Game on, girls. I’m about to rock your world.
Coach will kill me for this audible. He prefers the safe route, but we need a big play to win this game. Overtime is the cautious choice, tied with twenty seconds left on the clock. I’ll take my chances.
“Blue 85 on one!” I call, my voice loud and clear. “Blue 85 on one! Ready! Hut!”
The ball passes from Davenport to me like water pouring from a faucet. Everett goes down, but he takes a maroon-and-gold Commander with him.
My gaze skirts the field. Archie is in a game of which-way-to-go with an Ironfleet linebacker. Patton flies backward into the air with a tackle from the Vikings’ largest player.
Adrenaline explodes in my veins, my breath coming in shallow puffs as my entire body trembles. The stadium lights are brighter, the colors on the field more pronounced.
The Ironfleet center barrels forward, his icy gaze locked on me. Davenport throws out an arm like a traffic cop, stopping the center’s fingers about two inches from my chest. Chase breaks free of the line and sprints toward the end zone.
As I heave my arm behind me, ball in hand, I greedily inhale the scent of the game.
Sweat and leather and lawn, buttery popcorn and cotton candy and hamburgers sweating on the grill.
I close my eyes as the ball leaves my hand, and when I open them, I watch as it sails over the heads of my brothers. Off to my right, an Ironfleet linebacker takes down Archie and slams him to the field.
Chase bounds forward, his arms pumping at his sides and his cleats barely touching the field. He runs like a man trying to escape death. Only him, me, Davenport, and two Commanders on his heels are left standing.
That’s how we play. We give it all to the gridiron.
Time slows, my heart lurching into my throat, as Chase leaps into the air, his feet still poised to resume running as he flies over the painted line into the end zone. His fingers stretch toward the ball. It skims his fingers as he stumbles and falls to the field in a blur of limbs and his naval-blue-and-silver Voclain uniform. He lands on his back, and I lurch forward, my heart ricocheting inside my chest. He raises his hand as he lays there, and the crowd roars. The breath trapped in my chest erupts from my lips. Chase holds the ball.
“And the Vikings win!” the announcer shouts into the intercom.
Archie stumbles to his feet and sends me an aye-aye captain salute. Heaving with each breath, Everett slaps my back. Chase scrambles to stand and does a little dance in a fast circle. When he stops, he holds his hands out and shouts something, but I can’t hear his words, his grin wild and a little manic.
I smile, even though to be honest, it wasn’t our best game. As always, Coach makes us shake hands in the name of sportsmanship.
The crowd mingles, some clapping and calling down onto the field. Aurora stares at me before she returns her attention to some douche dressed in a polo with his collar popped and a pair of skinny jeans.
She thinks she is making me jealous, bending over the chain-link fence so that her cheerleader skirt threatens to show her ass. Normally, I would play along, at least to the extent it benefited me, but I don’t feel up to it. Instead, I head for the lockers, Archie at my side.
It is fucking hot, and although I’ve already taken off my helmet, I stop walking long enough to yank off my gear until I am naked from the waist up. Archie, of course, sees it as a competition, and tears off his jersey and shoulder pads like they are on fire.
“Good game, brother,” he says, slapping me on the ass—hard.
“Thanks. You too, man.” I just want to get a shower and go to my room and avoid whatever afterparty Aurora will try to drag me to.
Archie elbows me, catching me in between the ribs. I grimace. “Thank Christmas cookies, your dad wasn’t here. No play-by-plays with ol’ man Beckett about how you fucked up.”
I don’t answer, but he’s got a good point. My dad treats football as a business opportunity, and that means making sure his son plays very well.
The adrenaline still sings in my blood. My hands tremble like I am itching to punch something. This is always the hardest part of the game, the withdrawal. I am sweating and shaking like a drunk after a bad bender. We turn, passing the concession stand closing up shop, and I see her.
Stormy leans against the stone wall to the locker rooms, her arms crossed below her breasts, which push the ivory mounds even higher. She is normally a thief, constantly stealing my breath away, but she just gained a new line on her rap sheet, attempted murder because she’s heart-attack inducing.
She sucks on a lollipop, and although she doesn’t see us and certainly isn’t doing it for me, it’s like I am watching my own personal fantasy. Her lips curl around the candy when she pulls it out of her mouth as if she’s reluctant to lose the sugary taste. I swear I hear the pop when the lollipop escapes, even though that’s crazy because I am too far away.
Archie groans beside me. I mirror the sentiment. I want to hike up that dress of hers and plunge into her. I want to fuck her so that everyone can see she is mine.
Her hair hangs in loose waves down past her shoulders. The dress she wears is painted to her chest and flares out at the bottom. It isn’t a short, slutty
