Rescuing the Receiver Page 2

  For most of my life, places like the training center had been my sanctuary. A haven of weights and rubber mats, turf and blaring sun, camaraderie and the stench of sweat and work and accomplishment driving me to perform better, faster, more precisely. And never, in all that time, had I experienced anything less than the assuredness of coming home when I’d crossed the threshold.

  Until now.

  I walked through the maze of hallways until I reached the lobby, the gleaming Lombardi Trophy on full display. Even months later, winning the Super Bowl felt surreal, as if it had happened to someone else.

  I punched the elevator up button to the executive floor, pacing back and forth along the marble floor and checking my phone obsessively for news from Scott. He and my lawyers were meeting with representatives from the NFL Players Association at this very moment. I’d done nothing illegal, I told myself. I’d followed league policy. But once the drug test revealed my system wasn’t clean, none of it mattered.

  The elevator arrived, and the steel doors slid open. I stepped inside, frustration bunching my shoulders and tightening my jaw. The commissioner’s office would launch an investigation, that was a given, but the outcome of said investigation was anyone’s guess. The bell dinged and the steel doors opened again, revealing a wood-paneled reception space. I checked in with Tammy, assistant to McDougall, at the front desk and grabbed a chair in the waiting area.

  As I flipped through the latest issue of Sports Illustrated, laughter pierced the air. I glanced over at where Logan and Tony, the offensive line’s most lethal right guardsman, were emerging from Kent’s office at the end of the hallway, as though they were still teammates. As though Logan had never abandoned us.

  I stood and tossed the magazine onto the coffee table. “Stonestreet, shouldn’t you be at home perfecting your side part, trying on checkered blazers, and practicing your best broadcaster catchphrase in the mirror?” I asked, trying to keep my voice a subtle jab instead of the twelfth-round knockout I wanted it to be.

  It wasn’t unusual for NFL analysts to visit various franchise headquarters to interview players and coaches in preparation for game day, but why hadn’t he called to tell me he’d be swinging by? In fact, ever since the interview had aired two days ago, there’d been only radio silence from him—from all my teammates—but Logan was supposed to watch my back the way I’d always watched his, support me in spite of the circumstances.

  “Chris,” Logan said, dipping his chin in my direction and crossing his arms over his chest, his Super Bowl ring winking under the lights.

  We stared at each other in silence for a long moment. His face went tight with control, morphing into something smooth as stone, and I wondered what reprimand he was holding back. Ever since we were kids, I’d hated that look, the one he wore whenever I screwed up. The one that condemned me as a spoiled child instead of a grown man.

  Tony lightly punched my shoulder, breaking the tension. “You ready for your beating from Kent?” Leave it to Tony to bring levity to the shittiest of situations.

  I shrugged. “Can you ever be ready for something like that?”

  “Just keep your head down and focus on the game, and eventually this will all blow over,” Logan interjected, but the flatness in his tone indicated he didn’t believe his own words. “Anyway, my flight to Minnesota departs in a few hours, so I’ll talk with you both later.” Then without another word, Logan strolled toward the elevators.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be?” I asked Tony after the doors had closed shut behind Logan. “He acts like I’m the only person in the league to ever mess up.”

  Tony sighed. “Stonestreet’s sports media now. He can’t afford to pick sides, you know that.”

  I shook my head. “If he plans to marry my sister and become my brother-in-law one day, he better get comfortable with the concept of family first.”

  “Just be patient,” he cautioned, regarding me with a careful expression. “And, Chris?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Good luck in there.”

  I slapped Tony on the back, and in a ritual I’d established in high school, laced my fingers together and popped my knuckles, reminding myself that when it came to football, there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Leveling my chin, I straightened my posture and knocked on Kent’s office door.

  “Come in and sit down, Chris.” He pointed to the leather chair across from his mahogany desk.

  Ordinarily, Kent made an effort to present himself as “one of the guys” and handled meetings with players like locker-room banter. But today, his suit jacket was on and he wore an expression that said the friendship he cultivated with his roster members extended only to those who won and stayed out of trouble. He’d told me as much the day he’d signed me. I’d just never fucked up so bad to see this side of him.

  Inhaling a deep breath, I did as I was instructed, wiping my sweaty palms on my suit pants and tapping my foot on the ornate rug beneath my shoe. And waited. When Kent was pissed, the best thing to do was keep your mouth shut and accept the verbal thrashing. He stared at me with cold, unblinking eyes, and I forced myself not to fidget under the scrutiny.

  A snore interrupted the silence, and I glanced down at Oreo, Kent’s deaf black-and-white-spotted cocker spaniel that acted as the team’s unofficial mascot, sleeping on an overstuffed dog bed beside the desk. While seemingly sweet tempered and lazy, Oreo was actually more protective of Kent than a three-hundred-pound left tackle with a mean streak.

  I never really understood people’s obsession with canines. They shed, they smelled, they made a mess, and they chewed up your belongings. Best-case scenario, you trained them to fetch two things: cold beer and big boobs. Since I preferred my IPA drool-free, and the women came to me anyway, I really didn’t see the point of owning a dog.

  Kent cleared his throat and I met his gaze. He leaned back in his chair, causing the hinges to complain, not because the thing was old but because Kent needed to lose the seventy pounds he’d packed on since his tight-end days at the University of Alabama.

  “We have a number of issues to discuss today,” he said. “For now, I need you to answer one question. Were you illegally doping during last season’s Super Bowl run?”

  “Of course not.” And it was the truth. Until the Blizzards’ recent losing streak, I’d never touched anything stronger than ibuprofen and the occasional Toradol shot Doc Baxter injected into my ass before a game to help me get through particularly painful days.

  “Don’t bullshit me, son,” he said, his weathered face growing red. “There’s no ‘of course not’ when it involves this sort of thing. You’re nearing thirty years old, an aging athlete who’s ambitious enough to go for the brass ring and attain it, as you’ve demonstrated. What I want to know is if you were egotistical enough to swallow banned performance enhancers to help you get there.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He shook his head, disregarding my answer as though I hadn’t spoken at all. “You wouldn’t be the first player to confuse results with triumph. What I won’t tolerate are any more surprises. The commissioner’s office will investigate the circumstances surrounding your recent failed drug test and they will search far and deep into the past to get their answers. If you were putting banned substances in your body last season and the investigation uncovers that, the punishment for you and the franchise will be severe. So I’ll have the truth from you, Chris. Or I promise that whatever consequences you’re worried about are going to feel like preschool time-outs after I’m done with you. Now, on the record, were you doping during our Super Bowl season?”

  “No.”

  He leaned forward. “Then why in the hell did you start using a prohibited substance now?” he asked, his voice rising.

  “Because the only thing harder than winning a championship is doing it twice,” I said, as if this wasn’t the most obvious statement in the world. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re not winning. We’re a humiliation. No one in the sports commu
nity has placed odds on us bringing home that trophy again, let alone making the playoffs. With a rookie QB at the helm, everything has been an uphill battle. So yeah, I took Meldonium to beef up my performance and help me regain control of the season. But you should also know that the moment Meldonium became banned I stopped using it. When I volunteered to submit to a blood test, I had no idea the drug would still be in my system.”

  Kent drummed his fingertips on his armrest as if considering my words, though the hard set of his jaw told me it wasn’t enough to validate my actions. Finally, he settled on a stern, “And I suppose that makes this all okay in your book?”

  “No, I expect to make it okay in yours. You’ve got a talented but green quarterback in a role Logan dominated, and as a result, you need me to be better, reach farther, run faster, cut harder through the defense. And you pay me a small fortune to do it,” I said. Bold and arrogant, maybe, but factual nonetheless. “I have to make the impossible plays work or Fitzpatrick’s learning curve will forever be the team’s learning curve. To accomplish that, I required some outside help.”

  As a veteran player and leading scorer, it’d been my responsibility to position the Blizzards for success, to prevent us from turning into the one-hit wonders of the sports world, but the team dynamic had changed for the worse. I’d tried to hold up the offensive line as best as I could throughout the season thus far—a job I’d never prepared for or wanted—but no matter how much I pushed my game, no one else seemed willing to elevate theirs. So I’d taken matters into my own hands because I hadn’t dedicated everything to the sport for anything less than a Hall of Fame career. If I wasn’t winning, then what the fuck was the point? My next breath, next thought, next tomorrow—they were nothing if I was losing. I was nothing. Football was all I had.

  “Except now you risk a multigame suspension, so where does that leave the team?” Kent asked. “You think you’re irreplaceable and untouchable, Chris, but no starting position is safe. We talked about this sort of behavior when I brought you out here for postdraft discussions. And what did I tell you?”

  “We’re a team that doesn’t need to break the rules to win,” I mumbled, wondering for about the hundredth time if he actually bought into that bullshit.

  “I was specific about what type of team I wanted to build—no gossip, no scandals, no drugs. There are plenty of franchises in the league willing to glance the other way on all manner of sins, that care more about the bottom line and final results than how they go about achieving them. But that’s not the Blizzards’ mission.”

  Except whether he wanted to admit it or not, we both knew this was a business, and Kent, who was the sort of astute that only came from self-made success, cared a great deal more about his bottom line than he’d state out loud. And while he’d established a reputation for the team, one he’d go to great lengths to defend, I bet he’d be more than willing to look the other way if my situation hadn’t turned into something so public or carried the potential to affect ticket sales and advertising dollars.

  “So while you might have only taken the drug before it wasn’t banned, it doesn’t change the situation now. So fix it,” he continued, his tone brokering no room for argument.

  “How?” I nearly shouted, my frustration finally boiling over. “It’s not like I can turn back the clock or erase the test results.”

  At my outburst, Oreo popped up from her bed and growled out a warning to me. I shot her an unimpressed look. One glass of milk and I’d polish off that spoiled cookie.

  “Appears Oreo doesn’t appreciate your attitude, Chris. That alone would be enough to have me asking questions about your character—questions I’m not sure you’d like the answers to,” he said. “Fortunately for you, dogs are multifaceted. They might recognize a self-important prick when they see one, but I’ve also witnessed dogs work miracles on people who needed a . . . shift in perspective, shall we call it?”

  “So what are you implying?” I asked.

  “You created this shit show, so now you’re gonna shovel it.”

  I frowned. Shovel it?

  Kent rubbed his palms together like he was relishing what was coming next. “When you’re not at practice, in the weight room, or on the field salvaging our season, you’ll be volunteering at a local dog shelter.”

  Was he kidding? And do what? Feed and bathe and walk a bunch of yippy, ankle-biting hounds? Toss the occasional Frisbee?

  “I don’t really jive with dogs, Kent,” I said, keeping my voice upbeat in the hopes that he was simply working his way toward the punch line. “Couldn’t you set me up with one of those firms that does image rehab with local organizations around the community?”

  “I could, but then what would you learn? Seems to me you’re in enough trouble for taking shortcuts,” he said. “And anyway, me sending you to a hospital’s pediatric wing and dressing you up like Superman so you can pose with a bunch of sick kids in pictures doesn’t make you Superman, though I’m sure it would serve to inflate your own self-importance.”

  “Yeah, but shelter dogs? That’s hardly high profile,” I said, resigned to the fact that Kent would ensure I’d never step out of the lines he drew again. “I could do other things like a charity press tour, or make appearances at soup kitchens, or be more proactive in the NFL’s youth league above what I’m already doing. Things I actually enjoy. I’m not kidding when I tell you I’m not a dog person.”

  Kent shook his head. “You’re not understanding me, Chris. Dogs are selfless, loyal pack animals—qualities you could stand to learn—so I don’t care if it requires a hellhound with three muzzles to drag you there, you will get your ass to the kennel for duty tomorrow.” He bore his you-misunderstood-me-that-wasn’t-a-request glare into me. “This is a punishment, Mr. Lalonde, not a PR exercise. For your sake, I suggest you treat it as the penance that it is—and as a last chance.”

  “How long do I have to volunteer?” I asked. Yeah, I’d screwed up in the most royal way possible, but why was Kent treating me like a petulant child?

  “Until the shelter owner signs off on your successful rehabilitation,” he said. “We’ll take it week by week.”

  Throwing a hand up in the air, I released an irritated sigh and said, “You make it sound like I’m attending obedience school.”

  “Your conclusion. Which I won’t discourage.” Kent shrugged. “But be aware, if you don’t toe the line, if you don’t save the saddest, oldest, most flea-bitten mongrel you can find in that shelter—and do it with a smile—being benched will be the least of your concerns. It’s about time you stroked something other than your ego for a change.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hazel

  Farewells, no matter how enthusiastic, were never easy. It was hard not to get attached or feel like you were losing a small piece of yourself. Though over the years I’d grown accustomed to good-byes. In my line of work, it meant I’d done my job and done it well. And that, above all else, was the most important thing.

  “You know, normally I insist that a man buy me dinner before allowing him to kiss me, but you’re just too cute to resist,” I said, scratching Cannoli under his ear as he licked my cheeks all over, his face melting into my palm, his tailless butt wiggling in pure bliss.

  Corgis were typically an outgoing, friendly, tenacious breed, but when Cannoli had arrived at the shelter five months ago, I’d quickly realized why three other rescue organizations had written him off as a lost cause. He’d refused to leave his kennel, cowering in the corner and curling into a ball, and when I had finally managed to persuade him out of the crate, he’d snapped at me. He’d been nothing but skin and bones, and his fur, which should have consisted of a thick, soft undercoat and a coarser outer coat, had nearly fallen out completely. Even after Cannoli had warmed up to me, simple tasks like baths and meals had been an ongoing source of anxiety that had racked his tiny legs with tremors—years of fending for himself on the streets as a stray had taken quite a toll on him.

  Now, Cannoli was
fluffier than the pastry I’d named him for and twice as sweet. The truth was, most shelters weren’t equipped for cases where an animal had been abandoned, neglected, or abused and required severe rehabilitation—they favored saving as many animals as possible, which meant they needed rapid turnover and easy adoptions. I took a different, more individualized approach. While that resulted in higher overhead costs, longer hours, and more stress, moments like this more than made up for it.

  I stood, slobber cementing dog hair to my shirt, and grinned at Imogen, Cannoli’s new mom. She was also the person responsible for finding Cannoli behind a Dumpster and dropping him off at the shelter all those months ago.

  “I don’t think you could have chosen a more loving companion to adopt. Cannoli is a changed boy, and it looks good on him,” I said, guiding her out of the main kennel area and into the hallway.

  “It’s miraculous. Truly. After the other organizations had rejected him, I’m glad I took a chance on Rescue Granted and brought Cannoli here,” Imogen said as we followed Cannoli toward the lobby. “And that you felt we made a solid match.”

  “I’m glad you came back to adopt him. He’s going to love living in his forever home with you.” I gestured with my chin at Cannoli, who glanced back at Imogen every few seconds, as if checking to ensure she was still there.

  Another smart, permanent placement, and this time with a potential side benefit.

  Imogen was a director at the Communities Foundation of Colorado and worked exclusively on the Denver Day of Giving event, an annual donation extravaganza that helped build awareness and provide monetary support for nonprofits around the area. Over the years, I’d submitted multiple applications, but Rescue Granted had never been accepted, as there were so many other, bigger local animal organizations with long-standing ties to the event that also saved many more dogs than I was capable of. This go-around, I’d decided to be more proactive and asked members of the Denver Day of Giving selection committee to visit the shelter to allow them to witness for themselves all that Rescue Granted had to offer. It also helped that I now had an in with Imogen and Cannoli.