Samson had felt occasionally lonely when Joe had been sick, but with his uncle gone, he’d been totally alone. The last Lima, a short-lived dynasty over. Some charm.
“Nah, man. You did kinda disappear, but Dean and I got it. We knew you didn’t mean anything by it.”
His nose twitched. Here was the easy forgiveness he’d hoped Rhiannon would give him, but Dean and Harris knew him. They could afford to give him the benefit of the doubt in a way that Rhiannon could not. “Thanks.”
The baby’s crying rose in volume and intensity and Dean’s lunges became longer, taking him into the bedroom. Harris shifted. “Did Joe . . . I mean. I know he talked about donating his, um . . .”
“His brain. Yeah. He donated it to the Concussion Research Alliance.” Samson took a sip of water to wipe the taste of grief out of his mouth. Joe had been adamant about that donation. He’d wanted his brain to help with the research that was going on with chronic traumatic encephalopathy in football players. “Getting the results back takes time. Might be months longer.” They could take as long as they wanted, as far as Samson was concerned.
Samson had had to fight his mother to get his dad’s brain donated to science. Back then, CTE had only been diagnosed in a couple of deceased players. But Samson had had a hunch that his dad had the disease. He’d wanted his father to have the disease. He’d needed something. A diagnosis, an explanation for why the man had gone from a kind and loving father to a mood-spiraling, angry, unstable man.
The tests had taken a long time back then, when funding for CTE research had been nonexistent. Lulu had died before the diagnosis could come back. Aleki had had CTE, the buildup of tau proteins in his brain excessive and obvious even to a layman like Samson. Most likely linked to all the hard hits he’d taken over the years playing the game, the researchers had explained to Samson.
The National Football League had disagreed. Loudly.
Years after his death, in the big class-action lawsuit against the league brought by retired players, Aleki’s brain and his seventeen years of pro football playing had been cited by more than one attorney as evidence of the link between football and CTE.
“Are you gonna try to get a piece of the settlement?”
Samson shook his head. “Joe wouldn’t let me contribute any money toward his health care, so I’m okay, financially. I might have tried to navigate that mess for him, but he was lucky enough to have Annabelle. When his savings ran out, she took care of him.” Everyone thought all football players were rich, but money went fast when illness kicked in.
Harris drained his beer. “Okay, good. ’Cause I was gonna say, you know that settlement fund is a clusterfuck, so you’d have to lawyer up hard.”
“You know how it goes. Deny—”
“Until they die.” Harris finished the dark rhyme one high profile former player had applied to the claims process. The NFL might have settled the class-action for a billion dollars to compensate retirees exhibiting symptoms of CTE, as well as late players’ families who came with posthumous diagnosis in hand, but they were notoriously heavy-handed when it came to denials. “Hey, speaking of . . . You know, Trevor was asking me about you.”
Samson’s sneer was immediate. “I have nothing to say to Trevor.”
“That’s what I figured.” Harris patted Samson’s back gently. “It’s okay, man.”
Dean walked out of the bedroom, his baby’s face smooshed against his chest. “Thank God, she’s asleep,” he said, sotto voce. “You want to order dinner now? Or we can go out. Heard there’s a cool new vegan place on Melrose.”
“You can’t do those fucking lunges around a trendy restaurant if she starts hollering,” Harris said bluntly.
Dean covered his sleeping daughter’s ears with one hand. “What did I fucking tell you about swearing around her?”
Samson chuckled softly and slapped Harris’s back. Christ, he’d missed this. His brothers. “Okay, come on. Dean, there’s a family-friendly vegan place not too far from here. Let’s go there.”
Dean sniffed, his feathers still ruffled. “No swearing around the baby.”
Harris sighed when Samson glanced at him. “Fine! Fine. No swearing around the nonverbal, sleeping baby. For fudge’s sake.”
Chapter Eight
RHIANNON RESISTED the urge to check her face in any reflection before she walked inside the huge historic hotel. There was no need. She hadn’t bothered with makeup or her hair or changing out of her