Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 79800 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79800 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
That’s what makes the loss feel heavier. Not that she said no, but that she once said yes. She stayed in the dream with me long enough for me to believe in the life we were going to share. Long enough to shape the dreams for our future around the idea of us. Knowing that someone trusted me with that kind of hope, and then changed their mind, is a quiet kind of ache. One that doesn’t fade quickly. It just settles in, reminding me that some futures don’t disappear all at once: They dissolve when they aren’t chosen.
The only choice I’ve truly ever made in my life is football. I loved the game. It was solid, steady, and never turned me away. I’ve given my life to my career. It’s all that I have, and I’ve made my peace with that. Life has proven to me over and over again that we don’t always get what we want.
I didn’t get the girl.
I didn’t get the entire dream, but I did get a piece of it. I was drafted, and even through the heartbreak of losing her, and the life we’d planned, I gave every piece of myself to the game, to the Rampage, and along the way, finally, something gave back. The game gave me my family. My four best friends and their families, by extension. They chose me, not out of pity but out of friendship, and we formed our Rampage family.
It's different from what I had imagined, and the ache is intense as I watch them fall in love and start families. The pain lives inside me, but there’s also happiness for my brothers. I want that for them. I just wish it could have been for me, as well.
“You with us over there, Vaughn?” Reid asks.
“Yep,” I say, pulling myself out of my thoughts.
“Saturday, my place, one o’clock,” Knox says.
“My wife is going to ask me what to bring.” Baker grins.
“Damn, we’re all wifed up.” Landry chuckles. “Foster, my man, we need to find you a good woman.”
“I had one once,” I blurt out, then curse under my breath. The room around me grows silent.
“You never told us that,” Knox says quietly.
“She’s not mine anymore.”
“Tell us about her,” Baker says, wiping his face with a towel.
“It’s all in the past.” I try to brush them off, but I know my friends, and they’re not going to pass up this opportunity. They’ve never pushed me, but I think my luck with that has finally run out.
“A past we know nothing about,” Reid says gently. “Whatever it is, you can tell us, man.”
Eden’s words from a past conversation pop into my mind. She told me that I need to trust them, and I know she’s right. Hiding my past from them is stupid, but the little boy inside me, the one who lived through constant rejection, balks at opening the seal that used to be so tightly closed you’d need a jackhammer to open it.
That is, until Eden came into my life.
“It’s not a big deal. We made plans. I was still executing those plans, while she was changing hers.”
“Yeah, we’re going to need more than that,” Landry tells me.
I’m not going to go into the whole gamut of my past standing here in the gym, so I give them a small piece. “We met in college. Dated, fell in love, planned a future. The day I was drafted, I asked her to marry me. She said no. Her plans changed, and they didn’t include me.”
“Fuck,” Knox mutters. “I’m sorry, brother. I didn’t know her, but I know you, and I can tell you she wasn’t the one for you.”
His comment makes me angry. It’s irrational, but it bubbles in my gut all the same. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, fisting my hands at my sides, fighting against the anger to keep it at bay. She was the one for me, and I didn’t fucking fight for her. I didn’t fight for us, and it’s the biggest regret of my life.
“I do know, Foster. I know because if she were the love of your life, she would still be a part of your life.”
“It’s not that simple,” I tell him.
“Nothing is simple about love.” Knox laughs, telling me he knows how not simple it all is. “I fell in love with one of my best friend’s little sister. I snuck around behind his back, risking that friendship, our friendship, the dynamics of our team on the field, and my wife’s relationship with her brother. We risked it all because we couldn’t stay away from one another. I would have given it all up for her,” Knox admits quietly.
“I married my fake girlfriend,” Landry says. “Rowan wasn’t mine, but I fought like hell to keep her. I was supposed to be helping her ex leave her alone, and instead, she snuck in and stole my heart. There is nothing that I wouldn’t have done to drop the fake and make her mine.”