Chapter Forty-Two
Payton
By the time I finished the scouting report I’d been working on for the past several weeks, I didn’t have time to go home and change clothes before Dax and I were supposed to meet for dinner. I grabbed my bags and headed out not long before we were supposed to meet, and I knew I was likely to be late. I thought about calling, but decided to let him sweat it out a little.
There was no question that we’d grown closer over the past few months and that, in the past few weeks, we’d crossed a line I hadn’t anticipated or even wanted to cross. I liked him. A lot. There was no doubt in my mind that we had a intense physical connection; one that I’d never had with anyone else before, but right now I was mad at Dax for failing to see how valuable I was to the Storm organization. I knew I had a lot to offer and I knew he knew it too, but I also knew that our sexual relationship had made it difficult for him to separate the business from pleasure, and it meant that I was going to have to do it for him.
When I walked into the restaurant, the hostess greeted me with a big smile and handed me a large bouquet of brilliantly colored fall flowers before leading me to a table tucked far in the back of the restaurant where Dax stood waiting with a serious look on his face. I couldn’t help but smile when I thought about how Gram had told me how he’d developed the habit of brining her flowers whenever he’d done something bad — as if it would soften the blow of disappointment. I didn’t want to be mad, but I didn’t know how to get through to him how I felt about the Storm and football. I didn’t expect him to understand, but I did expect that he’d treat my passion with respect.
“Payton,” he said as I sat down at the table. I pretended to fuss with the flowers as I tried to hide the fact that every time I looked at him, I felt a wave of desire ripple through me. I wanted things to go back to being easy between us, but then I remembered that there was no us. We were a deal. A contract signed so that we could each get something we needed. We’d been lucky to be so physically attracted to one another, but I had to keep reminding myself that it was just lust and the rest was business.
“Yes?” I said as I looked up and felt my heart beat faster as he sat down across from me and reached out to take my hand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I don’t understand your love of the game, and I’m sorry that I haven’t taken you seriously. I’m also sorry that I have to make decisions about the business that feel hurtful to you.”
“I understand,” I said, swallowing my disappointment. A part of me had come to dinner hoping that he had somehow seen the light and was going to tell me he had chosen me for the GM position. I knew it was a long shot, but the fragment of hope I’d kept alive now withered as he spoke.
“After we spoke, I realized it was unfair to keep asking you to do a job that you weren’t going to get,” he said. “So I called Al Mendoza and offered him the GM position.”
“I see,” I said fighting hard to hold back the tears that were threatening to flow as my appetite abandoned me. “I understand. Thank you for being honest and telling me yourself.”
Hearing the news was much harder than I’d anticipated, and as the reality of it hit me, I felt a deep sadness wash over me. I stood up and excused myself from the table, and made a break for the ladies’ room. I heard Dax calling my name, but the urge to escape was stronger and I fled. I locked myself in a stall on the far end of the bathroom and covered my face with my hands as I choked back the sobs of disappointment. I hadn’t realized just how much I’d wanted the job or how completely I’d thrown myself into it as I’d waited for Dax to make a decision. I thought that if I’d done it right, he’d notice and do what my mother refused to do.
Now, as reality came crashing in, I realized I was a twenty-eight-year-old woman who had defied her mother, gotten herself disinherited over a stubborn refusal to tow the family line, and now had nothing to show for it.
“Ma’am?” a voice called from the doorway. “Ma’am, are you okay? Do you need medical attention?”
“No,” I said choking back a sob. “I’m fine. Please tell my companion I’ll be out in a minute.”
I heard the door close, then murmuring on the other side followed by someone entering the room. I held my breath, not wanting to call any more attention to myself than I already had.
“Payton,” Dax said and I gasped loudly. “Payton, for such a smart woman, you really do miss out on the big things sometimes. You shouldn’t be so quick to draw conclusions.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked reluctant to come out of my hiding place.
“I was trying to tell you what happened today, but you didn’t hear me out,” he said tapping on the door. “Can you open up so I can tell you face-to-face?”
“You can tell me just like this,” I said stubbornly refusing to let him watch me break down while he told me about the new GM.
“Woman, you drive me crazy!” he said raising his voice. I could hear him moving on the other side of the stall and when he spoke again, he was looking down over the wall between us. “Listen to me, will you?”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “Why are you torturing me this way? Isn’t enough that I know I’m not in the running even though you and I both know I’m perfectly capable of doing the job? Do you really have to shove the new guy down my throat?”
“If you would stop shooting your mouth off and listen to me, you’d know that Mendoza isn’t going to be our new GM,” he said in exasperation. “What I was trying to tell you is that I offered the job to Mendoza and he turned me down. And when I asked why, he said it was because he’d gotten a better offer from the Cardinals and even if he hadn’t, he didn’t want to work for someone like me.”
“What?” I said, stunned by this revelation.
“Yeah, he said I’ve been informally blackballed by the league owners and that no self-respecting executive who wants a career in the NFL will ever consider working for me,” he continued as a smile spread across his lips.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because this means I can do what I wanted to do all along and say: fuck ‘em!” he replied smiling even wider. He asked, “Could you please come out of that stall and talk to me face-to-face?”
I opened the door and walked out, wiping my nose with a wad of toilet paper. I kept my back to the mirror on the wall, not wanting to see my swollen eyes and mascara-streaked cheeks, and when Dax came toward me, I ducked my head and backed away.
“Payton, I realized I’ve been an idiot. I’ve been trying to play the game by their rules and they don’t want me,” he said as he stepped forward and slipped his hand beneath my chin to lift my face. “I did a shitty job of setting this up, but I wanted to ask you if you’d accept the job as the Storm’s new general manager.”
“You’re shitting me,” I said and then watched as Dax let out a loud laugh as he shook his head. “You’re asking me to be the GM?”
“Indeed, I am,” he nodded. “Will you accept the offer?”
“You’re serious?”
“Payton,” he said in a tone that told me he was.
“Of course I’ll take the offer, you idiot!” I shouted as I flung my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. Dax wrapped his arms around me and pulled me off the ground as I raised my hands to signal a touchdown and whooped loudly before I grabbed the sides of his face and kissed him hard.
#
The next day, Dax called a press conference and made the announcement that the Storm had hired the first female GM in the history of the NFL. The press went wild speculating exactly how I’d gotten the job, and while not all of the theories were complimentary, I decided not to spend time caring much about the ugly side of print media. Instead, I focused the task at hand and got to work making a quick mid-season trade.
I’d had an inkling that something was wrong when Riggs had been hit hard during the Bears game, and I’d known since the beginning of the season that the Storm were short on backup quarterback talent, so I’d spent most of my time in my training position looking for a way to bring Cal McKenzie to the team. With less than a week left before the mid-season trade window closed, we were cutting it close. Dax approved the trade of two special team members to Cleveland in exchange for buying out McKenzie’s contract. They let him go without a fight, and by Thursday we had an experienced backup quarterback throwing the ball with Gaddis.
When Dax asked me why Cleveland had been so eager to let McKenzie go, I told him that they were already three deep in talent and that they didn’t like the fact that McKenzie didn’t always play by the rules. That sealed the deal, and with McKenzie at the helm in place of Riggs, the Storm took off like a rocket.
In quick succession, the Storm beat the Vikings, Washington, Houston, and routed Jacksonville at home 35-14 as the fans went wild. Soon there were Storm flags flying from every business and home west of I-90 and south of 47th Street. The Back of the Yards became the home of the Storm fan base, and as the team headed into a second match up against the Vikings in the first annual Thanksgiving game at Storm Stadium.
We stopped by Gram’s before the sun came up that morning to drop off a load of groceries that she intended to give her various guests. Dax had tried to convince me that Whole Foods would deliver it if I just called and told them what she needed, but I hadn’t wanted to miss out on the sights and smells of Gram cooking Thanksgiving dinner. It had been a long time since I’d joined my family around a table for a holiday meal, and being at Gram’s felt like the perfect balm for all the pain I’d felt over the past few months.
When we entered her little stone house, Gram was covered in flour as she rolled out the dough for half a dozen apple pies. She’d baked the pumpkin pies the night before and was fretting about whether the turkey would be ready in time. I offered to help, but when Dax muttered under his breath that I should let it go because this was her MO, I laughed and said I was sure the meal would be fantastic. She agreed to hold off on serving it until after the game because she wanted to watch her boys win. Dax kissed her cheek and said the car would be there to pick her up at ten so that she could make the eleven o’clock kickoff, and she patted his cheek and told him how proud she was of him for doing so well with the team and for finally coming to his senses and hiring me as the GM. I hugged Gram and told her I’d save her a seat next to me and have a nice Manhattan waiting for her when she arrived.
“Darling girl, you are such an unexpected blessing,” she said as she kissed me and then patted my cheek, leaving a floury handprint on my face.
We told her we’d see her soon, and headed off to the stadium. I was concerned that Johnny was well enough to play despite the fact that the doctors had run every test they could and found no evidence of any lasting brain bleeds or damage. I’d read the research and I wasn’t convinced that putting him back on the field only six weeks after he’d taken such a hard hit was a good idea, but then I wasn’t the coach. As we settled into the skybox, I crossed my fingers and hoped that Nick knew what he was doing if he put Johnny on the field today.
We spent the next few hours walking around the stadium checking in with the security staff and winding our way down to the locker room where we wished the team good luck before heading up to the skybox. I looked at my watch as we settled in and saw that it was well past ten. Just as I started to ask Dax about Gram’s car, his phone rang. He looked at the screen and then sent the call to voicemail.
“Who was it?” I asked.
“Wrong number, I think,” he said shrugging. He settled in next to me and handed me a frosty glass of Fat Tire Ale.
“Isn’t it a little early for this?” I asked.
“Holidays don’t count,” he grinned as I laughed and took a drink from the cold glass.
Kickoff came and went and still no Gram. Dax tried calling the house, and when he got no answer, we assumed that Gram had gotten sidetracked by the turkey and would be here as soon as she got it all straightened out. When the second quarter started and there was still no sign of Gram, Dax called the car service and was told that the driver had been waiting outside of the house for over an hour and that no one responded when he knocked.
Dax gave me a worried look as he tried the house again. Still no answer. He looked at his phone and then muttered, “I wonder if…” as he punched the wrong number and then put the call on speaker.
“Cook County ER, this is Betty,” a voice on the other end said.
“I got a call from this number about an hour ago, and I’m looking for my grandmother, Eleanor Connor?” Dax said. “Is she in the hospital?”
“You’re her grandson?” the woman asked. “What’s your name?”
“I am. David Connor,” Dax replied with a worried frown. The woman was silent on the other end of the line long enough that Dax said, “Hello?”
“Yes, I’m still here,” she replied. “Mr. Connor, I’m sorry to tell you this, but your grandmother was brought into the ER this morning in cardiac arrest.”
“What the hell?” Dax shouted. “Where is she? How is she? Can I speak with her?”
“Mr. Connor, you’re going to need to come down to the ER and talk with the attending on duty,” the woman said calmly. “Can you do that?”
“Of course, I can!” Dax shouted. “I want to know how my grandmother is!”
“Sir, I cannot legally give you that information over the phone since I do not have signed consent from the patient,” the woman said in a voice designed to soothe the frantic next-of-kin. “But if you come down to the ER, the doctor will be able to talk to you.”
Dax hung up and texted Geo to have the car at the entrance as soon as possible. We ran down the ramp toward the parking lot and jumped in the backseat of the Navigator. We held hands as Geo swiftly drove us to the ER, dropping us off at the entrance. Dax exited the vehicle, leaving the back door wide open, and I followed, trying to keep up with him, but he broke into a dead run and left me in the dust.
When I finally caught up with him at the nurse’s station, the nurse had requested his ID as the doctor rounded the corner and motioned for us to follow her. Dax tossed his driver’s license at the woman on the other side of the counter, and followed the doctor. She stopped outside a room with a curtain over the window, and said, “Mr. Connor, I’m so sorry, but your grandmother was in severe cardiac arrest when she arrived here. We did everything we could to try and revive her, but after forty-five minutes, we were unable to bring her back. If you would like to see her, I can let you spend a few minutes in the room with her before we have to move her down to the morgue.”
Dax looked like he wasn’t quite aware of what was going on, so I nodded and said, “I think he’d like that, doctor. I know I would.”
The doctor slowly opened the door and allowed us in. Gram lay on the gurney under a cool, white sheet. I couldn’t quite process the fact that she was dead because she looked like she was sleeping peacefully. I looked up at Dax and saw that he was frozen in place. Tears were welling up in the corners of his eyes, but none of them fell. I reached out to take his hand, but he shook me off and moved toward Gram and bent down to kiss her cheek and whisper something I couldn’t hear into her ear. He laid his head on her chest and closed his eyes, and after a few moments, he straightened up and said, “We need to go check Gram’s turkey and pies. She’ll be mad if they burn and can’t be eaten.”
I thanked the doctor and told her we’d call the morgue later to make arrangements. As we walked back to the Navigator, Dax reached out and took my hand. He said nothing, but I could tell what was going on in his brain just by the way he squeezed my hand.