Marty’s eyebrow skidded upwards. “Aidan lectured you?”
“Warned me? Lectured me?” Dawson shrugged. “I’m not gonna fuck the rookie up.”
“Never thought you would,” Marty said.
“I guess itwasyou who wanted me and Cam to get closer.”
“Oh, it’s ’cause of whatIsaid now?” Marty chuckled. “I told you to hang out with him. That’s all.” But he didn’t look upset or disappointed. He actually looked . . .well, if Dawson was going to call it anything, he would say Marty looked absolutelynotsurprised.
“Yeah, yeah. You probably guessed this was gonna happen.” Marty probably had. Cam’s crush had been visible from space.
But he wasn’t sure how Marty had known that Dawson, when he finally started seeing the rookie, would figure out that once he started noticing him, he wouldn’t be able to stop.
“I don’t know if I’d go that far. But I thought you two would find some kind of common ground,” Marty admitted. “Glad to see you did.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dawson said, but hewasglad. He liked to think that even without Marty’s prompting, he’d have noticed Cam eventually, but he was glad it hadn’t taken himthatlong. Because it not only felt great to be having regular sex again, but he hadn’t even realized how much he’d missed having someone around he really liked. Someone to make laugh. Someone’s space to share. Someone to text when his apartment was feeling particularly empty.
“Let’s kick some balls,” Marty said. “Actually—let’s do the ladder.”
“Ugh, the ladder.” Dawson made a face.
The ladder was a particularly nefarious invention of Marty’s where Dawson had to kick three field goals each at graduatedintervals, starting at twenty-five yards and moving back five yards every time. Each time he missed, he had to do twenty pushups.
It wasn’t so bad from twenty-five yards to the fifty or so. But after? The last time that Dawson had done the ladder, by the time he’d gotten to the sixty-five-yard field goal, his arms had felt like they were gonna fall off.
Andthen, Marty always wanted him to work back the other way.
“The ladder’s good for you. You’re gonna appreciate it, later. And I’m sure the rookie will too.”
“Ugh, I regret you finding out about that.”
Marty grinned. “If you’ve got time to sex up the rookie, you’ve got time to put in the work on the field, Hall.”
“I hate you,” Dawson said. But he grabbed a ball and a tee from the bin by the bench and headed out onto the field. They were working on the smaller field today, away from the rest of the team.
Set up his first field goal. Hit those three. One after another after another.
Moved back another five feet. Hit another three, right through the center of the uprights.
Thirty-five yards. Same thing. Forty, and it was still easy.
He misjudged one of the three on the forty-five-yard length but it still barely sneaked inside the left upright.
Fifty, still money.
Marty made some noise about how it was only going to get harder from here, and Dawson already knew that.
Still, he was deep in the zone, totally locked in, and nailed the three fifty-five-yard field goals. Barely heard Marty as he clapped when the third one went in.
Dawson set up for the first sixty-yard attempt. Took a big breath and then another. This was a long field goal, even forhim. He’d only made one sixty-yarder in a game. Could make them more easily in practice, especially kicking off a tee, but that didn’t mean they wereeasy.
It was a long way, and with the longer distance he had to put a lot more force into the kick, and with that additional force came a stronger chance that his aim wouldn’t be as solid.
Dawson eyed the uprights, sixty yards away, and did his mental calculations. Felt pretty good about them, but despite his best efforts, his first attempt went slightly wonky, clanking against the right upright, and flying off, making it his first miss.
Reluctantly, he got down on the ground. The first twenty pushups weren’t so bad. But even if his arms weren’t aching now, he knew just how much they’d be aching by the time Dawson was done with this hellish exercise.
Thankfully, he made the next two field goals, even at sixty, and then he moved on to sixty-five. He nailed the first, and then missed the next two, and by the time he was done withthosepushups, he was mentally flogging Marty for ever having been born.
