Page 12 of The Quarterback
“Guilty. Absolutely guilty.”
The moment stretched, and Colton wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “It’s always like that, I guess,” Colton said. “I mean, if you know the details, the real inner workings, you do better than the guys who don’t. Wes and I were like that freshman year on the team. We’d stay up all night studying plays and breaking everything down. We were both on the scout team”—the team that played against the offense and defense in practice, pretending to be the opposing team they’d be facing that weekend—“so we got to see both sides of the play action. It made a huge difference in how we understood the game and what we could do.”
“The same basic principle applies everywhere in life. I can speak to a greater level of technical detail, what our tech can and can’t do versus what the client wants it to do, than the sales guys who don’t have that technical knowledge.”
“Yeah. Totally the same.” Colton smiled, finally, it seemed, relaxed. “Cool. Okay. So I know what I need to do. Step one: learn everything there is to know about your stuff.”
Maybe it would be good to give Colton a goal, an achievable end, now that he’d been so completely unmoored. Nick hadn’t wanted to stress him out, but maybe letting him dive into the technical specs and the slide decks would be good for him. “I can bring you the manuals and sales presentations if you want. You can start reading everything while you’re bumming around with nothing to do.”
“I’m not bumming around.” Colton pretended to pout, but there was an edge to it, like he really was hurt. “I’m healing. It’s important.” He rolled his eyes after he spoke.
“It is important, and you’re right. I’m sorry. You are healing. And you’re doing very well so far. Your doctor is going to be proud.”
Colton sighed. His arm hung between them, strapped and locked in a shoulder immobilizer—what he called his Terminator sling—swollen and still wrapped in surgical dressings and bandages. “I need something to do. Something to focus on. I mean, I showered today because you were coming, and that’s… all I have to look forward to, you know? You coming over was the only thing that got me to move today. So, you know. Thanks. I know you’ve got a shit ton of stuff to do—”
“I’ll come see you every day, Colton.”
“No, jeez, you don’t have to. I wasn’t trying to guilt you into—”
“Iwantto come see you. I’m happy to.”
Colton was quiet. He fiddled with one of the Velcro straps on his sling. “I mean,” he finally said, his voice soft. “I’m not going to say no, don’t come. I’d love it if you did.”
Nick smiled.
“You’re pretty cool,” Colton said in a rush. “Like, I know you’re Justin’s dad, but you’re also more than that. You’re cool on your own.”
“I don’t think I’ve been described as ‘cool’ in twenty years.”
Colton slumped back on the couch, peering sideways at Nick. “Well, when you first barged into the house, you weren’t so cool. Not just ’cause you were beefing all over our place. You were sportingmajordad fashion—”
“I drove all night to get down here to help—”
“Really cooldad fashion,” Colton corrected quickly. His shit-eating grin called him a liar.
Nick sank back as well, mirroring Colton. “I was so mad that day,” he said, his voice quiet. “I don’t think I’ve been that furious in my entire life, except for—” His lips clamped together.
Except for when Cynthia had come out and said what she’d been thinking for years, that Justin was wrong and was going to hell for his choices, that it wasn’t right for him to love another man. She’d said she couldn’t not speak the Lord’s truth anymore. That she couldn’t just sit by with all that sin.
He’d seen red had spent the next twelve hours in the garage banging around, vicious with his tools and his car and the remains of his broken marriage in the roar of his thoughts. He’d decided on divorce that afternoon but had told himself to wait. Calm down. Think things through. Twenty years of marriage didn’t get thrown away in a day.
Yeah, it did, he discovered.
The next time he’d felt that level of rage was when Justin was heartbroken and sobbing over Wes’s broken body and they didn’t have a clue who had put Wes in the hospital. Nick had his suspicions as he thought back to the horrific game he’d watched and the broken, dejected, angry faces the cameras had panned over on the Texas sideline. Of course it was the team, he’d thought. Bitter and furious over the loss.
He’d realized he was wrong about thirty seconds after throwing Colton against the wall, when something in Colton’s eyes had fractured at the news that Wes in the hospital. Nick had backed off from threatening to kick Colton’s ass—which had been pure rage, not a lot of thought. If the team had been half as vicious as he’d imagined they were when he banged on that door that morning, he’d have been nothing more than a gnat bothering them all. He could have made an uncomfortable few minutes for two, maybe three, of the guys before they dumped him on the curb.
But they weren’t the monsters he’d imagined. They were hurting, broken boys, wounded and scared and depressed and regretful. Colton especially had seized on to Nick’s pronouncement that Wes was in the hospital and repeated it like it wasn’t real.
It took some balls for Colton to ask the guy who had tried to choke him out to drive him to the hospital. Nick had to give Colton that. He’d made him sit in silence the whole drive, not giving him any information, only barking at him that he’d better fucking have something good to say to Wes when he got there or Nick was getting hospital security to throw Colton and the rest of the team out.
“You weretherefor Wes.” Colton was back to fiddling with his sling. “When he needed it most, you were there. And you didn’t even know him then.”
“I didn’t need to. Justin loves him. That’s all I need to know, then and now. I trust my son’s judgment. And who he loves, I love.”
Colton’s smile was thin, almost wistful. “You were there when he needed you.”
There was something Colton was saying and not saying. Nick held back from what he wanted to say:I’ll be here for you, too, as long as you need. Colton was Wes and Justin’s best friend, and even though Nick cared about Wes and Colton almost as much as he cared about his son, Colton might be uncomfortable hearing his friend’s dad come out and say something like that. “I think my fashion has improved,” he said instead.
