XO, Adaline
Most of the guys looking to see what I’d been sent were thoroughly confused, but I couldn’t stop my grin long enough to explain anything.
She’d sent me a crate of fucking vegetables.
If I didn’t love her before, this might have done it.
I set it down on the ground and strode past all my curious teammates, heading straight for Ned. Coach pinched the bridge of his nose, muttering something underneath his breath.
On the sideline, standing next to his lone security guard, Ned fidgeted uncomfortably as I approached.
I stopped about two feet away from him, crossed my arms over my chest, and stared him down.
“I have a meeting in less than five minutes,” he said, throat catching nervously on the last word.
“I don’t care.”
His eyebrows popped up, and he ripped his sunglasses off. “You still work for me, Ward, and I think you’re forgetting that.”
“I haven’t forgotten anything.” I took a step closer. The security guard watched me, yawning lazily. “I’m asking you, with all the respect you deserve as the owner, to honor the time I’ve put in here by allowing me to move on to another team where I can be closer to the people I care about.”
“Running home to Daddy?” Ned tugged on the sleeves of his shirt with a derisive sniff. “I thought you understood what an awful place that is to be. Makes me respect you less.”
“That would bother me if I cared whether you respect me or not.” I smiled. “But I don’t.”
“Why would I let my best player go anywhere?” he hissed. “I’d be an idiot to allow you to walk away before I have to.”
“There’s a whole list of reasons you’d be an idiot,” I said easily. “I might work for you right now, but contract or no contract, you’re putting me in a position where I won’t have much of a choice to do something drastic.”
“Like leave your team right before the season?” he said loudly. “That drastic?”
Loudly enough that my teammates behind us went conspicuously quiet.
Coach swore under his breath.
A few players muttered things I couldn’t hear, speaking to the people around them. If I looked now, I wondered what I’d see. Distrust. Suspicion. It was exactly the kind of thing that could ruin a team before we ever took the field.
I held his gaze. “It’s gonna be like that, then?”
Ned smirked. “Good luck getting them to trust you now, Ward.”
What an idiot.
He motioned to his security guard and swept out of the practice like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb right in the middle of the field.
I set my hands on my hips and tried to breathe through the hot wave of anger that curdled in my chest. Someone gripped my shoulder.
Darius squeezed his hand. “Hey, we got you, QB. Don’t sweat him, okay?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
He walked off, and I blew out a hard breath. Before I could think too hard about what I was doing, or what it meant, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and pulled up a number I’d probably never called.
She picked up on the first ring.
“This is Allie.”
“Aunt Allie, it’s Emmett.”
Allie Sutton-Pierson, owner of the Washington Wolves and my mom’s oldest friend, laughed. “Well, not every day I get a call from the competition,” she said, a smile clear in her voice. “What can I do for you, Emmett?”