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  Sunlight poured onto my face, and in the bright glow my pupils dilated. Soldier Field was gorgeous. Not a blade out of place. The yard lines and hash marks were even whiter than Thor’s teeth. And the sideline looked like it was just waiting for champions to fill it.

  A glimmering navy blue helmet dangled from my hand as I made my way around the field to Coach’s office. I hadn’t changed yet from practice, and my cleats clacked on the tile as I entered the building.

  The place was practically empty since it was a Saturday. I walked at a slow pace, looking at the grandeur of what could be mine—could have been mine.

  Who the fuck knew anymore.

  Just outside Jack Whitney’s office stood an eight-foot photo of himself from at least twenty-five years ago. The life-sized image was taken when he was the star quarterback for the Bears.

  It was meant to remind everyone who saw it to strive for greatness, but all it did was intimidate the shit out of me.

  His door was open, and he took no time at all to beckon me in. “Come in, Lucas,” he called.

  Slowly, reluctantly, I stepped over the threshold.

  Jack Whitney was at the other end, standing near the large window looking out at Soldier Field. He wore a standard coach’s outfit: navy Bears shorts and an orange Bears t-shirt, white cross-trainers, and yet he looked lethal.

  When he whirled around, he said sternly, “Sit down.”

  I sat immediately and put my helmet on my lap. Unsure why I’d brought it with me, now I was glad. It suddenly felt like a security blanket.

  I glanced around.

  The office was plush. A large wooden desk with tall, towering bookshelves behind it took up most of the space. There were pictures. Tons of them. But I couldn’t focus on a single one through the white haze of my vision. There was also his chair. It was huge. Then again, so was he. Chiseled and in shape, I bet even though he was more than twice my age, he could give me a run for my money.

  In his late fifties, Coach wore his blond hair short, was always cleanly shaven, and had the most chiseled jaw I’d ever seen. “Great job at practice today,” he started.

  I nodded, staying quiet. Suddenly feeling like my time here might be coming to a finish and instead of being happy about it, I felt like this could be the end of my world. Talk about a turnaround. “Thanks, sir, I appreciate that.”

  Coiled like a snake, Coach circled his desk and flopped in his chair. “I’m not a sir, don’t call me that again.”

  I nodded, swallowed, felt like I was going to vomit. “Yes, Coach.”

  His gaze drifted over me. “Better. I’m sure you won’t mind if I get right to the point.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  There was no hesitation when he spoke. “You have a bad attitude, Lucas, and I want it gone before you head to training camp in July.”

  Again, I nodded.

  Until very recently, I had mistakenly thought I had nothing to worry about. That my contract with a team I didn’t want to be on, in a city I had grown to despise over the years, was ironclad. So yeah, that was true, I might have had a bit of a bad attitude.

  He pushed back in his chair to steeple his hands. “You understand your contract isn’t final, right? It’s unsigned, and won’t be signed until training camp is over.”

  I’d signed.

  They hadn’t.

  A fucking incomplete contract. And no further ink would be put to that piece of paper until after training camp.

  This meant only the signing bonus was guaranteed.

  That stare of his was deadly. “This is a tough-assed game,” he told me. “Do the things that matter, and even those that don’t, the right way, and you might just make it, Lucas. Stay on the destructive path you’re on, and there’s no way you will go anywhere but out the door. Do. You. Understand. Me?”

  Cold sweat covered my entire body. Talk about being scared straight. “I understand,” I answered, swallowing the prickly lump in my throat.

  His voice was smooth and deep when he spoke again. “Good. Now, I’m going to give you some departing advice.”

  I waited, and didn’t say a word.

  He stood up and leaned over his desk. Reiterating what he had just told me, he didn’t beat around the bush. “Know this Lucas, no position in the NFL is guaranteed. If you don’t prove your worth at training camp, you’re out of here, no matter how important you think you are. It’s that cut and dry. Got it?”

  The only thing I could do was blow out my breath in a deep exhale. I wouldn’t be getting cut, not right now, anyway. “Yeah, I got it.”

  “Great, then get the fuck out of here.”

  I couldn’t move fast enough.

  Back on the field, I stood alone and looked at the quiet stadium. This was the NFL. The fucking NFL. And I was on a team that I’d just come so close to being cut loose from.

  As my gaze circled the empty stands, I began to understand the look I saw in my brother’s eyes the day I was drafted.

  This could be mine.

  And I wanted it.

  Fuck, I wanted it.

  Still, I had a lot of work ahead of me. It didn’t matter that I’d once proven myself. I had to do it all again.

  Back in college I had notoriety. I was the it guy. Now I was trouble, and what I had to do was prove I was football.

  I would bleed football, eat, drink, and sleep football.

  I would be fucking football.

  At training camp, not a shit would be given that I was a rookie drafted in the first round. I was just another player who either performed or risked being cut. That wasn’t a problem for me though, I knew what I had to do. I planned to dominate the field.

  To show I was hot stuff.

  TRAINING CAMP

  Lucas

  PLAYING NAKED WAS going to be the key to making it through the hot and humid days of training camp.

  Any pervert might be thinking that meant gracing the field without clothes. But a player would know what I meant immediately. Understand that wearing no protection beyond the rulebook minimum was how to play naked the right way.

  Quarterbacks typically wore padding on their legs, but until the official season kicked off, I’d be skipping the thigh pads. The risk of injury associated with this practice seemed unimportant, but speed—that was key. Then again, playing it safe had never been my style, and it was a good thing.

  When it turned out football contracts weren’t as ironclad as I had so naively thought, I got a new and improved attitude, and fast.

  Roster spots were vast, but the sheer number of bodies vying to fill them was even greater.

  With my cleats strung over my shoulder and in sweats, wearing no pads, I contemplated my disposability factor. I had to admit, I was more than freaked out that everyone’s head was on the chopping block, even mine.

  Nearly ninety of us wore navy blue or orange jerseys without numbers. We were spread across two practice fields like ants scrambling from our hills as we moved.

  It was hard to believe that in forty-two days we’d be cut down to fifty-three. That at the end of all of this, our team would be formed. That we’d be ready for our first pre-season game. That with me on board, we would be a winning team.

  I wasn’t being cocky. I was being realistic.

  Still, I was getting ahead of myself. First, I had to go through hell. And this was without a doubt, going to be a blazing inferno.

  The training camp was located sixty miles south of Chicago at Olivet Nazarene University. The place boasted four practice fields, a fairly new air-conditioned locker room, dining facilities, a weight room, and of course dorms. This was where I would be spending the next six weeks.

  For the first fourteen days, practices were closed, which meant fans weren’t invited to watch. Therefore, there would be no ice cream truck set up between the concrete bleachers, no autographs to sign, and no show to put on.

  Whether closed practices were good or bad, I had no idea.

  Although players wouldn’t ev
en be in pads the first week, practices were still going to be split into two-a-days. Early morning and late afternoon, with every minute in-between occupied as well. Typically the morning practices would be spent walking through the newly discussed plays and the afternoon practices would be all-out physically grueling play.

  The sun had only been in the sky for about an hour and we’d already eaten breakfast and were now strutting around the campus.

  Per the email sent last night with our daily schedule attached, it was time to head to an administration building in the west quad for a meeting on team rules and then we would be settling in for a talk on sensitivity.

  Interesting topics.

  Not.

  Not that my opinion mattered in the least because all of that had to take place before we actually could get on the field and play some football.

  As everyone filed into the designated classroom, we were handed a pad and a pen to take notes. It was a lecture hall with chairs and whiteboards, but still I doubted any of us would be putting ink on the paper.

  Already over this, I grabbed a seat next to the door. Standing by the back wall was a bunch of coaches—the safety’s coach, the receiver’s coach, and the special team’s coach, but no quarterback coach for the quarterbacks. For me.

  There were three of us quarterbacks, by the way, or there would be. Me, I was the starter, the primary backup, Isaac Swann, who was also new, and then there would be some dude from the practice squad as the reserve, but he hadn’t been named yet.

  And by the look of things, we would be coaching ourselves because Old Johnny Dwight wasn’t here. He hadn’t been here last night and as far as I could tell, he still hadn’t arrived. He did like to hit the bottle. Wonder if he’d had one too many.

  This past May in mini-camp, he was all up, down, and almost inside my ass telling me how my technique needed improvement and my attitude, an overhaul. He told me he’d be spending twenty-four hours a day with me at training camp. That he might even sleep in my room. He even went on and on about how much I was going to hate him. And then he hadn’t even shown up yet. Go figure.

  As soon as Jack Whitney walked in the room, the entire Bears staff hustled to sit right in front of him. There were seven coaches for offense, eight for defense, two for special teams, and three for strength and conditioning. Also present were the trainers and the equipment managers.

  Everyone it appeared, except the quarterback coach.

  Introductions came first, and then good old Jack ran his mouth on a gambit of need-to-know items, like how much Gatorade we should be drinking, mandatory Sunday dinners, and that this team was his team.

  Next up was the operations manager, who explained to us the need to conduct ourselves appropriately on the college campus by using the Port-O-Lets by the fields to take a piss.

  Good to know.

  I guessed relieving ourselves somewhere on the four practice fields or behind the bleachers seemed like something we might do.

  The head trainer got up and introduced his staff. He touched on the need to shower before entering the hot and cold tubs in the training room and how we shouldn’t buy over-the-counter medication. After which he stressed the need to check with the NFL drug hotline before taking anything he hadn’t approved.

  “Performance-drug testing in the locker room starts tomorrow,” he tossed out, “and photo identification is required.”

  A number of groans echoed around the room.

  Ignoring them all, he went on. “If you test positive because you didn’t realize what you were taking, I can help you, so bring the bottles of pills. If you test positive and you knew you were going to—well, you’re just stupid.”

  That shut everyone up.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ve been doing this for a long time, maybe even before you girls were born, and let me tell you, every swinging dick in this room is counted on to follow the fucking rules.”

  The guy next to me glared at Dallas as he walked away.

  Not my business.

  Didn’t ask why.

  Once again Jack took front and center. This time he put on his reading glasses and read from a stack of index cards he had in his hands. “We have thirty team rules,” he shouted. “Thirty, girls, do you hear me? Break one and you’re out.”

  The room fell silent as he began to list them.

  “Number one,” he bellowed, “You must attend every meal.”

  I started to zone out as he spoke about refraining from vulgarity in front of the fans and no dorm room overnight guests.

  “Number twenty,” he said, “Don’t chase too many women, it causes you to lose focus on what’s important.”

  We had a lot of Goddamn rules. Minimal antics on the field unless you were just that fucking good, curfew, and no distractions . . . blah . . . blah . . . blah.

  Jack removed his glasses and sat right on one of the tables, where he looked from one side of the room to the other. “Should you have a problem with any of these, I will be more than happy to personally explain their value to you.”

  I’d pass on that, thank you very much. I’d already had my share of me time with him, and I didn’t want more—not ever again.

  Coach went and took a seat in the front row and lucky us, it was sensitivity time.

  “Hey, guys! How is everyone?” This came from a buff dude in his forties or early fifties with spiky red hair striding down the aisle.

  No one answered. We all looked at each other with blank stares. Our reaction didn’t seem to bother him at all. Probably used to it.

  Taking the front of the room, he went on to tell us he was a former player and was now actively involved with the NFL. He stopped for a second to look at us, and I thought, okay, this is going to be really important. “One word . . . respect. Now give me another.”

  We all sat in total silence.

  “All right,” he pointed to a veteran offensive end. “Why don’t you tell me what that word means to you?”

  Preacher, the five-foot-eleven, one hundred and eighty-five pound cornerback, was speechless, probably for the first time in his life.

  The calling on a player and waiting for his answer went on and on for forty minutes. He kept throwing words out, and we kept defining them.

  So much fun.

  After the meeting, we finally got to hit the locker room and then at last the field, where we ran the length of it six times before moving on to conditioning evaluations.

  We were cooling down and I was deep in thought, spinning the football like a basketball on the tip of my left index finger, when Coach Whitney blew his whistle.

  “Okay, girls,” he hollered, “stop swinging your ponytails and show me how fast you can divide into two groups.”

  Jack was a real ball buster.

  Then again, he was testing our ability to listen, wasn’t he? Everything we did in training camp was a test and we were about to start another. Was this—who could follow instructions? Or maybe, who was able to line up in two even groups? Hey, I knew I could. Everyone else, I hadn’t a fucking clue.

  The offensive and defensive coordinators were over on the other field setting up more drills with the line coaches, which left just Coach over here.

  And by the way, not only was the quarterback coach still nowhere in sight, no one had said a word to me about why he wasn’t here.

  I wasn’t worried. I knew my shit, but the other guys, did they? I hoped they didn’t expect me to teach them. That wasn’t why I was here. Then again, why was I here?

  It wasn’t money.

  It wasn’t fame.

  It wasn’t because I was a die-hard Bears fan, although I had been for most of my life. Right, now I remembered. It was because I’d almost lost my spot, and now I knew how bad I wanted it.

  And let’s not forget I was here because I loved to play football.

  Because it was my life.

  What I had to remember was now that my head was on straight—I had to prove it. Prove that I was here to play professional bal
l, and only that.

  Hustling as fast as I could, I made it to the number two position in line. Right in front of me was the guy who’d called himself my locker mate. And he had somehow managed to get himself assigned as my training camp roommate.

  Trace Wentworth, or Thor as he liked to be called, was a big six-foot-one, two hundred and seventy-five pound offensive tackle from Georgia. The guy was built like a tank.

  Despite the fact that we’d become friends, we hadn’t spoken at all during the three-month break. Come to think of it, we hadn’t spoken that much since arriving, either. Even so, I knew more about him than he knew about me. I knew he had a girlfriend because he was sweet-talking her on the phone last night until I wanted to punch him. Oh, and I knew one more thing—the dude could snore.

  Under the rays of the soon-to-be-blazing sun, I watched him, a little surprised. Despite his size, he moved fast enough to reach the head of the line before me.

  Whatever.

  With the smell of fresh cut grass in the air, all of us prepared for the fumble ready drill coming our way.

  The pile of balls in front of Coach Whitney was the dead giveaway. Regardless of whether each player at the head of the line was ready or not, he tossed a football on the ground about ten yards ahead.

  I watched as it rolled, bounced, and randomly flipped into the air, as footballs tended to do. The objective of this drill was for each guy to try to get to the ball first and recover the simulated fumble by any means necessary.

  This was one exercise I could run in my sleep. I’d been doing it since I was ten, and often while water sprayed on me from a fire hydrant, which meant I had to dive for the ball into a cool puddle of mud.

  Talk about slippery when wet.

  The whistle blew and within seconds, those two hulking bodies at the front of the line were flying and colliding in awkward positions. Thor triumphed as he stood with the ball in his hand.

  Way to go, roomie.

  The opportunity to compete flooded my veins with adrenaline. Just then, the second ball was thrown across the field and the whistle blew.

  As soon as it did, my cleats moved and my body shook as I took off at a dead run. At six-four and two hundred ten pounds, I had agility on my side. With my speed off the charts, I got to the ball first and was gripping it with only mild exertion way before a struggle ensued.