My gut clenched. “What do you mean ‘you all noticed?”
“After we ran onto the field, you were staring up there so hard, we all had to look.” From where he flanked Fitzgerald, Finn chuckled. “Sure enough, there was your unicorn with her friends. She was staring pretty hard at you too—kinda like she’s doing right now.”
As bad as I wanted to know if Piper was watching me, I didn’t dare play into Finn’s bullshit and glance over my shoulder to check. Instead, I said, “What-the-fuck-ever. I blew that guy up because someone opened up a hole big enough to drive a truck through.” I gave Fitz a meaningful look. “If I’d missed that sack, Ainsworth probably would have had me running sprints until Christmas with you cheering him on.”
“True. But one has to wonder if maybe a bit of showboating was involved.” Fitz shrugged, then he and Finn exchanged a fist bump and stupid grins.
“Fuck you guys.”
They burst out laughing, their guffaws as loud as the screaming fans in the stands behind us. Luckily, Patterson saved me from more of my friends’ torture when he threw a perfect spiral to Danny running along the sideline about thirty yards from the line of scrimmage. We shot off the bench to join the rest of the team as we surged to the edge of the paint. Danny ran a tightrope for about ten yards and broke away from the corner hot on his heels. Shifting his hips, he eluded the safety closing fast to help his buddy. Then, as they say, the crowd went wild.
Chaos reverberated around the stadium when Danny crossed into the end zone and held the ball high over his head before casually tossing it to the ref. The rest of the offense mobbed him as they trotted off the field.
The first half so far had been a dogfight between the Hornets and us. Those boys may be from a so-called “weaker conference” in the South, but they’d showed up to play. For most of the game so far, we’d suffered more three-and-outs than we had all season. Until my sack stuffed them when they took a chance on fourth and two on our side of the fifty, they’d been moving up and down the field between the twenties pretty much at will while our offense couldn’t seem to get out of their own way.
If my concentration hadn’t been slightly distracted by a certain gorgeous fan and my friends’ razzing about her, I might have clued in more to the electricity my play had generated on our sideline. But after we broke through first on the scoreboard, I couldn’t help but sense the momentum shift that had my teammates buzzing.
After our kicker split the uprights to put us up 7-0, he dropped a perfect ball in the corner of the field where the returner had no choice but to catch it and run. Special teams stuffed him on the Hornets’ five, and we ran onto the field with a purpose.
“Meet you at the quarterback,” I said to Finn as we lined up.
He grinned around his mouthguard and dropped into his stance. When I realized their play caller thought he could trick us with a pass when the situation clearly called for a run, I ran up and down our line shouting our signal to shift. The center hiked the ball, and once again, Fitz did his job and laid the guy out. Finn raced in from his D-end spot while I took advantage of the second massive hole our nose tackle had opened up so far this game. The QB had nowhere to scramble when Finn and I crossed into the end zone. We shared a sack that gave us two more points on a safety and the ball back.
“That’s how we play football, boys!” Coach Ainsworth high-fived the entire defense after we skipped and whooped our way off the field. Coach Ellis merely nodded as he spoke into his headset, his actions telling us that while we’d rocked it, that play was over, time to move on to the next one. Didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy it as our special teams raced onto the turf.
This time I sneaked a glance into the student section of the stands to catch Piper bouncing up and down with another girl. I couldn’t help the grin that split my lips at her enthusiasm, which appeared right as she looked over at the sideline and our eyes locked. Oh, fuck, the electric charge at that shared gaze ripped through me and shot straight to my groin. Out of self-preservation, I swung my helmet in front of my crotch, but I didn’t—couldn’t—look away.
Only when her friend dragged her attention from me was I able to clue in that Finn was standing beside me, his chatter in my ear.
“I don’t even mind sharing that sack with you, Bax. I’ll meet you at the quarterback every damn day of the week and twice on Sundays.” His smile lit up his face as he grabbed a squeeze bottle and shot some water down his throat.
He set the bottle on top of the shelf behind the bench so we could do our hand ritual. Thankfully, his distraction took care of the Piper-induced semi I was sporting so I could set my helmet down and grab some hydration too.
“Nice work out there, you two. You’re making us look good,” Fitz said as he joined us on the bench again.” He slid me a grin. “Not that you needed a good-luck charm or anything with the way you’ve played this season, but that girl with the purple hair has ramped your game up another level. You just keep showin’ off for her, dude.”
“It’s not about a girl at all, Fitz. It’s about playoffs and making it to the championship and a nose tackle who spent most of the half figuring out their center’s number then dialing it in.” I gave him a chin tip and noted the sly smirk on his features.
“Methinks he doth protest too much,” he said to Finn out the corner of his mouth. Addressing me again, he added, “Sure, I’ll take some credit, but I see what I see.” He leaned back on the bench, manspreading with his arms across the back as well as his legs, taking up most of the seating, a huge smile lighting up his face.
I shook my head and stood to join the guys along the sideline. While Patterson didn’t light ’em up again with another crazy-long pass, he did put us in scoring range for our kicker to add his part to the offensive and defensive heroics of the first half. We went into halftime ahead twelve to zip. Before I followed my team into the locker room, I checked the stands one last time for a certain girl who hadn’t made it to halftime in any of the games she’d attended since we met. This afternoon when the halftime buzzer sounded, she stood at the top of the stairs for the student section. When I glanced up to look for her, a fleeting smile lit up her face as our eyes met then she turned away to follow her friends.
The line coach must have given the Hornets’ center a pep talk at halftime because Fitz couldn’t do a thing with him for the entire third quarter. Then someone on their side had a lapse in concentration that forced the quarterback to scramble to Finn’s side, poor sap. Finn swam through his blocker and met the QB at the line of scrimmage, but somehow he slipped out of Finn’s grasp. He had two steps on my buddy when Finn spun and lunged for the guy’s feet, slowing him down. Miraculously, he regained his footing and kept moving.
“Not today, sucker,” I said as I raced over to intercept him. Satisfaction flowed through me as I caught the deer-in-the-headlights expression in the quarterback’s eyes when he saw who was bearing down on him. He stutter-stepped once, which was enough. Wrapping him up, I buried his ass in the turf. Saunders and Hernandez came in from their corner and safety positions to make sure he stayed down, but he gained a first down on the play. Still, we held them to a field goal on the drive, so the score was 12-3 going into the fourth quarter.
“Time for some heroics, O’Reilly,” I said to my roommate. His offensive output had been limited to blocking or running crossing routes where Patterson couldn’t connect with him. “Danny already had his turn. Batter up.”
’Han’s eyes rolled like marbles before he pulled his helmet over his head and stepped into the middle of the offensive players waiting to go back out onto the field. Chuckling, I joined Finn and Fitz on the bench. During the course of the game, the temps had dropped at least another ten degrees, and I was glad for my lined cape when a trainer dropped it over my shoulders.
I slid my eyes up to the stands to see Piper gamely hanging in there. She and her friends were bouncing on their feet, the three of them jammed together beneath a blanket. They were laughing, then Piper on one side and her friend on the other side kissed the cheeks of the girl in the middle. A collective “Aww!” went up from the crowd, which attracted my gaze to the scoreboard above the band where the three of them were on the “kiss cam.” The sparkle in Piper’s eyes warmed me more than my protective cape, and that sparkle wasn’t even for me.
Damn. I had it bad for this girl—a girl who only wanted to hook up and didn’t care that I was good for so much more.
After the girls’ antics on the big screen, I should have known better than to sit my ass in my usual spot beside Fitz and Finn on the bench.
Finn launched in first. “Bet you wish she was laying that big smacker on you, huh, Bax?”
“Maybe she’s practicing for after the game.” Fitz grinned. “Her friends are cute. Either of them available?”
