Autumn

by Sierra Dean

  The ball snapped to the quarterback, and Cooper took off towards the end zone. Running brought a cool breeze across his face, temporarily chasing off the heat. For a moment the thrill of it swept him up, and he looked beyond the wall of the stadium to the cloudless blue sky and the tops of the pine trees beyond.

  Run, a voice within said, urging him to keep going, to clear the end zone and never stop.

  A different, older instinct kicked in, making him pivot his head back in time to see the ball sailing at him. He snagged it out of the air, tucking the ball into his chest and lowering his head. If he focused, he could feel the rumble of feet through the ground as he was chased.

  Cooper closed his eyes. He could find the end zone blindfolded, so he let his other senses take over. Someone dove at him, and he sidestepped, easily avoiding the tackle. Another player tried to assault him from the opposite side, and Cooper ducked, the big body sailing over his back and hitting the turf with a thud and a loud swear.

  Eyes still closed, Cooper picked up his pace and plowed forward to his finish line. At the last second someone grabbed him around the knees, sending him sprawling down, but still he held the ball, squirming his way forward even as he was falling.

  He fell half across the line, scoring the touchdown.

  In an active game, the crowd would have ignored the name on his jersey and broken out in cheers. It was one of the only times the Reynolds name didn’t count against him. If he was playing, and playing well, who he was didn’t matter, because what he was doing mattered much more.

  Football trumped everything else in Poisonfoot.

  If Hitler could score touchdowns, someone would be around to make excuses for him to be on the team. No one in town liked Cooper, but he could score at least one touchdown a game, which made him first string. And it was the only time he mattered to anyone outside his family.

  That was why he kept showing up. It was why he’d spent three years sharing a locker room with people who hated him and otherwise ignored him.

  Because once every other week he was important, and it gave him something to look forward to.

  But this wasn’t a game. It was practice. And no one here was rooting for his success. During practice games the points didn’t matter. It was just whether or not you were screwing things up.

  “All right. Good job, Reynolds. Don’t let it get to your head. Let’s set this up again.”

  No one helped Cooper to his feet, and no one cheered. The points didn’t count for anything here, so his effort went unrewarded. He dusted himself off, fresh grass stuck in his yellow vest, and rejoined the rest of the team on the line of scrimmage. He was falling into formation when his gaze landed on the bleachers.

  Lou Whittaker was sitting on the bottom step, wearing a black shirt with an undistinguishable art print on the front that was falling off one shoulder, her light brown hair in a messy ponytail. And she was staring right at him.

  When she noticed she’d captured his attention, she lifted her hand and waved. He could see her blush, obviously self-conscious of the scrutiny she was now under.

  An elated thrill rushed through him, his pulse hopping as a shy smile crossed her lips. He was happy to see her, bizarrely overjoyed she had found her way here, regardless of the reason.

  A part of him hoped like hell she was there for him, as improbable as that might be.

  Then the logical half of his mind told him not to be stupid, and that same part grew bitter, wondering why she had to show up and interrupt the one bit of his life she wasn’t meant to be a part of. It was bad enough he saw her every morning in chemistry, but now she was sneaking into his weekends, mocking him with her very presence.

  He sighed and looked away.

  The rest of the practice went as well as could be expected—meaning he scored another touchdown, withstood several tackles, and managed to only get screamed at by Coach seven more times.

  As the players jogged off the field, Lou got to her feet to meet whoever she’d come to watch. The guys ran past her with a few curious glances, but none stopped. Cooper was last off the field, and when he approached the bleachers, she waved again.

  He looked behind him.

  Nope, she was definitely waving at him.

  “Hey,” she said, putting her hands in her pockets. The knees of her jeans were worn through, giving him a glimpse of her tanned legs. He glanced back at her face, trying not to imagine her in a skirt.

  “Hi,” he muttered in return. He was sure to woo her with his linguistic prowess.

  “Good game.”

  “That was just practice.”

  She raised a brow that clearly said, Do I look stupid? “I know. I’m just saying…you’re good.”

  “Thanks.”

  They stared at each other.

  “Do you have to be so weird?” she asked suddenly.

  “I’m weird? You came to my game.”

  “Your practice.”

  He laughed, his own self-imposed stony façade crumbling. “Has anyone ever told you you’re really annoying?” He tucked his helmet under his arm.

  “I prefer to think of myself as charmingly persistent,” Lou corrected. “Anyway, what are you doing right now?”

  Cooper checked himself before he could do another glance over his shoulder to make sure she meant to address the question to him. Or to decide if this was some kind of prank.

  “Why?”

  “I thought guys in the South were supposed to be gentlemen. I want you to show me around.”

  “Lou, I thought we already talked about this. You spent all week eating with Marnie and her friends. You know you can’t keep doing that if you hang out with me.”

  “Look, I don’t see Marnie here, and I honestly don’t know why everyone is so anti-Cooper. Since no one is willing to give me a good reason—or any reason—why I should steer clear of you, I’m throwing caution to the wind. Now go hose your stink off and give me the ten-cent tour of this town of yours. Deal?”

  Cooper hesitated. She was nice, and she clearly didn’t appreciate how bad things could get for her if she was nice to the wrong people. But his loneliness overwhelmed his sense of common decency. The right thing to do would be to blow Lou off and give her a reason to avoid him. If he was mean to her, she’d stop trying to be his friend and she’d be better for it.

  He wasn’t that kind, though.

  He wanted a friend so badly it ached inside him like a disease, and here she was offering him exactly what he most craved. Naturally he was suspicious of a pretty girl demanding to spend time with him—what boy in his right mind wouldn’t be?—but in that moment he didn’t care what her motives were.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be back in ten. But just so you know, it’s more of a five-cent tour. There’s not a hell of a lot of town to see.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find a way to make it interesting.”

  Was she&flirting with him?

  He regarded her carefully, trying to figure her out, but Lou just smiled.

  Cooper didn’t need a lot of experience with women to know Lou Whittaker was going to be trouble for him.

  Chapter Ten

  It was evident where all the money went at Poisonfoot High School. Lou’s old school hadn’t been poor by any means, but football wasn’t nearly as big a deal there as it was in Texas. The benches in the stadium back home had been old and made of wood, and she’d gotten more than her fair share of splinters in the butt from nights spent on those bleachers.

  Here the seats were sleek metal, and in the early September sunshine they were warm to the touch. She couldn’t imagine sitting on them during the height of summer.

  Lou fiddled with her cell while she waited for Cooper, an anxious hum bubbling through her. She thought at first it was because she was doing something everyone had warned her against, but the longer she waited, the more she realized the truth. Lou was just excited to spend one-on-one time with Cooper. It had nothing to do with the forbidden aspect.

  She liked h
im.

  As much as she could like a person she barely knew who usually refused to speak to her.

  A shadow fell over her, blotting out the sun. “That was fast,” she said, looking up.

  A boy who wasn’t Cooper was staring back down at her. He had the vague familiarity of someone she knew she’d seen before, but she had no idea who he was. A surprising number of students attended Poisonfoot High, and she was still working on figuring out the names of people she shared classes with.

  “Oh, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

  He smiled at her, the white-toothed, too-broad grin of someone who had a lot of confidence in himself. “You’re the new girl, right? I saw you sitting over here alone, figured I’d come say hi.”

  The boy was handsome in a way that made her uneasy. He seemed too relaxed to be real. No teenager she’d ever met was as self-possessed as this guy. He had blond hair so light it was almost white, and blue eyes that rivaled the Texas sky in their hue.

  When he smiled, dimples showed on his cheeks.

  He looked like the after photo in an orthodontist’s office.

  He was also the walking personification of what she imagined a boy in Texas should look like. His voice had a masculine, honeyed drawl, and he wore a plain red shirt tucked into his well-fit Levi’s. Lou gave him a once-over. He was wearing cowboy boots.

  She wanted to find this hilarious, but something about him was oddly charming.

  “Hi,” she said, belatedly returning his greeting. “I’m Lou.”

  “Elle Whittaker’s granddaughter, right? My family goes to church with your grandma. Haven’t had the pleasure of seeing you there, though.” Coming from anyone else she’d have taken this as an accusation of her morality. This guy just seemed to be making an observation.

  “No. Not yet.” And not ever if she could help it, but Granny Elle was already threatening to wake her at the ass crack of dawn the next morning to make her go. Lou was worried her grandmother might have the upper hand.

  “I’m Archer.” He held out his hand. “Archer Wyatt.”

  She got to her feet and shook his hand, since it seemed to be the thing kids at this school did, and was impressed he didn’t hold back on his strength because she was a girl. “Nice to meet you, Archer. What brings you to the school on a nice, sunny Saturday?”

  Archer pointed to the field. “I’m on the team. You tellin’ me you watched that whole practice and didn’t notice me out there at all?” He winked. “I must be losing my skills.”

  Lou decided not to tell him she’d been otherwise distracted. “It’s sort of hard to tell who’s who. You know, with the helmets and everything.”

  “Ah, true. Well, I’m the captain. And the quarterback. Easy to remember that.”

  What little Lou knew about football told her that this information was Archer’s way of bragging. Again, she wanted to be put off by his bravado, but he was so damned charming.

  “Noted.”

  “You need a ride home?” He put a hand on her shoulder and applied a small amount pressure, as though he was trying to move her in the direction of the parking lot. It was subtle, but Lou caught it.

  “I’m actually waiting for someone.” She pulled her shoulder back and reclined on the metal bench, not wanting to be rude but wanting to let him know she wasn’t leaving with him.

  Archer either missed the hint or chose to ignore it, because he sat next to her, kicking his long legs out in front of him and leaning against the bench behind them. He looked like the freaking Marlboro Man. Someone needed to take his picture and put it in the dictionary beside All-American.

  His perfection made Lou all too aware of her own flaws. Suddenly her tangled hair and ripped jeans were taunting her, and she felt self-conscious in a way she didn’t when she was around Cooper. Archer, for his part, seemed blithely unaware of his effect on her and had tilted his face up to the sun, basking in the warmth like a cat.

  “Tell me about yourself, Lou. There’s no need to be a stranger. Your grandma told my mom you weren’t meeting any new people in your first week.”

  Lou bristled. Granny Elle was so dead set on keeping Lou away from Cooper she’d started trying to find her friends? It might have been a nice gesture, except Lou was certain it wasn’t meant as a simple kindness. Archer was talking to her because her own grandmother was trying to force friendships on her. What the heck was up with that?

  “I’ve made friends,” Lou protested. “I’ve been spending time with Marnie Jackson.”

  Archer nodded, still not opening his eyes. “I don’t think you’re here waiting for Marnie, though.”

  “I wasn’t waiting for you either, but you seem to have invited yourself to stay.” Lou was inwardly appalled at her own rudeness, but she wanted to get rid of Archer before Cooper came back. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed of being seen with her lab partner, but she had a feeling Cooper spooked easily. He’d been hesitant to agree to hang out with her in the first place, and if he saw Archer lounging around, he might reconsider their plans.

  Archer cracked his eyelids and looked at her. Rather than being offended by her response, he appeared downright amused. “You’re sparky,” he told her. “I like that.”

  Lou had never in her life been referred to as sparky.

  “I am waiting for someone,” she reminded him.

  “I know. I’m being a gentleman. It’s not nice to make a lady wait alone.” He covered his brow with one hand and met her gaze, grinning boldly. “Be honest now, Lou. Do you really mind the company?”

  She squirmed uncomfortably under his attention. “I guess not.”

  “Good.”

  Cooper stopped next to the bottom of the bleacher and cleared his throat. Archer turned his focus from Lou to the new arrival, and his expression changed instantly. Instead of being calm and relaxed, his jaw tensed and a stormy look clouded his eyes.

  “Reynolds.”

  “Wyatt.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re who this lovely young lady is waiting for.”

  Lou tried to express her apologies to Cooper with only a glance, but he was too busy staring at Archer to see her.

  “I thought I was.”

  “He is,” Lou announced. “You are.” She got to her feet and put some distance between herself and Archer, moving closer to Cooper as if to prove her point.

  “You think that’s a good idea, Reynolds? Lou here is new.”

  Cooper’s face mirrored Archer’s, jaw tight, expression serious. “I think Lou is capable of making her own decisions.”

  “Lou is also standing right here,” she said.

  Neither of them looked at her, they were too busy glowering at each other. The tension between the two of them was so tangible, Lou thought she might be able to reach out and touch it.

  “All right.” After a loaded silence, Archer hopped up. “Lou, it was a pleasure to meet you. Hope to see you at church tomorrow. You let me know if there’s anything at all you need, okay?” He tipped an imaginary cap at her and strode off the field without so much as a backwards glance.

  “Maybe I should just take you home,” Cooper said once Archer was out of sight. “This was a bad idea.”

  But with Archer gone, Lou only had eyes for Cooper. He wore a long-sleeved gray Henley over a pair of dark jeans, favoring Chuck Taylors to cowboy boots. His brown hair—freshly washed—was a tousled mess and still a little wet. He smelled like soap.

  “I don’t want to go home.”

  A small smile flickered, gone so abruptly she thought she might have imagined it, but the thrill it sent through her was like liquid fire, making her pulse quicken and causing something inside her belly to fizz like Mentos in Diet Coke.

  “Okay, you don’t want to go home.” He hiked his gym bag up on his shoulder. “What do you want to do?”

  “Show me all the glorious sights, Cooper Reynolds. Give me the grand tour.”

  “And what do you want to do after those five minutes are over?”

 
Lou laughed, jumping off the bleachers to stand beside him, feeling small but safe next to his tall frame. “Do you have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll find a way to kill some time.” She was impressed by her own boldness. But where Archer had made her nervous, Cooper brought out a fearlessness she hadn’t known she possessed. It made her silly and brave, and more willing to say things she never would have before.

  She liked it.

  Cooper made her feel like she could do anything.

  He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told her the tour of Poisonfoot would be a brief one. After leaving the high school parking lot in Cooper’s beat-up Ford pickup, they went down Mulberry—a quiet, idyllic residential street—and met up with Main. Lou hadn’t had much of a chance to see the shops on Main Street yet since her walking path home took her in the opposite direction.

  The storefronts looked straight out of a 1950s movie set, with white gables and shutters, all painted in cute shades of teal, cream, and barn red. Cooper pointed out the barbershop, the post office, a few small clothing stores, and the doctor’s office. As they continued down the street, the surroundings became more modern, with a squat brick apartment complex, a McDonald’s and then the Poisonfoot shopping center.

  The mall wasn’t much to look at, just a low concrete structure with a giant blue-and-white Walmart stuck on the end, but at least Lou knew she’d have a place to find five-dollar nail polish and trashy magazines. A Walmart meant she was still somewhat connected to the real world.

  A block past the Walmart the streets became more quaint and peaceful again, though the houses weren’t as classic as the ones nearer the school. These ones were seventies-style bungalows with large swaths of front lawn, all being watered in unison by sprinklers sending arches of water droplets into the air, which caught the afternoon light in a way that made them look like sequins.

  Lou had her window rolled down, and the wind smelled like fresh-cut grass and dust.

  After the houses was a long span of bare horizon, then before the woods picked up was a tall, ominous building with a wide, empty parking lot. Cooper pulled into the lot and stopped the car.