“Because of the friendships. The camaraderie.” He pointed to the television. “Those men were my brothers. They were family. That’s why it was so hard when I lost it all.”

Jamar paused for several moments before directing his attention to the game. He pointed at the screen.

“It was fourth down and eight yards to go. Common sense says you pass the ball, but the offensive coordinator drew up a running play. Coach knew it was risky, but he had enough confidence in me to put the ball in my hands—to put the game in my hands. Everyone thought it would work.”

“But it didn’t,” she surmised.

He shook his head.

“What happened?” Taylor asked, knowing his explanation would be meaningless to her. But she sensed he needed to talk through this.

“The Lions drew up a blitz,” he said. “Somehow, they read the play. The defensive lineman—a fellow Longhorn who I played with at UT and who was one of my best friends on the team—caught me on the right side. I never saw him coming.”

His eyebrows pinched together, his grimace reflecting genuine pain. Taylor could see the effort it took for him to swallow.

“I let everyone down,” he said, his hoarse whisper sounding like two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed together. “I knew within seconds that I wasn’t walking off that field—that I would have to be carted off.” He looked over at her. The sorrow in his eyes was soul-crushing. “There were only two days in my life that have ever been harder: the day Silas died and the day we put him in the ground. It’s as if something in me died those days, as if I lost a physical piece of myself.”

“Do you think playing football again will give you back something you lost?” she asked in a quiet voice. “It won’t bring Silas back.”

“No, but it’s the thing that connected us,” he said. “But, you know, this is about more than Silas. This game has been at the center of everything for nearly all of my life. There’s a picture of me on the living room mantel as a baby. I’m dressed in a throwback Houston Oilers jersey and holding this tiny football. Then, when I was five years old, my dad signed me up for peewee football, and I’ve played every year since.”

“No wonder it’s so hard for you to walk away.”

“I just wasn’t ready.” He closed his eyes. “I can’t accept the way my football story ended, Taylor. After all those years, all the work I put into making it onto an NFL team, to have it all snatched away from me like that?” He shook his head. “I want to write my own ending. I want to go out on my terms, not because of some freak hit to my knee.