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“You looking at his parents?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah.”

“What time are y’all meeting?”

“After he showers and finishes his interviews. I’m meeting him outside the locker room.”

Toni glanced over. “You nervous?”

“A little.”

Lauren gave her arm a squeeze. “You’ll be fine.”

Nicole hoped so. She wanted them to like her. There wasn’t much point pretending otherwise when she’d already spent too long this morning deciding what to wear.

A girl coming up the steps slowed beside their row. “Are you Melvin Wright’s daughter?”

Nicole looked up. “Yes.”

“Cool.” The girl smiled, then kept going up to her seat. Toni watched her go, then raised her eyebrows at Nicole. Lauren did too.

Nicole pulled her coat closer around her. “Yeah. I know.”

The paper wasn’t even out yet, and people were already figuring out who she was. On the drive over, she’d finally told Toni and Lauren who her father was. Lauren had screamed so loud Toni almost ran a stop sign, and once Toni got the car straightened out, she wanted to know why it had taken Nicole a whole year to mention her daddy was Melvin Wright, which, okay, was fair.

Then she’d told them about Monday’s article, the whole reason she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore. On the way to their seats, she’d heard a girl tell her friend, “That’s Melvin Wright’s daughter.” She’d kept walking.

Then the announcer called Dayshawn’s name, and Lauren jumped up so fast Nicole barely got out of her way. “That’s my baby!”

Nicole laughed and stood with her, clapping while Toni yelled beside them. Families all around them were on their feet too, pointing toward the field and trying to get pictures before their sons moved out of view. When Drew’s name came over the speakers, the whole section got louder. She put her fingers to her mouth and whistled, then kept clapping. His father had an arm around his back, and his mother reached up to touch his face before they posed for a photograph.

God, she was glad she’d come back.

He was smiling down there. She couldn’t hear a word he was saying, couldn’t get his attention from where she stood, but she wanted him to know she’d seen this part too, not just the throws and the touchdowns but him down there with his parents, getting his name called one last time as a senior in this stadium.

Later, when the team gathered in the tunnel, hardly anybody bothered to sit back down. Lauren gripped Nicole’s sleeve as the band got louder, and somewhere behind them a man started yelling, “Let’s go!” over and over until half the section joined him.

The players came running out, their helmets catching the afternoon sun, and as soon as Nicole spotted Drew, she yelled for him, even though nobody was going to hear her over the crowd. “Come on, baby!”

With the clock down to its last few seconds, Nicole was on her feet with everybody else, and Lauren was yelling her head off. Drayton had this one. LSU couldn’t get it back now, and she wanted those last seconds gone so she could finally believe it was over. Her hands were cold, her throat hurt, and she’d spent the whole game leaning around whoever stood in front of her so she wouldn’t miss anything.

Drew and his teammates had played their asses off, and she’d loved every minute of watching them do it. Now the whole stadium was counting down, Lauren shouting out the numbers while Toni clapped with her hands up over her head. Nicole joined in, her eyes on the clock until the last second was gone.

Lauren threw her arms around her. “We won!”

They hugged, laughing as Toni wrapped an arm around both of them. Below them, the cheerleaders had started a routine, shaking navy and gold pom-poms.

Nobody seemed interested in leaving. Down on the field, players were hugging, finding coaches, reaching for the seniors as they came off the sideline. Nicole searched for Drew and found him with his helmet off. Somebody caught him around the shoulders, and he laughed before pulling the guy into a hug.

She kept watching him while Lauren and Toni talked beside her. He’d played his last home game, and he’d won it. Whatever happened after this, he got to leave this field with that. God, she wanted to get her arms around him.

By the time Drew came through the players’ exit, Nicole had been waiting long enough to start wondering if every reporter in Alabama had decided they needed a word with him. Then he saw her, and she forgot about the wait.

“There’s my hot-ass girlfriend.”

She went straight to him, wrapping her arms around him as he bent to kiss her.

“You kicked ass today.”