Page 94 of Campus Muscle

All I could do now was wait for the consequences…

34

Trace

A week ago, these letters would have been a dream. Now, they just felt like a pile of heavy obligations sitting on my desk. I leaned back in my chair, staring at the glossy logos of three major competitor schools. Big-name programs with bigger budgets.

The confusion had worn off after the first few read-throughs. They weren’t looking for Frank Delaney’s protégé anymore. They wanted the guy who had helped take the man down. One recruiter had even mentioned the integrity and grit our team showed in the final stretch.

It was a huge relief to know Frank’s shadow wasn’t looming over these offers, but a knot of guilt twisted in my gut. Leaving the Highlanders now, right as we were finally becoming something real, felt like walking out on a fight before the big finish.

The silence in my dorm became too loud. Needing a voice that wasn’t trapped in my own head, I reached for my phone and dialed the one person who’d understand what I was dealing with.

“Hey, son,” my dad’s voice crackled through the line, warm and instantly steady. “What’s going on? You okay?”

“Hey, Dad. I’m okay, I think. Just… staring at a stack of offers on my desk that I didn’t see coming.” I rubbed my face, the paper rustling under my elbow. “I’m spiraling a little. Can I walk you through them?”

“I think I have an idea.” A familiar creak came through the line. The sound of him settling into the leather of his La-Z-Boy. “Started last week. Two coaches showed up here.”

“What?” I bolted upright in my chair.

“You heard me,” my dad said. “They wanted to talk about their programs. Kept asking what kind of offers you were getting, and promising to better them.”

Holy shit. This was bigger than I thought.

“What did you say?” I asked, my heart beating in my throat.

“Told them we’d think it over. What else was I supposed to say?” My mom’s voice filtered over the line, asking if my dad wanted chicken salad for lunch. He didn’t.

“I didn’t know if that Delaney character was still pulling the strings,” he continued. “So I figured it was safer to keep my mouth shut until I heard from you.”

A new flash of guilt flared in my chest. Between the game and the article, I’d completely dropped the ball on keeping my parents in the loop. Then there was the Dakota-shaped elephant in the room. I had no idea how to break that news. Not after Mom had turned my last visit into a near-medical emergency the second my sisters mentioned girls.

“That reporter I told you about finally got rid of him,” I said, hoping he was able to put the pieces together on his own. “But this whole thing is a bit much, don’t you think? People showing up at the house, offer letters… Where do I start and how do I choose? Especially when each one looks better than the last.”

“Look, Trace,” Dad started, his tone shifting into that careful register he adopted right before he gave me advice. “Your mom and I have been talking. We think you should seriously consider a transfer. Find a school with a more established program. A place where the foundation is already built.”

He paused, leaving a gap for me to jump in, but I couldn’t get a word past the sudden lump in my throat. I was afraid he’d say this.

“It’s the fastest track to a pro career,” he continued gently. “That’s still the end goal, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what the goal is anymore,” I admitted, the honesty coming out raw. “Everything’s different now. There are... feelings involved that weren’t there before. Logically? Yeah, your idea makes sense. But this team, Dad, we’ve been through hell together. They never looked down on me, even when they had every reason to. They’re my team. Leaving them now feels like a betrayal.”

Silence stretched across the line. I knew he hadn’t hung up. I could hear the steady rhythm of his breathing. He was chewing on my words, trying to reconcile the son he knew with the man I was becoming. He’d spent years advocating for me to find a life outside of scoring the highest grades, and now that I finally had it, he wasn’t about to tell me to throw it away.

Was he?

“I see the problem,” Dad said, his voice lower now. “People don’t notice it, Trace, but I saw it when you were out on that field. You care about those guys. It’s a brotherhood, and that’s a rare find.”

I stood up and paced the small square of carpet, my hand instinctively finding the dull throb in my shoulder. Dad’s voice followed me.

“You have to ask yourself if those feelings are worth the opportunities you’d be turning down. That’s not a call your mom or I can make.”

“It’s not just the team.” My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. I stopped at the window to stare down at the empty quad. My reflection looked back, tired and uncertain. “There’s Dakota. She’s— Things with her…”

“She’s not just the school reporter, is she?”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see it. I didn’t know where to begin.