Page 60 of Hard Pass

The shout slams me back to present. To the field. The game. To the pocket still holding around me. To the time I don’t deserve anymore.

Again.

Throw the fucking ball.

I force it, and I know it’s off as soon as the ball leaves my hand.

“Fuck,” I mutter a split second before the defender steps in front of the route like he knew exactly where I was throwing.

Interception.

Noise crashes in all around me. The groans of my teammates and the boos from the crowd.

I stand there for half a second too long, watching it happen, watching the momentum flip like a switch.

Move, Cole. Fucking move.

I jog off the field, fingers curled around the face mask, desperate to pound the goddamn helmet into the ground.

“Shake it off,” someone yells.

“We’re still up,” says another.

And yeah, we’ll win—technically—but for me, it doesn’t feel like a win.

The sideline blurs. Coach speaks, and I nod like I hear him, like I’m tracking the adjustments he’s talking about, like I’m still in the thirty seconds left of this game.

But I’m not.

Because that wasn’t the defense forcing my error. It wasn’t pressure from their line. It was me. The hesitation. The doubt.

What the fuck?

Fifty-five plus minutes of solid, textbook football, just for the yips to come back in the last five.

That’s what sticks, what I won’t let go, as I do the after-game back patting with the other team and sideline interviews before walking down the tunnel and off the field. Disappointment. In myself. In my performance. In how I can’t seem to turn this the fuck around.

“Valor!”

Fuck.

I don’t stop at the sound of Kate MacMillan’s voice.

“C’mon, Cole, one question.” Her heels click as she tries to keep up, her recorder already out like she’s been waiting for this exact moment. “Can you comment on the late-game interception?”

I keep walking.

“What about on the large player prop bet placed right before that play?”

My head whips her way and my steps falter for half a step, but she sees it and pounces.

“Yes. My sources are saying there was a significant live money bet on that interception. Do you have any response to that?”

I stop and look at her, eyes sharp with the kind of hunger that says she doesn’t give a shit about anything except the story.

“Do you think—”

“Leave me the fuck alone.” The words come out low, controlled, but there is no mistaking the edge.