Page 181 of Colliding with Ten

"Is that a yes?"

She grabbed the front of my jersey with both hands, fisting the fabric as she did the night the photos were taken at my house. Then she pulled me down to her.

"Yes, you beautiful man."

I kissed her on the Hawks' sideline, in my Stallions jersey, with confetti falling around us, cameras clicking, and sixty thousand people as witnesses. She kissed me back, her hands on my face and mine in her hair. Whatever people were gonna say, we would face it together. When I pulled back, I kissed her nose, both cheeks, her jaw, and her forehead as she giggled. I loved doing this to her.

"Go get your trophy, Lennox. You earned it."

"Come with me."

She looked midfield, where the trophy was waiting. The cameras were there to watch what happened next.

"I'm in a Hawks uniform.”

“I know. I still want you there.”

But then I considered that she was right. Walking into the Stallions’ trophy ceremony wearing a Hawks uniform wouldn’t photograph well. I pulled my jersey over my head and held it out to her. She stared at it, then at me standing in my compression top and exposed pads.

“Sorry this isn’t clean, but you can put this on.”

She hesitated.

“I’ve spent months imagining what you’d look like wearing my name.” I smiled. “Don’t take this from me.”

Her mouth twitched. She took the jersey and pulled it over her head. Number ten swallowed her frame. Despite her height, the hem still fell to her thighs. She looked down at herself, then back up at me, and the sight of her in my jersey with her hair wild and her eyes shining was worth more than anything waiting for me on that stage.

“How do I look?”

“Beautiful.”

She looked at my hand, then back towards the tunnel where her brother had disappeared. Then she took my hand, and we walked across the field together.

THE FRANCHISE ERA

EPILOGUE I

TWO WEEKS LATER

LENNOX

Eleven seconds. That’s what was left on the clock when I took the snap. Their edge rusher had been in my face all night, putting me on the turf three times. He came again, but the pocket held. My left tackle slid to meet him, and the lane opened.

Jace ran a post route, forty yards downfield, the cornerback a full step behind and losing ground. I’d been throwing the ball to Jace on this route since our first season together in college. We’d never needed a signal. When the setup was right, we both knew.

I set my feet and let it go.

The spiral left my hand, and I knew as it left my fingertips that this was the one. The stadium noise cut out. Seventy-two thousand people went silent. All I could hear was my own breathing.

Jace looked over his shoulder at the thirty. The ball dropped into his hands at the twelve. He tucked it, crossing the line for a touchdown without being touched, and the stadium exploded.

I just remember my knees hitting the turf. Through the torn knee and rehab, I woke up every morning wondering if the analysts who wrote me off were right. I let it all go in the middle of the field.

Jace sprinted back from the end zone, helmet off and already crying, tears streaking through the black eye paint. He hit me so hard we nearly fell. His arms wrapped around my neck and I grabbed his number one jersey—the one he’d worn since Pop Warner, saying it made him run faster. This man caught every ball I ever threw that mattered—during practices when my knee was too stiff to plant, in games when coverage was impossible, and the window was only a sliver. Now, he just caught the one that fulfilled our childhood dream.

“We did it,” he said into my shoulder, his voice cracking. “We fucking did it.”

“Yeah. We did.”