They repeated the sequence she’d put him through on the treadmill, increasing the intensity of the exercise every couple of minutes. This time, Jamar wasn’t going to force himself to go any further than she pushed him.

“Shit,” he said as he pumped his legs. “You don’t give a person an inch, do you?”

“Do you think the players on the other teams will give you an inch? You’re not paying me to go easy on you. Now move!”

Damn, that was hot. Why hadn’t he anticipated how much of a turn-on it would be to have her barking orders at him?

He pressed pause on his hot drill sergeant fantasy and redirected his mental energy to contracting and extending his quadriceps. Taylor began to count down his reps, starting from ten. He grimaced with every push but made it through the end of her count.

Jamar damn near collapsed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing.

“I admire the hard work you’re willing to put in, but aren’t you afraid of doing even more damage to your knee, or even worse, to this?” She tapped her head. “I saw that movie with Will Smith. I know about the permanent damage multiple concussions have had on football players.”

“You sound like my mom,” Jamar said. “She’s read every article on CTE there is.”

“Can you blame her?”

He shook his head, a wry grin pulling up one side of his mouth as he thought about the numerous lectures on chronic traumatic encephalopathy he’d endured while sitting at his mother’s kitchen table. She always ended them by saying that she supported his choice to play football because she loved him, but she didn’t like it.

“No, I don’t,” he answered. “And I understand the risks that come with playing. I plan to take every precaution to protect myself.”

“But why?” She gestured to the state-of-the-art equipment surrounding them. “I know it’s not my place to point this out, but it doesn’t look like you’re struggling to make ends meet here.”

No, he didn’t need the money, but an extra three million in his bank account would go a long way in helping Silas’s family. Jamar didn’t have the energy to discuss the complicated rationale behind his push to get back into the League. He didn’t know Taylor well enough to gauge how she would react to the admission that he was putting his body through all this pain because of a promise he’d made to his dead best friend. Because of the guilt he’d been drowning in for the past seven years over the role he played in his best friend’s death.

But Silas wasn’t the only driving force behind this. He had other reasons—less noble causes—that spurred him on. And that Taylor would understand.