Page 16

Chapter sixteen

Landon

ESPN notification – Colton Beaumont’s undefeated Sabertooths take the league by storm. Can they keep their rhythm going throughout the season?

ESPN notification – The Sentinels may be undefeated after three games, but Landon Beaumont’s efforts on the field, or lack thereof, have been average at best. Which receivers could benefit San Jose more? See here…

Game four was supposed to have been an easy win against Arizona at home, but as the third quarter drew to a close, the Sentinels were still down three. The offensive line wasn’t giving Myles enough time to get the ball out, and when they did, his receivers dropped or fumbled it, making it impossible to score.

Landon included. He had been no help all game.

What was worse? He had done something he’d promised himself he would stop doing.

Landon knew Maya and Colton had all but cut their father off, and Landon had made a real effort to avoid his calls after games, knowing it would only lead to more anger and resentment on his part. There was nothing good that could come of interactions with his father, but today he’d slipped up. That childlike part of Landon’s brain that still held on to the hope that his father wasn’t the monster they’d made him out to be had battled for purchase within him, leading him to make a mistake.

But old habits die hard, and Landon had found that out in the worst way.

Answering a post-game call from his father would inevitably snowball into conversations about his game that he didn’t much care to discuss. While Landon enjoyed football, it wasn’t the biggest, most important piece of his life the way it had always been for Colton. At least, before Lucia and their daughter, Lyla, had come into the picture.

But it was so rare that his father called before a game that a part of him had been clinging to the hope that maybe, just maybe , his father had been calling to wish him luck. To give him some kind of peace since he couldn’t be there in the stands the way he always was for Colton.

He’d thought his father finally saw him, considered him more than the spare son in his back pocket for when the “chosen one” eventually retired.

It hadn’t taken long for Landon to realize he’d been wrong. The conversation had started with his father griping about not being allowed to sit in Colton’s family box but had quickly devolved into insults. Landon had heard them all before, but it hit harder because he’d gone in with hope. Like he had promised himself he would stop doing.

His father was merely looking for a puppet, and Landon had been trying to cut the last of his strings for years.

“Don’t you ever get tired of being the second-best Beaumont child? Doesn’t it bother you? You could at least try to care . ”

Sure, Landon didn’t put his all into football. Why would he have? He had more to live for than a sport that never seemed to pay him back in kind, and no matter what he’d done, he had never been good enough anyway . Keala had said it herself, Landon was a slacker.

That word, spoken from the mouth of a woman he’d grown to admire in a way he wasn’t yet comfortable digging into, had hurt worse than any of the venom his father had spewed over the years. It was salt in a wound his father had created, and it had burned .

He wanted her to see him as more. Had been trying harder on the field to prove to her that he was more.

The problem was that he’d tried so hard for so much of his early life until it had become clear it wouldn’t pay off. His father didn’t treat him any differently, and even when he made catches that were practically impossible to make, the quarterback would get lauded as the MVP. Especially when Colton was throwing it, like in high school and college.

So what was the point of trying?

At least if he didn’t try, didn’t give it his all and just continued with his self-destructive defensive mechanisms, no one would expect more of him and he’d never fall short of their already low expectations. And if he did do something well, it was a pleasant surprise for all.

It was better to disappoint people on purpose than to make an effort and miss the mark, failing them when he was trying to do anything but.

“Beaumont, get in there, damn it.” Landon was shoved onto the field. He ran to the huddle, listening to Myles call a rush play, then got set on the line to block, face to face with an outside linebacker.

The moment the ball was snapped, Landon extended his arms to prevent the linebacker from reaching Ikaika, expecting a combination block with Jaxon, a Sentinels right tackle. Instead, Jaxon moved toward another backer up the field, and the one Landon had been blocking chopped his arms down, cut up into the backfield, and blew up the play, tackling Ikaika before he could cross the line of scrimmage.

The linebacker stood, flexing his biceps for the booing crowd before getting in Landon’s face. “Too bad you got stuck with this shit team while your brother wins championship after championship. Maybe if you could block better, you’d be—”

The Arizona linebacker didn’t have a chance to finish his sentence before Landon shoved him. In a matter of a few seconds, both of their helmets were off, and he was exchanging blows with the guy, getting in as many punches as he could as they wrestled each other to the ground. Ikaika had even jumped in, which was entirely uncharacteristic of him.

Landon felt himself being pulled up and away from Arizona’s players, whether by a referee or a teammate, he couldn’t tell. He was more than pissed. It was bad enough he had to hear that shit from his own father, from the media, constantly having it bouncing around in his head. The last thing he needed was to hear it on the field from a low-life, attention-seeking bastard on a worse team than him.

The flags that flew came as no surprise, and Landon was sure he was about to get thrown out of the game. It only took a second for the referee to confirm he was right. “After the play, personal foul, unnecessary roughness, San Jose Sentinels number eighty- three. Fifteen-yard penalty. Number eighty-three for San Jose has been ejected.”

Coach Boyer, the tight-end coach, shook his head as Landon headed to the locker room to change out of his pads. He knew he would be in a world of trouble after the game, but unfortunately for the coaches, Landon didn’t care in the slightest.

Ikaika stayed on the sideline, his face set in a scowl, and Landon wondered why he’d jumped in.

Ikaika and Landon were alike in many ways. They liked football, they liked partying, and they loved women. But where Landon dabbled in the occasional recreational drug and got into fights on and off the field when he got into these moods, Ikaika never joined.

At least he hadn’t been ejected too.

Landon spent the remainder of the game in the locker room, his chin in his hands and his head a storm of thoughts roaring through him, each centered around being his family’s greatest disappointment.

He wondered how much of that same disappointment he would detect on Keala’s face when he saw her next, knowing she had witnessed it all from the sideline. Landon was always on high alert for that look, primed and ready to identify it in all the people in his life.

For some reason, the thought of it on her was worse. So much worse than anything his family or his team could possibly have thought about him.

Letting her down meant something to him, and he hated it.

Landon didn’t remember how he and his teammates had ended up at this club despite knowing he hadn’t had all that much to drink. He’d been in his head all night, isolating himself from his teammates who, he was sure, partially blamed him for their loss. If not entirely.

He went out with the guys after games sometimes, but he hadn’t been as motivated to do so the last few weeks. The looks he imagined on his family members’ faces and his coach yelling at him after the game had been enough to change that.

Maybe those things should have fueled him, pushed him toward a more straight and narrow path. Instead, it had the opposite effect. Landon wanted to drown his sorrows in the burn of alcohol, pushing himself toward the brink of blissful ignorance, even if just for one night.

Landon had expected Ikaika to go home after the game, already having participated in one entirely out-of-character thing for the night. But instead, he’d joined the team.

The pair were seated at a table with four women they didn’t know, nor did they care to get to know. His friend’s scowl hadn’t budged since the game, and he’d hardly responded to the incessant line of questioning coming from the short woman with red hair next to him.

The brunette beside Landon inched closer and closer to his lap, and it took a moment of thought to know he didn’t want anything to do with her. Sex was not on his mind at the moment, and if it had been, there was only one person he wanted. Maybe he could get this woman’s number and call after he found a way to get Keala out of his system, but even the thought made his stomach turn.

Why prolong the inevitable? Might as well go home and get this over with, knowing Keala would become another person who couldn’t bear the sight of him and his many fuckups. “Ik, you want to go?”

Ikaika nodded, and they said their goodbyes to their teammates before heading outside.

The chill in the air seeped into them, causing Landon to shiver as he dug around in his pocket, pulling his phone out. “I’ll call a car.”

“Don’t bother,” Ikaika said, waving a dismissive hand through the air. “I can drive back. That’s why I drove here in the first place,” he added, his voice gruff.

“Are you sure?” Landon had been sitting beside Ikaika most of the hour they’d been at the bar, and his friend had drunk at least a beer.

“Yes,” Ikaika grunted, leaving no room for argument. Landon trusted Ikaika with his life, and if he said he was safe to drive, Landon believed him.

He followed Ikaika to his Porsche Panamera, and as Landon swayed on his feet through the parking garage, it was clear that while his friend might have been safe to drive, he most certainly was not.

He slid into the passenger seat, buckling himself in. Ikaika did the same and started the car with ease. Landon turned his attention back to his phone, checking notifications he’d missed over the last few hours.

His father hadn’t deigned to so much as text him, not even to berate him. Even that would have been too much to ask for since he was obviously too disgusted to waste a single brain cell on his youngest son. There were, however, messages from Savannah, Maya, and his grandparents checking to see if he was okay.

His fingers shook as he formulated an answer to his sister, typing and then deleting the response only to start over again. What does someone say after beating someone up on live television ?

The tell-tale sign of his sister’s worry was evident in the three dots that appeared and disappeared. She was doing the same thing he was. Trying to come up with a response that would ultimately fall short because there was nothing to say. He sent a quick “all good” and switched to the conversation with his grandparents.

Nausea roiled in Landon’s stomach as his body was thrust in the opposite direction of his head, his phone slipping from his fingers and falling to the floorboard of Ikaika’s car. His eyes widened and he steeled his spine, pressing his feet into the car below him as he white knuckled the handle above his head.

One moment, they were on the road, Landon’s head buried in thoughts that seemed insignificant now, the next, they were swerving, dodging a car and spinning out.

They barreled toward a concrete guardrail on the small stretch of highway, Ikaika slamming his foot on the brake, miraculously managing to slow the car down. It wasn’t enough though.

A split second before they made impact, Ikaika’s arm swung out, plastering itself to Landon’s chest, preventing him from feeling the full force of the airbags deploying.

The wind was knocked out of his lungs, and he sat there panting, overcome with an uncomfortable mix of fear and appreciation that things hadn’t been worse.

Landon’s muscles ached, his neck sore and his head pounding as his pulse beat against his temples. The pain throbbed, radiating throughout his body.

“Fuck,” Ikaika groaned, head in his hands.

“Are you okay?” Landon asked his friend, his tone frantic as the shock wore off.

“Damn it,” he grunted. “I’m fine. Fuck!” Ikaika was frustrated, likely more with himself than anything else. Landon couldn’t help but internally shoulder some of the blame for him.

A rush of relief swam through Landon’s blood that Ikaika was okay enough to be frustrated, but so did the subsequent guilt making its way to the forefront of his mind. Why hadn’t he pushed harder for them to call a car? He would have never forgiven himself if something bad had happened to Ikaika.

If Keala hadn’t hated him before, she certainly would now.

Working in silence, they pushed the deployed airbags down enough to extract themselves from the vehicle. Once outside, Ikaika’s face fell further, taking in the significant damage.

Landon had never seen so much concern in his friend’s eyes. “Landon, I don’t want to have another issue today. I’m fined for the fight and I know my family is going to see that. I can’t let them see this too. It would kill them, especially right now.”

Landon didn’t know what Ikaika meant by “especially right now,” but he didn’t want to agitate his friend further by asking. He thought through their options. “I can have Seb work on it. Find us a ride and he’ll get everything else taken care of,” he responded, knowing his agent had dealt with far worse with far more difficult clients. Ikaika nodded and stepped away to make his call.

“Hey, Seb?”

“The hell did you do now, Beaumont?” Landon’s agent answered, his no-nonsense tone more terse tonight after the fight Landon was sure he’d seen.

“Small car accident, run-in with a guardrail. No injuries and no one else involved. The car we avoided hitting is gone, so for now, it looks like we’re in the clear.” Landon glanced at Ikaika, whose shoulders were slumped, hand rubbing his brow as he spoke into his phone quickly. “It was my bad. Can you make sure the media doesn’t catch wind of it?”

“That is part of my job,” Seb grumbled, and Landon was thankful he had found such a gem of an agent who had done so much for him.

“You’re the best. I’ll send you the location. Just, uh…” He looked around nervously, clearing his throat. “Probably should get a move on before this gets any harder to clean up.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s more important that you get out of there before people show up.”

“Already on it.” Landon inclined his head to Ikaika, and they walked down the side of the highway, making their way to the small gas station at the next exit. Landon texted the information to Seb as they walked, then waited for Ikaika to finish his call.

“Keala’s on her way.”

Landon nodded. He hadn’t thought he’d be forced to see her so soon after the night had taken this turn, but it made sense that Ikaika had chosen her. Except now that the inevitable was approaching, Landon knew he wasn’t ready to see her.

They’d fallen into an easy routine over the last few weeks. The night she had drifted off with her legs in his lap, he’d sat there waiting for her to wake up. When she hadn’t, he’d decided to try sleeping upright. A part of him wished they could have slept like that all night.

And when he’d gotten her car started a couple of days ago? There had been something simmering there. Sure, he’d been overtly flirty, loving the way her freckled cheeks lit up in annoyance, but something else had lingered between them.

That would all be gone now. Surely, she’d be pissed, and that made him more upset with himself than anything else.

It was a feeling he couldn’t fathom, so unfamiliar and terrifying, he was scared to look at it head on.