Page 90 of Nothing Less Than Everything

Tatum: I’ll take your silence as a “no.”

Tatum: Good night, Little Bird. I love you.

Wren: Sorry, I crashed as soon as I got back into town. I just saw your text. Love you too.

Tatum: How was NYC?

Radio silence.

* * *

Something wasn’t right.Ever since our dinner in Manhattan and overnight at the hotel, Wren had been distant. I didn’t know whether it was because I had called her out during dinner, or if something had happened with Colette.

I didn’t mean to point out that she generally seemed miserable when it came to the projects assigned to her. But if I had to hear her talk about the Westicotts and their incessant need for their third-floor parlor to be repainted in “aged snow” because “eggshell” was so last season, I was going to sandwich my head between two of the heaviest weight plates I could find and have Theo sit on them. Wren was just as annoyed, but pretended like she wasn’t.

But the moment she started telling me about the renovation she did for that DeRossi fellow’s house in North Carolina, she lit up like the jumbotron over the stadium.

Wren was a get dirty, put in the work, blood, sweat, and tears kind of woman. She wasn’t content with pointing a manicured nail at pieces in an art gallery, then having someone else install it. She was all in, all the time. She was going to be miserable in New York.

Hell, I was going to be miserable with her in New York, but it made me a selfish bastard to want her here with me.

Gideon shifted anxiously beside me. Our game had ended twenty minutes ago. The entire team barreled through the tunnel, completely avoiding the press line and fans waiting for autographs. It was nothing personal. It was bye week.

As in, goodbye testicle freezing weather and hello four days of R&R. We showered at record speed, tossed every stitch of uniform and pads at the equipment managers, and piled into the meeting room.

Theo checked the time on his phone. He was taking Angie and their kids to Disney World for some family time. He had used the line, “It’s her week with the kids, but she’s letting me have them since it’s bye week,” as an excuse as to why he was spending four consecutive days with his ex-wife. But we all knew he and Angie had started sneaking around. I couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t a lack of love that wrecked his marriage. It was football. It was the schedule. It was the game being his first love; Angie was his mistress.

If it hadn’t been for Gideon and Heidi making it work, I would have stomped on the brakes the minute I started feeling things for Wren that were more than physical urges. I wasn’t a sadist. I was a realist. Some lifestyles were impossible to overcome.

But Wren got it—even before she knew who I was, or I knew who she was. Being around her gave me peace that I didn’t fully understand. I didn’t have to explain why I was gone so much. I didn’t have to make excuses as to why I had to work on my day off.

She got it, but she didn’t want it.

That’s what meant the most to me.

Wren wasn’t trying to ride my coattails. She wasn’t another WAG, snapping selfies in the stands during a game to get social media sponsorships for lip fillers and pyramid-scheme energy shakes.

She had her goals, and I had mine.

Coach Williams had been yammering on for twenty minutes, laying down the law about “acceptable bye week behavior.” I leaned to my left and murmured, “Does he do this every season?”

Gideon snorted. “Same speech, more gray hair.”

Mohammed, our long snapper, pinched the bridge of his nose and grumbled, “My flight leaves in an hour.” He was flying back to Michigan to see his family.

“Told you to book the red-eye,” Theo murmured. “You know Coach does this right before we get time off.”

Coach Williams dabbed his forehead with a towel. The old man was looking sweatier than usual. If he had a heart attack and we had to stay here longer, there was going to be a mutiny. “You’re all to report back to the facilities bright and early on Saturday morning. The weeks ahead are the ones that really count. We’ve had a solid season so far. Let’s recuperate. Rest your bodies and keep your minds sharp. Any questions?”

Rookie opened his mouth to say something, but Theo clapped his hand over Seth’s mouth and stuffed him down into the chair beside him. If he suddenly turned from the punk at the back of the classroom to the pencil dick asking the teacher if there was homework to be assigned right as the bell rang, we would bury him under the west side of the stadium. He’d be our very own Jimmy Hoffa.

Snickers and stifled laughs rumbled throughout the room.

A tense five seconds passed before Coach cracked a smile and said, “Alright. You’re dismissed.”

Car engines were already running as fifty-three men bolted into the player’s lot. Tires squalled as each one of us floored it onto the freeway. T.F. Green would be flooded with overgrown men hauling ass through security. Gideon and I were skipping the chaos at Rhode Island’s airport and, instead, heading to LaGuardia.

“Heidi said she and Wren just hit a bunch of traffic in New Haven,” Gideon said, reading off the text his wife had sent.

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