The paper?
Who reads the papers anymore?
“Ma’am, with all due respect, Ms. Kettner is my cousin. And I’m here on business, layin’ low. Hadn’t had any home cookin’ since I moved away from my mama—when Posey offered me her spare room, shucks.”I pretended to be bashful.“Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see my cuz.”
“Cousins, my ass,”she harrumphed in a way only an old woman can: with pursed lips and an attitude. And rightly so. I was lying, and we both knew it, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to stick to my story.
Playing this game was fun.
I hadn’t had fun in a really long time thanks to entering the draft as a kid—twenty-two was young, in my opinion, to have that much pressure on you. I had to get my own place, pay my own bills, hire managers and agents, and trust them with my money.
Sometimes it worked in my favor. Other times, it didn’t.
That is why I’m in Illinois, hiding in the suburbs, near where my new and trustworthy agent hung his hat. There is security in having Elias close by—almost at my beck and call, though so far? I haven’t needed him.
I barely thought of him, honestly, or the shitstorm coming my way. If one considered a media blitz a shitstorm, which I most certainly do.
No one has seen me in over a week, so the good people at the sports networks are starting to speculate, as they’re wont to do. What’s going on with Duke Colter? Where is he? Is he hiding?
Has he been traded?
Has he been let go?
WHERE IS DUKE COLTER?
I’ve been video chatting and texting Eli, which has suited me just fine. I thought I’d want more visits from him—thought I’d want him to drop by the house while I was here—but Posey has kept me occupied and entertained.
The hammock. The book.
The fence I still have to fix.
The men I have to scare off for my roomie.
That fucker.
What a piece of shit, scaring her like that.
Hell, my heart was racing something fierce as I’d watched from my car in the parking lot, wanting to lash out at him a lot sooner than I had.
That’s the Colter Self-Control my pops tried to drill into me from the time I stopped sleeping in my crib. He’d done the same with Dallas, Drew, and Drake, and we turned out just fine.
Mostly.
I scrub, the shampoo good and lathery, thinking maybe I used too much of it, considering it takes a while to rinse it out.
I go easy on the conditioner.
Funny thing: I thought I’d hate it here. Being stuck in this small house—which I didn’t think was gonna be this small—with a woman I didn’t know, in a town I couldn’t explore, because I insisted on being within rock throwing distance of my agent.
Because I was freaking the fuck out.
Scared.
I wanted the change but hadn’t been ready for it. My dad was gone, my brothers were doing their own thing, I had no one guiding me except the man I was paying. Elias Cohen gets a giant chuck of change to negotiate contracts I can’t negotiate myself, and that itself is terrifying.
Plenty of athletes have been screwed over by their business managers; I was one of them, though he didn’t hit me in the pocketbook. I fired him as soon as he fucked me by letting me go to a team I hadn’t wanted to go to, in a trade that benefited him instead.
He made a side deal with New York and blindsided me in the process.