His mother’s car was in the drive when Jason pulled in. Jason sighed. What now? He had had a good evening, and all he wanted to do now was sit out on the back porch and go over it all in private.
But he couldn’t tell his mother to leave, not immediately. If she had turned up without warning, something had to have happened that left her concerned.
Pulling his car alongside his mother’s, Jason headed into the house. Sarah was in the kitchen, pouring out some coffee. She looked up as Jason came in.
“Mom?”
“I know, I’m sorry.” She cut him off before he could speak any further. “I’m not supposed to use the key for your place unless it’s for an emergency, but it was getting cold out there. I wanted to get warm.”
Jason sighed, putting his keys on the counter. “Just don’t make it a habit, will you?”
“I don’t plan to. Where were you, anyway?” Sarah frowned at him. “You weren’t at the office, were you? Not working late?”
“I was out having dinner, actually.”
Jason kept back the fact he had been with Elena. While Sarah had met Elena, and the two of them seemed to get along, she might not be impressed with Jason’s choice of a dinner date. He didn’t want to ruin the evening by being subjected to disapproval. He shrugged out of his jacket.
“Is something wrong? You wouldn’t be here just because it was cold. Has something happened?”
“I was notified by a friend that the Wolves were trending on social media. Something about Liam?”
“What about Liam?”
“You’d better see for yourself.”
Now Jason was nervous. Had Liam said something that would put them into trouble?
Heading into his office, he turned on his laptop and went searching. It didn’t take long before he found the trending topic. Liam was, by all accounts, ready to play and he wanted to, but he was being held back by the new boss. Underneath it was a lot of speculation about the reasons why, going from a personal beef to Jason wanting to field his own players from outside.
None of it was good, but all of it was fiction.
“You’ve seen it, have you?”
Jason looked up. Sarah was in the doorway to his office, looking uncomfortable. He sat back.
“Is it like this everywhere?”
“There are even a couple of local news articles about it. I saw it in the paper in Lincoln, and a couple of my friends asked about it.” Sarah frowned. “What’s going on, Jason? Is any of this true?”
“What? You should know me by now, Mom. Of course it’s not true.”
“You mean people went out and posted fake news to stir things?”
“Isn’t that what journalists do? Not all of them, anyway.” Jason rubbed his hands over his face. “There’s a lot of unrest about my purchase, and I get that. But to discredit me like this is just stupid.”
“I saw one article saying you were holding Liam back due to some jealousy stuff. But I can’t see that happening with you.”
“God no. The reality is that Liam simply isn’t ready to play. I trust his physical therapist, and if she says he needs more time, he needs it.”
“When’s your first game of the season?”
“This weekend. And Liam isn’t ready.”
Jason could see what was happening here. Liam was the poster boy, and everyone wanted him to play. Hell, so did he. But if they put him on the field before he was ready, he could do more damage and may end up going off in a stretcher. Nobody wanted to see that, and Liam would be out for more of the season. While he wasn’t happy with staying off the field, he understood why.
The town had to know this; from what Jason was aware of, news traveled fast. And yet they thought this news that their quarterback was injured and needed to recover was an excuse to attack Jason. Even though the injury happened before he arrived.
He was going to get the blame for everything regardless of what was happening.