“Ready to go, you damn cripple?” Grouper took his time getting up, his bones creaking as he lifted himself from a chair in the dining hall.

He wagged his bony finger at me. “You should be so lucky to be in as fine a shape as I’m in when you get to be the ripe old age of sixty.”

“Sixty? Who you kidding? You have age spots older than sixty.”

Grouper grumbled something under his breath. He lifted a box off the table. “This is the last of Marlene’s things. There’s a nice little gold cross necklace in there and some old coins—not sure if they have any value or not. Everything else is pretty much paperwork. We donated everything to Phoenix House like you asked. They were pretty excited to get all those clothes. More than half of ’em had the tags on still. You sure did spoil her.”

“She deserved it.” I took the box from Grouper and waved goodbye to Shannon at the nurses’ station as we walked to the front door.

“That place said you’d be surprised at how many of their patients aren’t young kids anymore. Drug and alcohol rehabs are more than thirty percent women over the age of fifty.” He shook his head. “Would never have guessed.”

I didn’t know the statistics, but I knew Marlene would want her stuff to go to a place where people were trying to get help. “Thanks for taking care of that for me.”

“You gonna bring the cross to Willow?”

“I’ll mail it to her. She moved upstate yesterday. Her roommate from rehab bought a place up near Saratoga, and Willow needed to get out of the city. Place she was living had too much temptation for a recovering addict. It was easier to score drugs from her neighborhood than it was to buy milk. Marlene left her a nice little chunk of change, so I’m hoping it starts her on a new life.”

He nodded. “That’s good. Marlene would be happy about that.”

We picked up Grouper III and one of his buddies on the way to Media Day. The two of them were wearing Easton jerseys and didn’t shut the hell up in the back of my car the entire way to the stadium. Their excitement was contagious.

“They always that loud?” My eyes slanted toward Grouper.

He nodded. “The Good Lord made old people go deaf for a reason.”

Even arriving at Media Day four hours before the start, the place was mobbed. More than two thousand members of the media from all over the world and four thousand fans were expected to attend the day’s event, which was the unofficial kickoff to the Super Bowl next week. If today turned out to be anything like previous years, the crowd on the field would resemble more of a circus than a news event. Crazy fans dressed as superheroes, women with painted bodies, and questions that were often off the wall.

The league had set up extra security and a valet, with a roped-off parking area for each team. I navigated the signs to the Steel entrance. “Once we get inside, keep a close watch on those two. The fans can get pretty rowdy.”

Grouper smiled. “Such a big softie under all that hard ass. Do your teammates know what a wussy you really are?”

“Bite me, Flounder.”

The valet sped off with my car, hitting the gas with a lead foot, and the four of us walked to the entrance through wooden police barricades. Both sides were lined with fans who had probably camped out all night. I hoisted Grouper the third onto my shoulders and walked to the crowd lined up three deep to sign autographs.

A kid about fourteen or fifteen had half his body leaning over the wooden barricade. I took his first, scribbling my name, then held the pad and pen up to my passenger. “You want both our autographs, right?”

The kid nodded, even though he had no idea who the boy on my shoulders was.

“You sign too, little fish.”

“I don’t know how to write my name in script.”

“Just fake it. That’s what I do. Scribble a lot.”

Guppy balanced the pad on top of my head and did as I told him. The crowd got a kick out of it. We signed for fifteen minutes and then went inside before I got fined for being late to the pre-event team meeting.

I handed Grouper and the guppies VIP badges to wear around their necks and fan admission tickets. “Back here at six?”

“You got it, boss.”

“Boss? Now you’re talking.” I grinned at Grouper. “I like it.”

Fifteen minutes before the event was to start, I stood alone in a luxury box high above the swarm of people on the arena floor. I looked out through the glass window and sipped from my water bottle. Both sides of the arena were lined with booths set up for each of the starting players to sit in. Microphones dangled from wires high above the ground, and I knew from experience that crowds of reporters would soon be yelling their questions and shoving even more microphones in our faces.

This week was the pinnacle of what every player worked for—making it to the Super Bowl. Yet I hadn’t felt like celebrating with the rest of the team after our meeting. Instead, I’d ducked into the first private area I could find so that I could take a few minutes to look for her. It had been ten long days since I’d seen her face, and I would take whatever glimpse I could get. Now I knew what a fan felt like stalking a player.

Part of me was still pissed at her for saying she didn’t love me. But a bigger part of me didn’t believe it was true. Her eyes had said something different than her lying lips. After my anger had subsided, I’d replayed the last few months over and over in my head. A wounded chick playing a mix tape that her ex made her before he dumped her had nothing on me. The only good thing was, every time I was exhausted at practice, I thought of that douchebag Langley with his hand on my girl’s back, and I suddenly had a fresh burst of energy. Angry energy, but it worked at my job.

Finding her in the crowd of thousands took less than a minute. I guzzled the last of my water bottle, following her with my eyes. She was wearing a black dress, a fitted red blazer, and had on high-heeled black leather boots that came up to meet the hem of her dress. Sexy as all fuck, while showing barely any skin.

Suddenly she stopped walking and looked up, scanning the arena as if searching for something. When her eyes found mine, even across half a stadium, it was all the sign I needed. This shit was not over. And I was going to find out once and for all why she was pretending it was.