Chapter Thirty
Ten months later
I stepped inside Franklin High School with plenty of time. The traffic getting into Iowa City moved slower than a snail because of a tractor-trailer accident and holiday travelers. I’d planned the drive with an extra hour to spare just in case. I’d learned my lesson a month ago when I was scheduled to speak at a high school in Cedar Rapids, and construction on the interstate set me behind by half an hour. Since then, I planned extra drive time.
“Hi,” I said to the woman behind the bulletproof glass. “I’m Aaron Betts. Coach Withers is expecting me.”
She smiled and glanced at a paper on a clipboard. “Yes, here you are. Actually, it says Principal Boudreau wants to see you.” She pushed a button, and the door to the office clicked open. “Come on in.”
I sat in a chair not meant for an adult ass and waited for the principal. After my humiliating exit from college, I came up with a game plan. With the help of my father, I started contacting high school sports teams and summer programs throughout Iowa and offered to speak in front of them about my use of PEDs. They needed to understand the dangers of using, not just to their bodies but to their lives. I never brought up Mallory. It still hurt too damn much. Every night when I closed my eyes, I relived the moment when I told her what I’d done. It haunted me.
“Mr. Betts?” A woman in a sharp gray pantsuit stood before me with her hand extended. Her blond hair hung in loose waves around her shoulders. The warmth of her smile surprised me. When I shook her hand, she squeezed it tighter than most men I knew. “Coach Withers told me about you, but I’m afraid I’ve got other plans.”
“Other plans?” I almost took a step back from this obviously crazy woman. What the hell else could she have in mind?
She smiled, and I was glad she wasn’t my principal in high school. I wouldn’t have gotten away with shit. “Please come into my office. I’ll explain.”
Forty minutes later, I sat onstage in the auditorium filled with student athletes who were more excited about Thanksgiving break than an assembly. Principal Boudreau decided I needed to speak to all the teams. Even the cheerleaders were in the room. She also wanted me to open up the floor for questions. That wasn’t an issue. I’d done that at every school I’d visited since September. Most of the time, the kids didn’t ask anything at all. Instead, I’d field questions from the coaching staff.
Sometimes I felt good when I left, like I got through to the athletes. Sometimes nobody cared about what I said.
Principal Boudreau gave a small introduction with some very detailed information about my exit from school. I shook it off. It wasn’t a big secret. I’d given interviews and testified during Seth’s hearing over the summer.
I smiled when I stood before the kids, taking the microphone off the podium before I started. “Sorry, but I can’t stand still,” I said, earning a few laughs.
“As Principal Boudreau said, my name is Aaron Betts, and I tested positive for performance enhancing drugs my junior year of college. I was eligible for the draft and a top prospect. Now here I am,” I began. The crowd quieted down after that, and I launched into my story, leaving Mallory as the only part I held back. Hell, I didn’t even bring up how Seth sabotaged me. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was that I used. “I’d hurt my knee during a soccer game, tearing my ACL and meniscus. The initial surgery was successful, but I didn’t listen to my doctor. I pushed too far, too fast, and I wasn’t healing as quickly as I thought I should. My recovery was hampered by my own stupidity. I wanted to play baseball. That was all I ever wanted. So I started using HGH and anabolic steroids to recover faster.” Even as I neared the end, I knew I was getting through to the vast majority of the students. It felt good. It felt right. It felt like redemption was possible. “Using cost me my college career, my future, and my health. I’ve suffered some of the aftereffects of steroid abuse, even though I only used for a few short months. My face broke out, but that was on the outside. The worst was ’roid rage, I’d get uncontrollably angry. Nobody was safe. I was lucky. It never got beyond verbal abuse, but it was still abuse. That was when I was using. Now I still suffer.”
I met the eyes of a student in the front row who hung on every word. He bounced his leg nervously, and I knew he was using. Maybe it wasn’t steroids, but he was taking something. I held his gaze. “I have unreasonable panic attacks. My heart developed an arrhythmia. I went into cardiac arrest. And I lost everything that mattered to me.”
His eyes widened, but he didn’t break my stare. For the first time since I started this, I opened up completely so this kid could see what was at stake. It wasn’t just the physical toll; it was the emotional toll they didn’t get. I opened the vein and let it bleed. I told them about Mallory.
“After I suffered the knee injury, I had to hire a tutor to help me pass a class.” I half smiled at the memory of seeing Mallory through video chat the first time. “She was smarter than anyone I’d ever met. And she didn’t put up with my crap.” A few people chuckled. “I’d fallen in love with her almost immediately, but she was resistant to my charms. It took me until Thanksgiving to finally get her to trust me. There wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her. Honestly, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her now. If she walked back into my life and needed a kidney, I’d give it to her.” I paused and took a deep breath before I went on. “But she never will. What I did was unforgivable, and she won’t have anything to do with me. When I say I lost my future, I mean it in every sense of the word. I wanted to marry that girl. And I lost her.”
A few of the girls in the front wiped their eyes. Heck, I had to wipe mine.
One raised her hand, and the Q&A began.
“Do you know where she is?” a girl with dark hair asked. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen.
“No. She told me to go, and I honored that. But there isn’t a moment I don’t think about her and wonder.” Talking about Mallory hurt like hell, but this was a good thing.
“You said you stopped taking the PEDs before you tested positive. How’d that happen?” the boy in front asked.
“My dealer had supplied me with what I thought were B-12 supplements. They weren’t. I didn’t know I was still taking PEDs when I tested positive.” I stared him directly in the eye. “But that doesn’t excuse the fact that I start taking them in the first place. I could’ve let all the blame fall on the dealer. I could’ve tried to lie and save my college career. But that wouldn’t have been right. I’d cheated. I needed to own up to that.”
“Why was a doping scandal such a big deal for this girl?” a cheerleader in full uniform asked. “I mean, it’s not like you killed somebody.”
I smiled. “No, I just almost killed myself. She had her reasons, and let me tell you, they were damn good ones.”
Even when we began to run out of time, we kept going. The bell rang, and Principal Boudreau let us continue. Halfway through the next period the questions dried up, and the students were dismissed.
“That was amazing,” Principal Boudreau said as the kids cleared out. “Really, Mr. Betts, you did a great job. We’ve had a lot of speakers, but few got through to the students like you did.”
I smiled and glanced down to where the nervous kid had sat. His seat was empty, but I hoped he’d seek help for whatever he was using. A few of the coaches came up to thank me.
Principal Boudreau gushed some more, but I didn’t hear her. Over her shoulder the most beautiful woman in the world stood at the edge of the stage. I reached for the podium to steady myself.
“Mr. Betts, are you okay?” Boudreau asked.
I nodded slowly, not taking my eyes off Mallory. Her hair was pulled back into an oversized ponytail, and she had glasses on, but every single thing about her stopped my heart in a good way. I knew she’d started teaching somewhere, thanks to Chuck, but he didn’t know exactly where. Or he wouldn’t tell me. The fact that he’d given me that much information was enough.
“Ah, Mr. Betts, this is Ms. Verbach. She’s actually the person who told Coach Withers about you.” Boudreau seemed to sense something going on. She glanced between me and Mallory. “But I think you might know each other already.”
“You…you brought me here?”
She nodded and took another step closer.
“That…that was nice of you.” I wanted to wrap my arms around her and pull her against me. She was here. In front of me. She was real. And she was talking to me.
“Why?” she asked.
“I needed to do something. This seemed like the right thing. I wondered after I left if I would’ve taken the drugs had someone been honest about what would happen. I don’t mean the physical effects, either.” My grip tightened on the edge of the podium as I tried to control the panic attack. “Not that the physical side doesn’t suck.”
Mallory nodded and took another step closer to me.
“Verbach?” I asked.
“It was time…” Her gaze never wavered from mine. “It was time to let go. To forgive them.”
“Will you ever forgive me?” I asked. I’d wanted to ask her this for so long. Hell, I needed to hear her say no just so I could move on with my life. Not that I wanted to let her go. I held on to that brief month we had together like it was the Holy Grail.
“Maybe,” she said.
My entire body froze. I wasn’t expecting anything other than no. “Do you mean that?”
She nodded again.
“Mallory, I—”
“Wait, not here.” She glanced around at the quiet coaches who were watching us out of the corners of their eyes. “Can we maybe have coffee after school?”
“Yeah, that would be nice.” I offered my hand to her for a handshake. And just to feel her skin.
She slipped her fingers into mine.
“Then maybe…” I let the implication hang in the air. She knew what I wanted. Her. All I wanted was her back in my life.
A small smile crossed her lips. “Maybe.”
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