidi and the kids. I guess the outlook was never good to begin with.”

I sighed. “Is there anything I can do now? Like, any bills I can help with? I can’t…I would have been there if I’d known.”

“I know they still have a ton of medical bills from his treatment,” she suggested.

“What hospital?”

“Olathe Med.”

“I’ll call them and see what I can do. I’m so sorry, Mom,” I said, once again choking down the lump in my throat. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? I have to be at the gym in a couple of hours, and I need to call my publicist and find out why in the actual fuck she thought I wouldn’t want to know about my uncle dying. Tell Jay, Prue, and Aunt Heidi I’m so sorry, please.”

“I will,” she sighed. “Take care of yourself down there.”

“Always do,” I told her.

I hung up with my mom and stood up, the grief once again turning to rage. If my fucking publicist had just passed on a goddamn message, I could have been there today mourning my uncle’s death and celebrating his life with my family. Instead, I was nine hundred miles away from them. And all because someone I fuckingpaidto field phone calls for me had dropped the ball.

“Fuck!” I screamed, letting my fist fly into the wall.

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