AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Can’t argue with that,” he says. “Except there’s not any paint onyou,and that’s not fair.” He sits her on his stomach and gently presses his palm to her cheek, leaving behind a swatch of color. “There. Much better.”
“Can we get ice cream?” she asks.
“Ice cream sounds delicious,” I say.
“It’s not even eleven.” Dallas turns his head to glance at me, and he looks younger than he has in the month I’ve been working for him. His smile is wider. His eyes are brighter. There’s a lightness to him, like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders. “You’re not going to back me up on this, are you?”
“You manhandled me to the floor. I’m siding with June on this one, dude.”
“Fine.” He stands up and lifts June with him. When he’s on two feet, he offers me a hand, and I accept it, standing too. “Ice cream it is.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Are we good? After…” he gestures to my face.
“Yeah. Totally good.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Good,” I agree.
He hitches another look at me before June drags him toward the door, talking about mint chocolate chip and cotton candy.
Weweregood, until he was on top of me.
Now all I’m thinking about is what his mouth would feel like on every other part of my body, and something tells me that’s not good at all.
FOURTEEN
DALLAS
There’snothing like a Sunday afternoon at UPS Field in September.
The energy radiating from the fans is through the roof today. Their roars work their way into the locker room. The walls shake and my ears ring. It’s a sound I’ve missed during the off season.
I grin and pull on my helmet. My body thrums with excitement and anticipation. Electricity runs through me as I buckle my chin strap and take a deep breath, savoring the last few seconds of tranquility before we head into chaos.
It’s game one of the regular season, and our first step on the journey to another Super Bowl ring. The dream of being back-to-back champions fueled us through training camp. It was the motivation to go undefeated in the three preseason games and earn us the title of Vegas’s favorite to win it all.
I’ve been in the league for eight years, which is long enough to be able to recognize when a team has chemistry and when it doesn’t. It’s easy to tell when guys want to be there and are having fun, versus the ones who think they’re better than everyone else and just want to collect a paycheck.
The fifty-two men around me fall into that first camp. They’re special. Selfless and hard workers. It’s anusnotmementality, and they’re hungry.
Something big is going to happen this season.
I can fucking feel it.
“Alright, boys. Gather around,” Shawn says, and the locker room quiets down as we crowd around him.“Welcome to day one. The road to February starts right now, and it doesn’t stop until we have a trophy in our hands. There is going to be a lot of pressure on us this season—we have people telling us we’re overrated. That we shouldn’t have won last year, and there’s no way inhellwe’re going to repeat our success.”
That earns a grumble from the guys. There’s a low growl of displeasure with the shit talking, and I mumble my disagreement with that opinion, too.
“Probably that blow hard who yells on his television show all the time,” Sam Wagner, the stellar tight end we drafted two years ago, says under his breath. “He can fuck right off.”
“There are also going to be people overinflating your confidence,” Shawn continues. “They’re going to stroke your ego and make you feel cocky and complacent. And, at some point in the season—maybe it’s today, or maybe it’s in week twelve—you’re going to want to take your foot off the gas. You’re going to want to get comfortable. And what do we think about getting comfortable, Lansfield?”
I lift my head and look around at my teammates. My brothers who have been with me through thick and thin. They were there the night I got the call about June. They stuck by me that first season as a single dad when I was barely sleeping, a shell of myself on the field and off.
They are the guys who have lifted me on their shoulders after a game-winning field goal and comforted me when I came up short, the kick going wide right and costing us the division title.
