Page 1 of First Down Promise

Prologue

Abby

“You’re moving to Nashville. I can’t risk you staying here by yourself. It’s in your best interest, Abby,” Pete said.

“Just because you left six years ago doesn’t mean I have to!” I argued.

But all arguing got me was my stuff packed into boxes.

“But it does,” Pete stated.

Nashville wasn’t my plan, nor were the Stallions.

Growing up, Pete rarely pulled the older brother card, but now he’s cashing in on twenty years of not giving me much crap. Before I knew it, my university enrollment had been transferred, so starting in the fall, I would trade my school in Wisconsin for the one in Nashville. Pete said it was lucky they offered both a marketing degree program and a dance minor, and that my credit hours would transfer smoothly. While I heard him, his voice was still static in my ears.

For the past two years, I pictured graduating from college in Wisconsin and was on track to graduate a semester early until I added the dance minor. Mom said she and Dad didn’t mind paying for the extra semester of tuition, and a spring graduation meant Pete could easily attend during his offseason. His football career rarely dictated our lives, but it was also impossible to ignore.

He’s one of the top professional quarterbacks in the country. Poised to be a future Hall of Famer. And the face of the Nashville Iron Stallions, aptly nicknamed Iron Man.

And only two years into his contract, he knew who the hell he was. I could bring him back to planet Earth with a simple inside joke from our childhood, but something I couldn’t put my finger on had changed. The money could have played a role, which allowed him to make my move to Nashville uncomplicated. No one says no to Pete Wilson. Except for his little sister.

“Abs, you okay?” Pete asks.

I blink at him as my eyes focus after I zoned out while staring at the bright green lawn. I rub my cardigan-clad upper arms and yank the ends of the sleeves over my hands. The cardigan belonged to Mom. The last time I saw her wear it was at Sunday service. The queen of layering, she wore it with a yellow bodysuit that paired seamlessly with jeans and complemented her gold wedding rings. That was days before they were both taken from this world.

In high school and college, I was notorious for borrowing Mom’s clothes. Her style was classic; her wardrobe was full of investment pieces. As I sniff the neckline of the sweater, I breathe in her perfume lingering in the fibers. The fragrance always takes me back to the mornings before school when she applied her perfume, filling the house and car with the clean scent.

My eyes threaten to well up, so I grip the edge of the wooden stair I’m sitting on. My fingertips run along the plank under me, and my index finger lingers over a splintering spot. Dad and Pete built these steps to the porch when Pete was in high school, and they let me paint them white afterward. I added small flowers too with acrylic paints, but seven years later, the flowers had long since faded. The white paint had chipped too, but the imperfections made this house a home.

“Just thinking about Mom and Dad,” I answer.

It’s a warm summer day—blue skies with a couple of fluffy white clouds. Yet I shiver every time Pete passes by, as he carries boxes of my things to his Yukon. It took me days to pack a single box until Pete became impatient, holding things up, asking if I wanted to bring them, and packing them for me. How he was functioning was beyond me.

Pete presses the button on the back hatch of the car, making it beep as it lowers and latches, then steps toward me. He dusts off his hands and shoves them into his pockets. “I know, sis. I miss them, too.”

But the loss hit him differently. He wasn’t waiting for them to come home from a date night they’d never return from. Pete was in Nashville, enjoying being off from football until August. I was here wondering why my parents hadn’t come home until I got the call. I purse my lips together and peel my eyes closed when the emotions from that night swirl through me.

“Abby, relax.”

“You weren’t here,” I whisper. “You haven’t been around for years.”

“That’s not entirely true.”

When Pete played college football in Minnesota, he was close enough to come home for most holidays and breaks, but his move to Nashville meant he only visited during bye week—his week off from playing each season—and the offseason. He typically had games on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and he didn’t spend what would be our last holiday season with our parents at home. Mom, Dad, and I still cheered him on, regardless.

“How are you coping?” I ask, brushing my fingertips over my arms again. The sweater is fuzzy beneath my touch, but so damn soft.

He kneels in front of me with a sigh. “I don’t know, honestly.” He has bags under the hazel eyes he inherited from our mother—something I used to envy, since Pete otherwise looks like our dad. Now they’re the last piece of her I have. “Knowing you’re coming back with me is helping.” My eyes well with tears again, and my nose stings with heat. “Abby, you’re going to love Nashville,” he adds softly.

I shake my head, making my ponytail shift around my shoulders. “No, no. I should stay here. We can put everything back the way it was, and I’ll—”

“I can’t let you,” he calmly interrupts me. “And you know that.”

When I learned my parents weren’t going to survive the car accident, I said, in complete hysterics, that I was going to unalive myself. Weeks later, I know I didn’t mean it, and it was only an immature reaction. But it raised enough of a red flag that Pete demanded I move to Nashville to live with him.

Uprooting the life I’ve lived for twenty years makes me lightheaded, but living in our childhood home without Mom making pancakes on Sunday mornings or watching football with Dad every fall is worse. If we didn’t wear the right shade of green on game days, he’d get superstitious and demand we change. Dad changed his tune once Pete was drafted to the Stallions, and black became the new game-day color. Still, I thought I saw Pete pack Dad’s old green football tee.

“And you get to come to my games. Hang out in the skybox with the VIPs,” he says, smiling warmly at me.