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41
Brody
I didn’t have it.
I just didn’t have it all game. It was like someone had taken my mojo and replaced it with a jar of stale Buc-ee’s popcorn. I wasn’t myself.
I tried to muscle through it, as if it was a problem that could be solved with brute strength and stubbornness. During running plays, I put some extra oomph in my blocks. I clapped my hands after every play and shouted words of encouragement to my teammates. I tried to be the team’s biggest cheerleader.
But that wasn’t why they paid me the big bucks. They needed more from me.
How can I be the best I can be, I thought, when the woman I love is being punished?
Taylor was impossible to miss. A redheaded bombshell in a short skirt. And rather than standing in the front row of the cheer team, dancing and moving with the others, she was sitting on the bench in the back.
It was an image I couldn’t get out of my head, even when I forced myself not to look over at her.
Andrew Stark took most of the snaps in the second half. When I did go into the game, I wasn’t being targeted. I couldn’t blame Dallas. He was doing his best to win the game.
But when it came down to crunch time, a minute left in the fourth quarter and the game tied 24 - 24, I felt the itch of a professional athlete. I wanted the ball. I wanted the opportunity. I wanted to make things right.
“Sit this one out, partner,” I told Andrew. “I’m feeling good.”
“Uh, but coach said…”
I didn’t hear the rest of his protest because I was putting my helmet on and jogging out onto the field. If Dallas was surprised to see me in the huddle rather than the younger tight end, he didn’t show it.
After he called the play and the huddle broke, I got close to him and put my helmet against his. “Give me the ball.”
He gazed back with the calmness that came from leadership and experience. “If Kincaid or Marcus are open, I need to hit them.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But if we’re all covered about the same? Get me the ball.”
Dallas paused for a fraction of a second, then nodded.
We lined up. The crowd, sensing that this was a critical play, got loud. Very loud. Dallas was shouting his commands behind the center, but I could barely hear him over the noise.
The ball was hiked, and we burst into motion.
My part of the play was a stick route. I ran straight forward, counting off the steps in my head. The defender backed up with me, waiting to see what I would do. I made a hard ninety-degree turn to the right, toward the middle of the field.
Give me the ball. Give me the ball. Give me the ball.
I turned back and the ball was already in the air. Coming my way. It was thrown high, to keep the defender from undercutting the route and intercepting it. I engaged my quads and leaped into the air, fingertips stretching for the oblong piece of pig skin.
For once, my muscle memory didn’t betray me. The football stuck to my gloves, blessedly caught.
As I came back down to my feet, I was already tucking the ball under my arm and preparing for the defender’s tackle. He needed to stop me there, right there, before I advanced into field goal territory, and that made me more aggressive than I should have been. I instinctively side-stepped to my left and back, away from the defender’s momentum. His body flew through the air where I had just been, arms wide, hands pawing against my sleeve ineffectively.
The crowd noise shifted to moans and wails of disappointment as I ran upfield and into field goal range. The Titans secondary was collapsing around me like I was a black hole, sucking them into my gravity. I should have taken a few more steps and then slid to the ground.
But I hadn’t had the ball all day. I was hungry, and I wanted more.
I cut back across the field, targeting the defender on the left. A stiff-arm knocked him down and I leaped over his body, gaining another five yards. Every yard gained meant the winning field goal would be easier, I told myself. This wasn’t just an ego-driven run.
The stadium cursed and raged and shouted.
Three defenders ahead of me now. I couldn’t avoid them. Rather than sliding, I lowered my shoulder and met the first one head-on. His two-hundred-and-fifty pound body slammed into mine like a wrecking ball. The shockwave ran through my muscles and bones and blood, but I still held onto the ball like it was the most important thing in the world.
