“I need to get back to the office,” Paxton said as she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. “I’ll think about the game,” she said over her shoulder.
Ever the smart-ass, Shayla said, “See you at seven!”
Chapter 8
Bright stadium lights illuminated the perfectly manicured field at Gauthier High School, reflecting off the ferocious lion logo holding center stage in the middle of the field. The chain-link fence surrounding the stadium was covered in hand-painted signs promising to “Manhandle the Mustangs” and “Bring Home the Iron Boot.”
Homecoming was always the biggest game of the season, and tonight’s game had even more at stake, as it pitted the Gauthier Lions against their archrivals, the Maplesville Mustangs. The game had become a yearly tradition, with the victor winning the honor of displaying the coveted iron trophy in the shape of a boot—representing the shape of Louisiana—at the school for the remainder of the academic year.
There was not a single seat left in the stands. People were crowded at least three deep along the fence, as well. Shayla was right; it looked as if every single person in Gauthier and Maplesville was at this game tonight.
Paxton buried her chin inside her jacket collar and braced herself against the blast of cold wind that blew across the bleachers. A collective whooooa went through the crowd.
People north of the Mason-Dixon would probably laugh at the crowd’s reaction to the temperature, which was just under fifty degrees, but south Louisianans weren’t used to such weather, especially this early in the season. The October cold front that had blown in had everyone pulling out their winter gear.
“Fun, right?” Shayla said as she sat next to Paxton and handed her a hot chocolate from the concession stand.
“If I had a list of things that are more fun than this, it would stretch from here all the way back to Little Rock,” Paxton answered.
“Well, can you pretend it’s fun so I don’t feel guilty for dragging you here?”
“I want you to feel guilty,” she said, taking a sip of her hot chocolate. She grimaced. “This is horrible.”
“I know. It’s instant. But it’s not supposed to taste good—it’s just supposed to warm you up.” Shayla nudged her shoulder and pointed to the far end of the football field. “The homecoming court is about to take their pregame walk.”
“And what is that?” Paxton asked.
“Just watch it,” Shayla said.
All of this was so foreign to her, Paxton was at a complete loss about how to act.
Back when they were in high school, she attended exactly two football games during her entire four years as a student, and neither of them had been the homecoming game. Not only did she abhor all the silly pageantry that appeared to her to be nothing more than a chance to heap more praise on the popular crowd, but she also hated football.
She really could think of a million places she’d rather be right now. She’d probably spend the majority of her time tonight coming up with a mental list. It would be better than having to pay attention to the game or to the homecoming court, which was currently receiving a standing ovation from the crowd.
She snorted.
A standing ovation? For what? Knowing how to walk in heels and wave at the same time?
Stop it! she mentally chastised herself.
Paxton slunk deeper into her collar, ashamed at the petty thoughts swirling through her head. These were kids, for goodness’ sake. And she was no longer that girl she once was in high school, seething with jealousy, coveting her fellow classmates’ fun-filled, carefree lives.
That Paxton Jones, the girl who had never fit into celebrations like this one, was gone. She had been replaced by the self-assured woman who was successful enough to buy her mother a bar and wear designer clothes and do all those other things she couldn’t do back in high school.
This new Paxton could put up with a few hours of this spectacle for her friend’s sake, couldn’t she?
The homecoming court walked the length of the football field. It looked rather silly to see the girls in their fancy dresses while their escorts—all football players—wore their uniforms. But since no one else pointed out the ridiculousness of it, Paxton decided it was best to keep her opinion to herself.
Once the girls were seated on the dais that had been erected on the running track that surrounded the field, their escorts joined the other members of the team underneath the goalpost at the far end of the field.
After the team ran through the sign the cheerleaders held up for them, everyone stood for the playing of the national anthem by the Gauthier Lions marching band. A small contingent from each team walked arm in arm to the center of the field for the coin toss, with a roar erupting when the Lions won the toss.
The moment the Mustangs’ kicker sent the ball sailing into the air, Paxton lost all interest in what was taking place on the field. While the two teams battled it out during the first quarter, she read through her work email on her phone, replying to those she’d flagged as low-priority follow-ups throughout the week. She shook the green-and-white pom-pom shaker Shayla had shoved into her hand when she heard the crowd cheer and joined in with the booing when that reaction was warranted.
The only time she raised her head was when Xavier arrived. She gave him a quick hug, then went back to checking her email.
“You could have stayed home for this,” Shayla told her at the end of the first quarter.
Paxton looked up from her phone. “What?”
Shayla grabbed her pant leg. “They’re calling out the classes by decade. You have to stand and cheer when they call the decade that you graduated.”
“Seriously?” Paxton said.
They called the 1990s.
“Come on!” Shayla grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her up. Paxton shook the pom-pom as enthusiastically as she could muster, which wasn’t much at all.
“You really do suck at this school spirit thing,” Shayla said as they wedged back into their spots in the packed bleachers.
“Again, how long have you known me?”
Shayla rolled her eyes. “At halftime they’re going to call each year individually, so you’ll have to stand again.”
“Oh, joy,” Paxton said.
“It’s Alumni Night. The whole point is to honor alumni. The football players from each class get to walk on the field and get a little taste of those glory days. It’s fun.”
For someone who actually had fun back in high school. But Paxton refrained from pointing that out.
She actually started to feel bad over her lack of enthusiasm. She knew Shayla was only trying to make her feel as if she were a part of the bigger group, just as she had in high school. The least she could do was pretend she was enjoying herself, for her friend’s sake.
Determined to abandon her stank attitude, Paxton tucked her phone away and tried her hardest to pay attention to the game. It was a stretch, but when the largest player on the Lions’ defense—who had to weigh at least three hundred pounds—recovered a fumble on the Mustangs’ fifteen yard line and ran it in for a touchdown, even Paxton had to stand up and cheer. There was a ten-minute delay while the paramedics rolled out an oxygen tank for the player, who had winded himself so much with the fifteen-yard run that he couldn’t even make it back to the sidelines.
While the player was being tended to, her eyes roamed the rest of the field. Paxton spotted a cadre of men and women in letterman jackets congregating on the sidelines around the thirty-yard line. She realized it must be the alumni taking part in the halftime ceremony Shayla had mentioned, players and cheerleaders from years past.
Her eyes sought Sawyer. He wasn’t hard to pick out of the crowd. As one of the Gauthier Lions’ most decorated quarterbacks of all time, he was the very center of attention, with fellow players giving him hearty pats
on the back and the cheerleaders sidling up to him with unabashed adoration in their eyes.
Paxton was hit with a wave of nostalgia that was both unsettling and, in an odd way she didn’t quite understand, comforting.
Standing on those sidelines was the Sawyer of her teenage daydreams, the tall, strapping, handsome boy who was revered by everyone who knew him. Seeing him there in his green-and-white letterman jacket, surrounded by his adoring fans, conjured up so many past memories that Paxton had to remind herself to take a breath.
All too soon that odd comfort she’d felt was overcome by a rush of dark unease. As she stared at the former cheerleaders and players encircling him, all of those old insecurities that had plagued her back in high school came flooding back. Some of those people currently worshipping Sawyer right now were the same people who used to look down on her.
And despite what her best friend thought, her hang-ups were not a figment of her imagination. Hell, it wasn’t until Shayla had befriended her that anyone had even bothered to acknowledge her at all.
To so many of the people in these stands, she was nothing more than Belinda Jones’s illegitimate daughter. She was the girl who had to work in Harlon’s just to help her family get by, the girl who made the same jeans last for three years because she was too proud to accept hand-me-downs. The girl who never fit in at high school games or pep rallies or homecoming dances.
The girl who didn’t belong here.
Paxton’s chest tightened to the point that she could barely take a breath.
At that moment, Sawyer looked into the stands, and their eyes locked. He smiled and gave her a little wave, but all Paxton could see was the bounty of reasons why they didn’t fit together—why they would never fit. They were both from this small town, but they were from two different worlds. And she didn’t belong in his. She never would.
She had to get out of there.
Paxton caught Shayla’s arm to get her attention and said, “I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be back.”
“Okay,” she called. “Don’t take too long or you’ll miss when they call our graduating year.”
Paxton nodded, even though it would take an army to make her come back into these stands. She jogged down the stadium steps to the path below, which traveled underneath the bleachers to the stadium exit.
“Paxton! Pax, wait up!”
She turned, stunned to see Sawyer jogging up behind her.
“What are you doing here?” Paxton asked. “Aren’t you supposed to take to the field in a few minutes?”
“I was, until I saw you leaving. Where are you going?”
She shook her head. “I don’t belong here, Sawyer. I don’t know why I let Shayla drag me to this game.”
“Paxton—”
“Don’t.” She put her hand up. “Don’t feed me lines about how I belong here just as much as everyone else does, or any of that other crap.”
His deep chuckle came as such a surprise that Paxton jerked back a step. “What’s so funny?”
“You,” he said without hesitation, without one ounce of remorse. “You’re so clueless that it’s actually comical.”
Yet another person calling her clueless today.
Before she could retaliate, he took her by the arm and tugged her deeper beneath the bleachers, away from the concrete path leading to the parking lot. Splotches of the gleaming stadium lights filtered through the stands, illuminating people here and there, mostly teen couples making out.
Sawyer positioned her against the steel leg truss. Gripping the metal above her head with one hand, he caught her chin with the other and nudged her face up. Instead of pissing her off, the humor sparkling in his eyes made her want to smile, too. But she fought the urge. Just barely.
“Paxton, do you have any idea how often I sought Shayla out in the stands back when we were in school, hoping that she had somehow convinced you to come with her to a game?”
She blinked hard, dumbfounded by his admission. “Why? You played in front of packed stadiums every Friday night. I remember the frenzy surrounding you back in our senior year. People who had never heard of Gauthier before would travel from as far as Covington and Picayune to come see you play.”
“I didn’t care about those people. You’re the one I wanted to impress.”
“But why? I didn’t even like football. I still don’t.”
He shrugged. “Nothing else I tried to do ever got your attention. I thought maybe if I impressed you with my football skills, you’d finally notice me.”
“I noticed you,” Paxton said before she could even think to hold the words back.
The crazy-sexy smile that gradually lifted the corners of his mouth did unbelievable things to her insides.
“You did a damn fine job of pretending that you didn’t.” His eyes roamed her face, his fingers brushing her cheekbone.
He leaned forward, his breath skimming along the sensitive skin of her neck. “You want to know a secret?”
Paxton sucked in a deep breath. Swallowed. Then nodded.
“When we would fall behind, I would pretend that you were there,” he whispered into her ear. “Coach Jackson may have thought it was his pep talks that got me going, but it wasn’t. I would pretend you were in the stands, watching me, and it was all the encouragement I needed to turn the game around.
“So, even though you weren’t there, I still owe that senior season to you. Because just the thought of you was enough to make me want to be better.”
Her heart flipped twice, did a waltz and then collapsed in flat-out exhaustion from the tailspin his sweetly whispered words induced.
She tried to avert her eyes, but he wouldn’t let her.
“Now tell me,” he said. “Why were you really leaving?”
“I already told you. Because I never fit in here. And...” She shook her head. God, if she started to cry she would never, ever forgive herself. She didn’t cry. Especially here of all places. “Seeing all of you on that field tonight—the cheerleaders, the homecoming queen—it just reminded me of how much I don’t belong.” She looked up at him, and as much as she tried, she couldn’t mask the hurt in her voice. “I was never that girl, Sawyer.”
He leaned in so close that their heads nearly touched. With his intense eyes locking hold on her gaze, he said, “You were always that girl for me.”
Paxton went liquid as a warmth she’d never experienced before embraced her, wrapping her up in a blanket of sheer enchantment.
“You know what I just realized?” Sawyer whispered, trailing his lips along her jawline. “I can finally live out a fantasy I’ve had since high school.”
“What fantasy?” she asked.
“To kiss a girl under the bleachers.”
Sensations in all makes and models fluttered through her stomach as his strong fingers gently gripped her waist.
“In four years of high school you never kissed a girl beneath the bleachers?” Paxton asked, her voice thready. She was trying her hardest not to gasp. “Isn’t that like a rite of passage or something?”
“The only girl I wanted to kiss beneath the bleachers was never at the games. But since she’s here now, it’s only fair that I get to kiss her.”
Her heartbeat escalated as Sawyer’s mouth closed in on her, his lips slanting over hers.
“Eww, gross,” came a teenage voice from somewhere in the darkness. “Let’s get out of here. I’m not here to see some old couple making out.”
Paxton nearly backed away from the kiss so she could tell the kid off for calling them old, but when Sawyer’s wet tongue started a hot trail along the seam of her lips she forgot teenagers even existed. She forgot about everything but the man whose splayed hand was slowly making its way up her spine. He pulled her closer, and the telling bulge pressing against her stomach told Paxton all s
he needed to know about how incredibly turned on he was.
He wasn’t the only one.
A roar erupted above them, and the bleachers shook with the crowd’s rowdy cheers, but Paxton could not care less about whatever was happening above their heads or on the field. Apparently, neither could Sawyer. He never lost stride as he parted her lips and found his way inside.
Paxton closed her eyes and soaked in this moment as her girlhood dreams were brought to life within Sawyer’s arms. Back and forth her tongue moved in rhythm with his, rediscovering his texture, his taste. She moved her hand inside his letterman jacket, trailing them along his sides before settling them at his waist.
Sawyer narrowed the distance between them even more, his big, solid body pressing against hers as his tongue delved deeper, the gentle yet sure thrusts awakening those same feelings she’d experienced when he kissed her in the arbor. Paxton moved her hand to the back of his head and held him in place. She sucked his tongue, wanting it, needing it to fill her mouth. Her entire being grabbed hungrily at this small glimpse of heaven on earth.
“Okay, you two. Break it up.”
She and Sawyer both jumped and pulled apart at the strictly spoken command.
Zoe Taylor, who had been a senior and student body president during their freshman year, and who had just been hired as the new assistant principal at Gauthier High, crossed her arms over her chest and cleared her throat.
“Really?” she said. “I expected better from the two of you.” Then a smile curved up the corners of her lips as she winked and walked away.
“I can’t believe we got caught kissing under the bleachers by the principal,” Paxton said.
“I think that’s another of those rites of passage. We’re hitting it out of the ballpark tonight.”
“I’ll check it off my bucket list as soon as I get home.”
His deep chuckle caused goose bumps to pop up all along her skin. Or maybe those were the lingering effects of that kiss. Paxton had a feeling she would be experiencing those for the rest of the week.
Stay with Me Forever Page 13