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I shook my head. “You all have worked so hard to get to this point, and now I could be the reason you lose it all. It’s not fair, Coach. Not when you and the guys have kept your noses clean through all of this.”
He sighed, a heavy, weary sound that seemed to age him a decade. “I appreciate that. Really, I do. But the truth is, we’re not out of the woods yet. Frank is already threatening to pull back his funds, and that could put us right back to where we started.”
“Hold up.” I hadn’t noticed Malik coming into the office, and turned to see him blocking the door. “What do you mean he’s pulling his funding?”
He stumbled forward as the rest of the guys piled in as well, and suddenly I realized that the conversation wasn’t as private as I had hoped it would be.
“Great,” I muttered under my breath.
I braced myself to repeat the confession, to look at the guys who had treated me like blood and tell them I was the reason their future was a coin toss. But Coach didn’t give me the chance. He stepped into the gap, summarizing the Delaney disaster in a few blunt sentences. He was trying to shield me, to be the lightning rod, but his protection only made the guilt burn hotter.
I scanned their faces, looking for the exact moment the brotherhood evaporated. If I were in their shoes, I’d be looking for a reason to put my fist through the wall. Or my jaw. They had every right to feel betrayed. If I had an ounce of the spine I pretended to have on the field, I’d stand there and take every hit they were about to throw.
“That’s one hell of an achievement, man,” Lucas said, slapping my back. “I don’t think any of us have ever had a shark like that circling before. Guess we’re officially next level now.”
Ethan clipped him upside the head. “Did you miss the part where the guy is a cancer, Lucas? We should be thanking our lucky stars he didn’t come for the rest of us. It sounds like Delaney specializes in scorched earth.”
“Yeah, well, if scorched earth comes with passing grades and a new car, he can ruin my life whenever he wants,” Cam joked, though the humor didn’t quite reach his eyes.
A chorus of groans rippled through the cramped office. I waited for the turn. For the moment they realized my lies had nearly cost them everything. But it never came.
To them, my mistake was a drop in the bucket compared to the way Delaney was trying to hollow out the program. They weren’t looking at me like a traitor. They saw me as a teammate who’d been caught in a trap.
“The truth is, we didn’t have big-money boosters last year, and we survived,” Malik said, his hand steady on my shoulder. “We’ll go back to riding in that beat-up roach of a bus if we have to. We play on our terms, Trace. That doesn’t change just because some suit wants to pull the plug.”
“Exactly,” Ethan added. “Win or lose, we do it as a unit. We don’t let some guy with a check decide when our story’s over.”
“The guys have spoken,” Coach said triumphantly. “So, Trace, that brings me to my next question. Do you want to play or sit out with that shoulder of yours?”
“Honestly, Coach, it would be better for me to warm the bench. There’s too much at stake in this.”
“Okay guys, we’re going to do it this way...” Coach’s eyes reached every one of us crammed into his small office. “I know we’re all worried about upsetting Dick Pine and the alumni because it could cost us our funding, but we’re not taking that onto the field with us. Politics stay here. We give this game the heart it deserves, and that includes you, Prescott. What happens next is a problem for another day.”
*
The first quarter opened with a violent reminder of what was at stake. The Bisons’ returner carved through our coverage for twenty-eight yards, their fans screaming for blood, but the momentum hit a brick wall the second Malik locked on. With a sound like a car crash, his massive frame folded the running back in half. The ball squirted loose and suddenly the stadium was ours.
On the first snap, Ethan tucked the ball into my gut. I felt the Bisons’ front four closing in. There was no time to think. I spun off the first tackle, catching the defender with a stiff-arm that sent him eating turf. The second guy went low, trying to take my knees, but I found a gear I didn’t know I had. I lunged, hurdling him with a clean, athletic arc that gained nine yards before a third defender drove me into the dirt.
The drive stalled near the red zone, Ethan’s eyes burning with a restless heat.
“New plan,” he said, pulling us into a tight circle. “HB toss. Fast and nasty.”
The snap was clean. Ethan stepped back with the kind of composure I’d seen in real pros, flicking an underhanded toss to me. The Bisons bit hard on the fake, and by the time they realized the ball wasn’t in the pocket, I was already hitting the end zone. 7-0.
By the second quarter, the air turned cold, and the hits got harder. We gave up a twenty-yard gain, and despite Coach’s call for a blitz, the Bisons sniffed it out. They slipped a receiver through the seam, leveling the score 7-7.
That was when the world started to tilt.
The stadium lights smeared into fuzzy blurs of white and gold. The roar of the crowd thinned out into a muffled, underwater hum. I felt like I was watching the game through a dirty window. I slapped my helmet, trying to shock my brain back into my skull, but the scoreboard blurred again. They’d scored another touchdown while I was drifting. 14-7.
“Trace? Talk to me,” Ethan demanded, grabbing my jersey.
“Passing play,” I rasped, shaking my head to clear the cobwebs. “Get it to Lucas.”
We clawed back just before the half, Malik and the line holding the surge long enough for Lucas to find the corner of the end zone. 14-14.
In the locker room, the walls felt as if they were breathing. Dylan appeared at my locker, holding a small sachet. “You’re fading, man. Adrenaline crash. Take this. It’s a concentrated shot, pure caffeine and electrolytes. It’ll rewire your brain.”
