In Baltimore, everyone had known to give him space before a kick—but definitely after a missed kick. Apparently nobody had the memo here, because he heard footsteps behind him, deliberately stopping.
Dawson sighed, pressed a finger between his eyebrows. He almost wished he had a headache, because maybe that might explain why that field goal hadn’t been good. Turning around, he was surprised that it wasn’t Cameron there again, wanting to apologize again, maybe to go over every moment of that play.
It was Marty.
“I’m not gonna say I told you so,” Marty said.
Dawson made a face before he could pull it back. Hopefully there wasn’t a camera watching him still—though who was he kidding? There wasalwaysa camera watching.
“Except that it sounds like you’re gonna say exactly that,” Dawson complained.
Marty said nothing, just shrugged. The knowing look on his face before he turned to check in with another staff member said it all.
When Dawson had gone to Marty last week to bitch about Cameron not giving him space on the sideline, Martyhadsaid he’d talk to him. But he’d also argued that the biggest issue wasn’t that the rookie didn’t know to keep his distance; it was that they were on two different wavelengths, and until they got their shit together and jived, their kicking unit wouldn’t be as good as it needed to be.
Dawson hadn’t ignored him, but he hadn’t agreed either. He’d made an effort. Okay, aminimumof effort, but still some kind of an effort.
He was thirty-two years old, newly divorced, his ex-wife was now with the guy she’d fallen in love with while Dawson had been killing it at his job, and his bank accounts weren’t as comfortable as they should’ve been. He was tired and disgruntled and a little bitter, and the last thing he wanted to do was to take a rookie under his arm and teach him everything he should already know.
Especially not a rookie who reminded him, uncomfortably, of how he’d felt coming into the league ten years ago. Wide-eyed, naive, hanging on every word from the vets, shocked but pleased at any sliver of opportunity he’d gotten, even though he’d fought like hell for every single one.
But Cameron was even more of all that than Dawson had even been.
He was raw and unproven and untested and so fucking talented he made Dawson’s teeth ache.
Cameron did at least know enough to keep his distance until the end of the third quarter.
Aidan had driven the offense down the field and scored a touchdown to extend the lead to fourteen, so the missed field goal had disappeared out of everyone’s mind—except his own.
They’d gone out and kicked the extra point and it had gone in, ball straight down the center of the uprights, their kicking team working like clockwork. Like they’d never missed at all.
But Dawson remembered.
It was a hard kernel of unpleasantness, a rock in his shoe. Impossible to forget, even though Dawson knew he had to forget it.
Maybe he wasn’t the only one, if the way Cameron came up to him after he’d kicked off to the Miami receiving team was proof.
“Hey,” Cameron said.
Dawson wanted to tell him that he was attempting casual and it wasn’t working, the anxiousness was written all over his young, open face.
“You haven’t gotten much work in today,” Dawson said.
Because he knew what Cameron wanted to talk about, but he really, really,reallydidn’t want to discuss what had gone wrong.
He’d already be thinking about it, and there was no way Marty wouldn’t force them to go over every second of the play on Tuesday, over and over again until Dawson wanted to scream about it.
“Best work in the world, when your team moves the ball well enough they don’t need you to punt much,” Cameron joked. But there was still that tightness around his eyes. Dawson couldn’t miss it.
“Yeah,” Dawson agreed.
“I just wanted to say—again—that I don’t know what happened, but it won’t happen again.”
He sounded very confident. Sure of himself.
It was a common trick special teams guys liked to use.Fake it til you make it. Fake it til you believe it. Fake it til it’s true.
“Sure,” Dawson said, even though there was a loud, insistent part of him that wanted to yell that the stupid trick didn’t always work. It hadn’t worked for him last year, anyway.
