The Player | SPORTS ROMANCE | 18+

Chapter 3

6 YEARS LATER

TITUS REYES

"Did you know that this is the biggest game of his career? Players start winding down at the age of twenty-eight. They might have another good year or two left in them before they step down, but things don't seem to be slowing down for The New York Eagles' star quarterback, Titus Reyes!"

"If he plays well in this game, he'll have his contract renewed for another two years. That'll bring him to thirty when most players think of retiring from the game."

"I've heard that the New York Eagles are going to offer him four years. They're trying to keep him in the game for as long as possible, and I would do the same if I was in their shoes. That guy is seriously hot on the field, and hands down the best quarterback that team has ever seen."

"They might have to pull on their purse strings because rumours say that the Detroit Lions have offered him nearly double what his current team are offering to keep him on, and I've heard that he's expressed interest."

"It's difficult to imagine Reyes as a Lion instead of an Eagle."

"You're not leaving us for the enemy, are you, Reyes?" Denzel chuckled, playfully slapping me on the back as he walked past on the way to his locker.

I was the kind of guy who had a lot of friends, but not many best friends. However, if there was someone that I was going to consider a best friend, it was going to be Denzel Brown. We both played football in NYU together and were discovered at the same time. We were both the youngest on the team and stuck together ever since.

"Not for all the money in the world!" I snorted, laughing. "I don't know where they get some of their information from. Nearly everything they've said about me is bullshit."

Speaking of bullshit, my head angled back to the TV when they mentioned my name again.

"Taking money, contracts, and sports politics off the table, this is a very serious game for Reyes. With how well he's playing this season, he's so close to breaking a world record here. The current record stands at three-hundred and forty-two points in a season by an individual player. That's held by Hazem El Masri in 2004 who played for the Canterbury Bulldogs. Reyes is going into this game with three-hundred and twenty-five points. That means he only needs seventeen points in this game to match the record, and eighteen to break it."

"That's as certain as it is that I'm wearing a grey suit right now." One of the sports anchors chuckled, pointing out the definite grey of his suit. "There's no way Reyes isn't breaking that record tonight. There's absolutely no way. We can definitely expect–"

"What did I tell you guys about watching the sports anchors before games?" Coach Dobson groaned as he walked into the locker room, immediately turning off the TV. "The only thing it's good for is siking you guys out, and that's the last thing we need before a big game."

For a man that coached American football, he was short and stout, and with a balding head, but damn could he teach football. I had learnt a great deal from this man alone since joining the New York Eagles when I dropped out of my junior year of college and honestly, owed a lot of my success to him.

If it wasn't for coach discovering me – and Denzel – during a college game that his nephew was playing, I didn't know how I could have proved myself to break into the world of professional American football.

"This is the last game of the season, boys!" Coach announced, though the entire team knew this already.

We had worked hard this entire season and made it this far. If we won today's game, we would walk away as champions. There was no way any one of us were forgetting that.