by Carrie Elks
Somebody Like You
Carrie Elks
Contents
Join Me!
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
Dear Reader
About the Author
Also by Carrie Elks
Acknowledgments
SOMEBODY LIKE YOU by Carrie Elks
Copyright © 2021 Carrie Elks
All rights reserved
100321
Edited by Rose David
Proofread by Proofreading by Mich
Cover Designed by The Pretty Little Design Company
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are fictitious products of the author’s imagination.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Chapter One
At first he thought he was asleep in his bed. He was laying on his front, his legs flung out, his hands clutching something beneath him. But it didn’t feel like a pillow. And it smelled… different. Letting out a groan, Cam Hartson opened his left eye and all he could see was emerald green.
There was a pause. Like the moment when a baby opens its mouth right before it starts to scream. The kind of silence that has meaning, but you have no idea what it is.
And then the noise came rushing in.
The sound of roaring voices was all it took for him to realize where he was. Not at home on his two thousand thread count bedsheets, but on the turf at Freedom Field, where the Boston Bobcats played their home games.
“Is he conscious?” a voice asked.
“One of his eyes is open,” someone else replied. “Cam, can you hear me?”
Cam tried to say yes, but no words emerged. There was some sort of disconnect between his brain and mouth.
“Okay, we’re gonna put a neck brace on, just in case. Then we’ll be sliding you onto the gurney. Give me a signal if something hurts.”
“No neck brace,” he tried to say, but it came out as a grunt. The medics took it as his agreement, because the next minute he felt a stiff plastic brace being clipped around his neck, soft padding holding his chin up.
If he’d had any strength left in his body, he would’ve mustered it to push them away. But whatever had landed him in this situation had winded him completely. His breath was coming in short, sharp pants, and the pounding in his head was stronger than ever. With gentle hands, they lifted him onto the gurney and he closed his eyes for a moment.
His humiliation was complete.
There was one thing every player in the NFL knew. When you got hurt, you don’t let them take you off the field. You swallow down the pain and play, regardless. Because winning was everything.
Only losers left the field.
He’d followed that code since his pee wee football days, and continued with it through high school then college, until his NFL draft nine years ago. And now here he was, being carted off in front of a stadium of seventy thousand people, plus hundreds of millions of viewers watching at home.
And that thought was all it took for his brain to finally connect with his mouth.
“Stop,” he croaked. The medics actually followed his instructions. “Let me off, I can walk.” From the corner of his eye he could see Dan Motion, the Bobcats’ quarterback, running over, followed by a group of Cam’s fellow defensive players.
They were his coworkers, his friends, his partners in every play they made. Apart from his family, they were the closest people to him. They knew him inside out, and understood that the pain of being humiliated outweighed any physical ache in his body. Most of them had been here like this – multiple times.
“How is he?” Dan asked, leaning over Cam’s stretcher. “Hey, you’re awake.”
“I’m coming back on,” Cam croaked. “Give me a minute.” He reached up to touch his throbbing head, and realized his helmet must have come off during the impact.
If only he could remember what the damn impact was.
“You don’t look so good, man.” Dan frowned. “You sure you’re okay to play?”
“He’s not playing.” Cam recognized that voice immediately. He sat up and swung his legs around, jumping off of the gurney onto the soft grass. A wave of nausea crashed over him, causing Cam to sway. Coach Mayberry had his arms crossed as he stared at Cam with his all-seeing eyes. “I’m putting Rayburn on.”
“The rookie?” Dan said. “He hasn’t played a game since he joined us. That’s a fucking terrible idea.”
Coach gave the quarterback one of his famous iron-clad glares, then looked back at Cam. “Hartson, you’re off. Go see the doctor and do what he tells you, including going to the hospital if needed. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“But Coach, I’m fine.” Ignoring the jabbing pain in his head, Cam walked toward him. “If I can walk, I can damn well run. There are only twenty minutes left. Let me play.”
A flicker of sympathy flashed over the coach’s face, and that was worse than seeing his anger. Cam didn’t want sympathy. Didn’t need it. He was the Bobcats’ best paid player. Had been their safety since he was drafted nine years ago, and had played nearly every game in that time. That spot was his. Had been since he was a rookie.
But those years had taught him something else. You didn’t argue with the coach during the middle of a game. He was the general, and the players were the soldiers. You kept the discussions for when the battle was over.
“Okay.” Cam sighed, nodding his head. He winced at the white hot pain that stung at his eyes. “The rookie can go on for twenty minutes. But he needs to know one thing.” His voice was full of determination. “That position is still mine.”
“You have a choice to make,” the doctor said two days later, as Cam sat in his office and looked at the screen in front of him. He’d been in for an MRI scan earlier that day, and they were discussing the results. “You give up football or you end up with a traumatic brain injury. It’s that stark, Mr. Hartson.”
Cam ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “What about treatment?” he asked. “Something to get me through the season.” There was no way he was giv
ing up now. He’d signed a contract. After he fulfilled it, he would consider retirement. Not before.
“There is no treatment. TBIs are permanent. Look at what happened to Junior Seau. Sean Morey. Dammit, Aaron Hernandez if you really want to know the worst case scenario.”
TBIs were the dark shadow that followed defensive football players around. The constant collisions as they defended could lead to traumatic brain injuries, which in turn could lead to something worse.
Like the Chronic Traumatic Encaphlaopathy that footballers like Junior Seau and Sean Morey suffered from. Leading to memory loss, sudden outbreaks of anger, and in Seau’s case, suicide.
“Shit.” Cam squeezed his eyes shut. The pain in his head still hadn’t quite gone away. “It’s that bad?”
The doctor’s tone softened. “Look, those are worst case scenarios. And hopefully we’ve caught this in time. You’ve been having brain scans for a year, and you can see the deterioration in your brain, but it hasn’t reached crisis level yet.” The doctor cleared his throat. “But if you carry on playing football, it will. Another concussion could be the end of life as you currently know it.”
Cam had watched the replay of his collision five times since yesterday. It had been brutal, the way they always were. He’d gone up against the wide receiver, both trying to catch the ball, and their helmets had collided in mid-air. Cam’s head had bent back almost ninety degrees, and as he’d suspected, his helmet had flown off in one direction while his body hurled to the ground in the other. He must have been knocked out on impact with the wide receiver, because he hadn’t even put his hands out to brace himself as his body collided with the ground. He’d looked more like a ragdoll than a damn football player.
He still didn’t remember a second of it. Of course, he knew it was himself he was watching, not only from the number on his back and helmet, but from the way he played. He spent half of his life watching his own football games, he could spot his ‘tells’ in an instant.
And yet he didn’t remember a thing. Not from the play being called to waking up on the grass. He didn’t remember going in for the ball, or the sickening thud that must have come from his helmet hitting the wide receiver’s. And that scared him more than the scan of his brain on the screen in front of him. He didn’t want memory loss to be part of his life. Didn’t want to get sudden outbursts of anger like he’d heard from those who suffered from CTE.
He could live with the constant headaches. But not the personality changes.
The problem was, he had no idea how to live without football. It wasn’t just part of his life, it was his life. From the moment he woke up in the morning, until the moment his head hit the pillow at night, it was who he was. It was in the breakfast he ate – nutritious and full of protein – to the morning drills he did at the gym to keep his muscles in peak condition. In the drive he made to Freedom Field every day, and the meetings with the coach to discuss tactics.
It was his social life, too. The team tended to stick together in their off-time, hosting parties and dinners and every other kind of get-together. There was solace in spending time with people who understood your lifestyle.
Heck, he’d probably spent more Thanksgivings with the Bobcats than he had with his own family.
And now, he was going to have to leave all that behind? The thought was giving him palpitations.
“I need to think,” he said, running a palm across his short hair.
“Of course.” The doctor nodded, switching off the screen. “And if you have any questions, call me. I’d like to see you again next week. Make sure you’re healing from this concussion.”
“Yeah.” But Cam’s mind was elsewhere. Somewhere in the middle of the turf on Freedom Field. The place he’d called home for the last almost-decade of his life. Giving the doctor a grim smile, he walked out of the consulting room and into the main lobby, swallowing hard when he saw his assistant, Brian, waiting there for him.
“Everything okay?” Brian asked. He’d been Cam’s PA for the last six years.
Cam blew out a mouthful of air, then nodded, though nothing was okay at all. “Come on,” he said, nodding his head at the exit. “Let’s go home. I need to tell you something.”
“Another orange juice?” Brian asked, pointing at Cam’s empty glass. Cam shook his head and stared down at the remaining orange liquid, running his finger along the rim.
“Nah. I think I’ll head out of here.”
“In the middle of the game? Don’t you want to watch the end?” Brian lowered his voice. “You know they were just trying to fill time when they said the rookie was a breath of fresh air, right? You’ll always be the Bobcats’ star safety. He’s just filling your space until you decide what to do.”
In the week since Cam’s visit to the doctor, he’d had so many meetings his head would be full of wool, if it wasn’t already, thanks to the multiple TBIs he’d suffered from. With the coach, with Marty Landsman, the owner of the Boston Bobcats, with the team’s doctor, and with some of his defensive team mates, too. And he still hadn’t come to any conclusion.
There was still a place for him on the team if he wanted it, Coach had made that much clear. But until he decided one way or the other, Cam needed to take a break and the rookie was going to be played. The guy needed the experience.
“Maybe you could give him some pointers,” Coach had suggested. “He looks up to you.”
Yeah, maybe. But not right now. Because it felt like he was hitting himself in the face a hundred times every moment he didn’t run out onto the turf.
On Friday, before the rest of the team had caught their flight to California, he’d joined them for a party at Dan Motion’s house, to celebrate his fiancée’s birthday. It had been less than a week since he’d played, but there was already a feeling of being an outsider. He hadn’t been able to joke with them about what they’d do in San Francisco on Saturday night, or about the drills Coach had made them run all week. Even when he’d joined in a discussion about the San Francisco team’s weaknesses, he’d felt a pang in his stomach.
Because he wouldn’t be able to take advantage of those weaknesses. Or try to intercept the ball and run it up the field. With every day of indecision he was being inched out, and pushed away from the life he knew.
That’s why he’d suggested to Brian that they watch the game at a bar. He’d only sulk if he was sitting in his leather recliner at home, watching the oversize screen that had been installed the year he’d bought the house on Beacon Hill. So much better to be surrounded by people than to be alone.
“Hey, is that Cam Hartson?” he heard a woman whisper.
“Jesus, it is,” the man next to her agreed. “Hey Cam, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be playing ball?”
A man to his left lifted his head up. “Saw you take that hit last week. Looked painful. You out of the team now?”
Cam curled his fingers into his palm and forced a smile. “Just resting.”
“That rookie though. He’s good. You’re gonna have a battle to get your place back.”
Cam’s muscles tensed.
“It’s a young man’s game,” the woman to his left said. “Once you hit thirty, you’re pretty much done for.”
Brian frowned. “That’s not true. What about Brady? He’s forty something.” Brian drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. His black hair was pulled into a low pony tail.
“He doesn’t take the impacts like a safety.” The woman shrugged. “Anyway, good luck with retirement.”
Cam could tell Brian was getting irate from the way his finger drumming increased in tempo. “It’s okay, man,” he said, reaching out to calm his assistant’s hands. “This is a football town. I gotta get used to it.”
“Yeah, well they wouldn’t like it if I talked about their job like that.” Brian gritted his teeth.
Cam pressed his lips together. “You know I’m still gonna take care of you, right? I’ll need you even if I’m not playing football. Or if you want to k
eep with a player, I’ll give you a recommendation.”
Nearly every professional player he knew needed some kind of assistant to keep their lives running smoothly while they concentrated on the game. Brian did everything for him, from making sure the bills were paid and the house in order, to liaising with Cam’s manager and arranging for endorsements and sponsorships. He’d be nowhere without him.
Brian sighed. “I know. It’s not that. I just don’t like the way they were talking.”
Neither did Cam. But he knew better than to react. The problem was, everywhere he went in Boston he was recognized. This was a football town, the Bobcats were the biggest celebrities around. These kind of questions were going to crop up again and again.
And if he retired, it was probably going to get worse.
“I think I might go home for a while,” Cam said, his brows knitting together while he thought about it. “While I’m on a break from the team.”
“To Beacon Hill?”
He shook his head. “To Hartson’s Creek. Spend a bit of time with my family.” He had three brothers and a sister, and all of them were there. Gray, the oldest, who’d spent years touring the world as a singer, but had since settled down with Maddie Clark and had babies. Tanner, the youngest, who’d transformed from a New York computer whizzkid to buying up half the real estate in Hartson’s Creek, after he’d reconnected with his childhood best friend. They’d gone on to set up a home together.