The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(9)

“Can you get us one of those suites?” Davontae said.

“I’m gonna need one of those passes to go stand on the sideline,” Deuce said. “Hundred percent.”

“Locker room pass for me to go with it,” Carlos said. “Hang with my boys after the game. So I know how to act when I’m in the pros.”

He high-fived Davontae and Deuce.

“Why wouldn’t you do this?” Chris Tinelli said. “Your dad obviously wants you to do this or he wouldn’t have left you control of the team.”

Chris was one of those kids. He just looked the part of high school hero. I imagined this is what Ted Skyler was like when he was a senior in high school.

“I didn’t do what my dad wanted me to do when he was alive,” I said. “I’m getting my head wrapped around the idea that he still thinks he can tell me what to do.”

Chris grinned.

“You like to be the one tells people what to do.”

“Kind of.”

“So why don’t you want to tell the Wolves what to do same as you tell us?” he said. “Isn’t football your family business?”

“Love the football business. Hate the family.”

Carlos said, “Is that why you had that big fight with your father?”

“I never told you about that.”

Now he grinned. “There’s this thing called the internet, Coach Jenny. And it pretty much knows everything.”

We practiced then, and practiced hard, but then these kids always practiced hard, because their season mattered as much to them as the pro season meant to the Wolves. And maybe even more.

Damn, I do love this game as much as these kids do. This is my favorite time of day, the same as it is theirs.

No wonder they acted as if they didn’t want to live in a world where somebody got handed an NFL team and was even considering handing it back.

At one point during a water break, Carlos came over to me and said, “If you do take over the Wolves, you gonna leave us?”

“The only time I leave this team is if you guys tell me you don’t want me around anymore.”

He lowered his voice.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Practice ended a few minutes later with Carlos reading Chris’s eyes perfectly and breaking up what looked to be a perfect pass to Davontae. As soon as he did, he looked over at me and shook his fist. I smiled and shook mine back.

Maybe the Hunters Point Bears had made up my mind for me.

When I got back in my car, I decided to turn my phone back on, just to see if it had blown up yet.

The last text message I’d gotten was from Rashida.

Check out the Trib.





Eleven



I SAT WITH MY ex-husband at a table near the wall at the Horseshoe Tavern on Chestnut Street, once my father’s favorite hole-in-the-wall bar. Fascinating that Joe Wolf, the guy who had such a taste for the finer things in life, also loved places like this.

Just not as fascinating, in the whole grand scheme of things, as my once being married to the quarterback of the Wolves.

Ted Skyler had his navy cap imprinted with the white wolf logo pulled down low.

My phone was in front of him next to his mug of beer. The screen was filled with a headline in end-of-the-world type on the Tribune’s home page:





SHE WOLF





Now my ex tipped his cap back and grinned.

“What did you expect? That your brothers were going to fight fair?”

“I didn’t do this to them,” I said. “Dad did.”

“You should have heard your brother Danny in the locker room after practice today,” he said. “He’s pacing up and down and yelling that hell would freeze over before his sister was going to take over his football team. And his imagery got even more colorful after that.”

“Jack probably feels the same way about the paper,” I said. I pointed at the phone. “Hence the hit piece.”

“You have to know it’s only the beginning.”

He clinked his mug against mine.

“Well, cheers.”

“Easy for you to say.”

We both drank.

There were only half a dozen customers at the bar. All guys. They’d made Ted Skyler the moment he walked in. I had called him from the car after I’d seen the Tribune, then driven around a little more before arriving at the decision that drinking with my ex was better than drinking alone. There had been a time when we’d only spoken to each other through our lawyers. My position had softened, at least slightly, over time. He wasn’t a better person now. But he hadn’t gotten any worse, either.

Low bar, I thought.

We’d married in his second year with the Wolves. It had been treated in San Francisco like a royal fairy tale, a Wolf marrying the team’s star quarterback. The marriage had lasted until his fifth year. He swore he still loved me. It just turned out that before very long he liked the sports anchor at one of the local network affiliates more.

He was thirty-seven and still looked remarkably like the golden boy he’d been at USC. Somebody had once written that when Ted Skyler walked into a room, all the women—and half the guys—wanted him.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I said.