The whistle blew.
“Eyes on the field, Walker!” Reid’s voice cracked across the pitch like thunder.
I muttered a curse and jogged back into position.
“Yeah,” said Griffin Nash, our other longtime defender—just loud enough for me to hear, “stop staring at your nemesis.”
“She’s not—” I started, then cut myself off.
Because what was I going to say?
That I wasn’t watching her?
That I hadn’t been thinking about her since the interview?
That I hadn’t frozen the frame on that smirk more times than I cared to admit?
She called me old.
She called me a god.
And somehow, she’d done both like she was daring me to live up to either title.
So why the hell did it feel like she owned my attention?
Every time I looked up, she was still there—unbothered, unreadable, scribbling notes like she wasn’t the reason I felt ten years younger and twice as unsteady.
I turned my attention back to the game, jaw clenched, lungs burning.
She wasn’t playing.
She wasn’t even trying.
And still—she was winning.
I didn’t know what bothered me more.
The fact that she’d turned my head in the middle of scrimmage…
Or the fact that I wanted her to do it again.
The thing about the game was—I still had it.
People loved to speculate. Commentators tossed around the word “decline” like it was inevitable, like the second you hit thirty, your legs gave out and your brain forgot how to track a play.
But on the field? None of that mattered.
I saw things before they happened. That was the difference. That was what you earned after a decade of top-tier football. I didn’t need to be the fastest anymore—I was the smartest. I could read a run two passes before it happened, see a gap forming in the formation like a crack in glass.
Caleb made a run down the right. The rookies were trailing him too late, watching the ball instead of the man. I shifted left, intercepted the pass before it could even hit midfield, and pivoted without losing momentum.
The ball stayed glued to my foot as I sent it up the line.
“On your left!” I shouted, and Adam cut in fast. Too fast.
I winced, but the kid adjusted last second and threaded it back to me with the kind of confidence only a second-year could fake.
I took it, flicked it forward, and dragged two defenders with me like a goddamn tractor beam.
