That summer, I got to know her, as Braxton was still crashing at my place and they were splitting their time between Indianapolis and Hartford. Dakota was a sweet girl and perfect for Braxton. Their young love made me smile while at the same time making my chest ache, knowing I didn’t have someone who looked at me like I was their reason for living. By the time the season began that fall, Dakota had moved to Indy and they’d bought a house together.
Jenner took over as my companion after Braxton moved out. He was the one by my side during the extensive rehabbing of my knee, which took far longer than anyone had expected. Getting old was a bitch, and my body had no problem reminding me of that after each physical therapy session. Jenner didn’t mind not going out with the rest of the team to Pipes, the local karaoke bar the Speed claimed as their post-game hangout. Instead, he was content grabbing a quiet beer at my place and watching the highlights on the local sports broadcast.
While I was the one physically wounded, Jenner’s heart had taken a hit. A while back, his wife had left him. The divorce was painful, and I knew he was still in love with her, so he rarely went out with the team. Three years later, he still wasn’t ready to move on.
Between Braxton and Jenner, I’d witnessed both sides of the relationship spectrum—the all-consuming love and the gut-wrenching heartbreak. Maybe I was better off single, after all.
Having a wife and a family seemed like a good idea when you were alone, but in reality, it came with a heavy dose of responsibility. I might be thirty-five now, but I wasn’t sure I was ready to have someone entirely dependent on me—whether it be a woman or children. I was still too focused on my career.
What was left of it anyway.
Placing me on long-term injured reserve for an entire season had allowed the Speed to use my salary cap hit to pick up additional players. None of it was enough to see us be competitive after coming so close and failing to achieve the ultimate goal. We hadn’t even made the playoffs the season following the championship loss.
That didn’t sit well with management, and they fired Coach Avery, who had been at the helm in Indy for the past seven years. Rumors were still swirling over who they might hire to replace him, but no decision had been made public yet.
I didn’t care who the new coach was, so long as I got to play. That was my primary focus—getting back out there with my teammates.
That was how I found myself standing atop a balance stability trainer—half a ball attached to a flat platform—on my bad leg, bending my knee to a ninety-degree angle before straightening. My entire weight was being held on a wobbly platform on a reconstructed knee as sweat rolled down my back. Gritting against a twinge I felt when I lowered myself for the tenth time, I pushed through.
Bad idea.
My knee buckled, and I crashed to the floor.
I was in the gym at Speed Arena, and Jenner was twenty feet away doing his own workout.
“Oh shit!” Jenner’s voice called out over the music we had filtering through the speakers built into the walls.
Closing my eyes, I let out a breath. My pride was hurt more than anything else. Knowing I couldn’t hold my body weight on that knee for long didn’t spell good news for being reinstated to the team.
Jenner rolled me onto my back, and when I forced my eyes open, his concerned brown ones scanned my face. “You okay? How’s the knee?”
“Fuck the knee.” I huffed,sitting up on my own power.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard.”
Whipping my head around, I snapped at my best friend. “Too hard? That’s a joke, right? It’s been over a year, and your definition of ‘pushing it too hard’ is ten single-leg squats on a stability trainer?”
He slid off his backward-facing Speed ballcap and ran fingers through his auburn hair before replacing it. Blowing out a heavy breath, he clarified, “I just meant it’s not worth injuring something else. If the knee’s not ready, it’s not ready. You can’t rush the process.”
“What process?” I spat. “The one where I’m about to fail my physical and be placed on long-term IR for the second straight season? The last season of my current contract, I might add.”
The compassion in his eyes was what made it finally feel real. He already knew what I wasn’t allowing myself to accept. That it was over. That I wasn’t going to lace up for the Speed—or any other team, for that matter—ever again.
What the hell was I supposed to do now?
“Come in!” Jared McCall, general manager of the Indy Speed, shouted through the thick wooden door to his office inside the arena.
Turning the handle, I let myself inside.
It had been two weeks since I fell in the gym, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get my fucking body to cooperate. The one thing I had always been able to count on—that had gotten me to where I was—had failed me.
The career of Maddox Sterling had been reduced to a bum knee taking him out of the game for good.
Jared smiled when I walked in, gesturing for me to take a seat opposite where he sat behind his massive desk. This was an office I didn’t often find myself in, so I allowed myself a moment to look around as I lowered my six-three, two-hundred-ten-pound frame into one of the chairs.
The focal point was a massive glass wall behind the desk, overlooking the arena. While I knew management sat in a luxury suite on game days, this wasn’t a half-bad view either. On the wall were photographs of his own career achievements. He had played and won a championship with the Houston Heroes alongside Ace Moreau, who coached the Connecticut Comets. There was the tiniest pang of jealousy that he had reached the pinnacle and now kept his hand in the game by orchestrating the moves of an entire franchise.
“Maddox, I wish I had better news for you today,” he began, and I forced myself to focus on the meeting.
