by Ella Maise
Right as I was about to say something else, I felt hands on my waist, and a second later I was flying through the air as I shrieked like a banshee.
“Look what I found,” someone sing-songed behind me as I tried my best to grab the hands that were clamped around my middle. Thank God the strap of my camera was wrapped around my wrist, saving it from flying across the field.
Recognizing the voice, I looked over my shoulder and down.
“Trevor?”
“That’s me,” he replied with a grinning face.
“Trevor, what the hell do you th—”
My words turned into another scream when he maneuvered—or more like abruptly flipped—me around until I was holding on to his neck, cradled like a baby in his arms.
“What’s up, buttercup?” he asked, his shit-eating grin still in place. I was pretty sure he’d been born with that smile, or another possibility was that he had worked on it in front of a mirror for years until he perfected it. “I’ve been watching you the last ten minutes. I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
“Let me down, you idiot,” I swore, out of breath.
“I’ll do just that once I get you away from enemy lines.”
I growled at my childhood friend, but it didn’t seem to have the desired effect on him; it never did. Gripping his shoulders for dear life as he sprinted away, I looked over his shoulder and my eyes zeroed in on one person.
Dylan.
All his teammates were filtering into the tunnel to get back to the locker rooms, but he was standing still, one hand holding his helmet by the fingertips, the other on his waist. I wanted to give him a wave or a smile, but he was looking at me in Trevor’s arms with a face carved from stone, his jaw set, expression completely closed up.
Something tightened in my chest, squeezing at my heart.
I slapped Trevor’s shoulder twice.
“Trevor, stop. Trevor, you have to stop!”
He must’ve heard the urgency in my tone because we finally came to a halt. Gently, he put me down back on my feet, and my eyes stayed on Dylan the whole time. I watched him take a step toward us, and then another, and another. My heart pounding just from seeing the determination on his face, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Something was about to happen—or was happening already—and my heart was flipping out on me. Trevor said something to get my attention and touched my shoulder.
My brows snapped together and I murmured a distracted, “What?”
Was Dylan jealous?
When he started a light jog toward us, I felt all the hairs on my arms stand up. I gave Trevor a quick glance.
“Can you give me a minute?”
He glanced back at what I was looking at, and I was already walking to meet Dylan halfway. The need to go to him had come out of nowhere. Maybe it was the way his hard eyes locked onto mine, daring me to look away, or maybe it was something about the controlled way his body was moving. God, he looked so good in his uniform, almost as good as he looked when he worked out in our kitchen half naked…almost. He looked larger than life, bigger and better than anyone else warming up on the field.
Before I had taken four steps, Chris blocked Dylan around the thirty-yard line. He rested his forehead against Dylan’s, squeezed his neck, and guided him toward the tunnel. Dylan frowned at him then shook his head once as if coming out of a trance. Then he was nodding and jogging alongside his teammate.
When he disappeared into the tunnel, I turned back to Trevor with a sheepish smile.
He raised an eyebrow, which only added to his signature cocky look. “Did I step on some toes?”
“What? No. What are you even doing here? I thought you were in Boston.”
“Yeah, I was, but I transferred here this year. You dating number twelve? That Reed guy?” he asked with a flick of his head toward where Dylan had disappeared to.
“No. He’s just my friend.”
After giving me a long, thorough look, he spoke again. “If you say so.” His big smile back in place, he gave me a playful shove. “Look at you, buttercup. I haven’t seen you in two years and this is where I find you? I missed you.”
“Don’t call me that,” I grumbled as I shoved him right back.
“Still so cute. What the hell are you doing here then? Came to watch your boyfriend get his ass handed to him by me?”
“I told you, he’s not my boyfriend.” I lifted my camera as if that would answer his question. “I’m on an assignment, taking shots of the team.” And because I didn’t like him talking about Dylan like that, I added, “And don’t be so sure whose ass will be getting kicked. They’re amazing.”
I actually had no idea if they were. All I knew was that Dylan was amazing.
His eyebrows shot up. “Are they now? And did you become a football expert because of a certain someone?”
We heard someone shout his name, and Trevor looked over his shoulder. “Shoot. Okay, I have to get back.” Grabbing the heavy camera out of my hand, he lifted it up in the air as if to take a selfie. “Come on, I want a photo of us together. I have a prettier face, and you need something better to look at than those baboons.”
“It’s off, you idiot.” I laughed when he couldn’t quite manage to figure out how to work it.
I turned the camera on and let him pull me to his side so he could get a shot of us together. When we heard his name called again, he thrust the camera back into my hands.
“Here, take it. Email me—both the photo and your number. I don’t have yours, so you better send it my way.” Jogging backward, he kept talking. “Don’t forget, Zoe bug. Better yet, I’ll email you my number and you can text me.”
“Okay!” I yelled back, smiling.
When he was close enough to his coaches, one of them hit him on the back of the head and his grin got bigger.
“Okay!” he yelled one last time, and then he was out of sight.
Our team was winning—Dylan’s team. I didn’t know exactly when it’d become our team in my mind, but I was swept up in the rush of the game and the magic of being in the stadium. Sure, maybe I didn’t get what was happening most of the time, but I was right there with them when everyone was cheering, yelling, or swearing. Even being close to Mark hadn’t managed to kill my excitement.
And Dylan…he was a beast. The way he ran away with that ball, his speed, the way he ducked and dodged and rolled and twisted and everything else he did—I was mesmerized just watching him.
It sounds weird to say out loud, but he felt like mine. I knew how he looked in the mornings, knew pretty much every muscle in his upper body. I hadn’t touched them or anything like that, but they were burned into my brain. I knew what he liked to have on his pizza, which was very important. Extra cheese, pepperoni, and black olives was his go-to, and he didn’t look at me like I was an alien because I liked pineapple on my pizza.
I knew his smiles, and he had a handful of them, each one deadlier than any other smile you could imagine. I knew when he brushed his palm through his short hair that he was stressed, agitated. I knew he liked to hold my hand; I didn’t know why, but I knew he liked it. If he was rolling his neck and that muscle in his jaw was working, he was angry and having trouble keeping himself under control. I knew making me blush just with the way he was looking at me amused him, and that usually prompted his amused smile, which never failed to kick my heart rate up. I knew he was the hardest working guy I’d ever seen. I knew he was one of a kind, and I knew with every passing day I wanted him to be mine—not my buddy, but mine, just mine.
Knowing all that about him scared the shit out of me. When it was the last play of the third quarter and the scoreboard showed 31-42, someone else walked out of the tunnel and joined his teammates on the sidelines.
JP Edwards.
My gaze zeroed in on the crutches under his arms, and the smile I had plastered on my face suddenly didn’t feel right.
The ref blew the whistle to end the quarter and the team huddled together with their coach. After some helmet slapp
ing, back thumps, and what I assumed were encouraging words, they made it to JP’s side. I was watching Dylan the entire time.
Out of breath, he came to a stop in front of his friend and took off his helmet, shoulders tense and high, the black paint under his eyes smeared. Balancing on one foot, JP rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head once. My camera was already in my hands so without second-guessing myself, I lifted it and took a quick shot, not sure what I was looking at, but wanting to capture it. I saw their lips move, but I had no idea what they were talking about. Dylan put a hand on JP’s shoulder, and JP shook his head again. Dylan’s hand curled around his neck and he dropped his forehead against his friend’s.
Click
I zoomed in and took another shot, realizing both their eyes were closed.
JP’s hand went around Dylan’s neck.
Click
Chris joined their little huddle and dropped his helmet to the ground next to them.
Click
Click
I lowered the camera and looked away. I’d already intruded more than I should’ve, but I hadn’t taken those shots for the assignment. Those were mine. If I was honest, I had taken a lot of shots that were just for me since the game had started.
“I’m gonna grab something to drink. You girls want anything?” Cash asked us. Miriam was busy texting on her phone, but she looked up long enough to shake her head.
“Water would be good,” I said, and he moved off toward the team, talking to a few players before heading our way.
When he got back, I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “You know what’s going on over there?” I tipped my chin toward JP, where at least ten or fifteen of his teammates were surrounding him in a half-circle. I took the water bottle Cash handed me.
“Yeah. Bad news for JP, and the team, really. Apparently he’s done for the season. He’s gonna need surgery for that foot injury, and his career is probably over if he can’t recover fully. It’s too bad—he was a hell of a player.”
“Just like that?” I asked. “One injury and he’s out? Done?”
“Yeah. That’s how it goes with sports. You never know when you’ll be forced to tap out.”
“I didn’t see him at the hotel, or on the plane,” I managed to say through the rock lodged in my throat. I remembered the anguish and anger on Dylan’s face the day I’d found him sitting by himself in the dark. He was gonna be devastated.
“He wanted to be the one to tell his teammates and join them for one last game before all that, so they flew him in today.”
The boys ran to the fifty-yard line and the last quarter of the game started. It turned vicious in no time. I’d seen tackles, but after the last quarter, after the news from his friend…if Dylan had been a beast before, he’d turned into the Hulk in no time. I flinched and gasped throughout the entire thing, especially when someone tackled Dylan right after he practically flew into the air and caught the ball. It was brutal, sure, but Dylan always got back up with the ball still in his hands, and I got over it pretty quickly. Trevor hadn’t stepped foot on the field for the first half of the game, but he’d been there for the second half. So, when Dylan took Trevor to the ground right at the beginning of the last quarter after Chris threw an interception and Trevor caught it—at least that was what Miriam told me had happened—I was worried he’d broken my childhood friend in half. Trevor eventually pushed himself up, but it took some time.
The rest of the game went the same way—tackles, passes, whistles, cheers, tackles again. The game hadn’t even ended and I already had a crick in my shoulder blades from all the tension.
When there were only seconds left, Chris took a few steps back then threw the ball in a perfect arch straight toward Dylan from the forty-five-yard line, and I was up on my feet right alongside Miriam and Cash. It seemed like every player on the field was running toward that damn ball. Sucking in a breath and holding it in, my hands clutched my head and I watched Dylan shoulder bump another player, jump high, and snatch the ball right out of the air with his fingertips. Before I could process the perfect catch, he had the ball tucked under his arm and was off running toward the goal line like the roadrunner from the cartoon.
A player caught up to him from behind and threw himself toward Dylan’s back, but as if he had eyes in the back of his head, Dylan swerved right and avoided him by inches. I jumped up and down like a giddy little school girl. “Yes! Yes!” All caught up with the roaring crowd now, I was about to come out of my skin when someone came out of nowhere and tried to block him. Dylan jumped to the side before the guy could do anything, and he ran the last five yards without another player hunting him down. They were too slow for him. My cheeks hurting from smiling so damn hard, I jumped up and down as I watched my buddy score his third touchdown of the night.
He was amazing.
My hands shaking a little, I lifted my camera up, ready to photograph the joy on his perfectly chiseled face if he took his helmet off, but instead of letting his teammates tackle him down like they had before, he dodged every single one of them like they didn’t exist for him and ran straight back to the fifty yard line, ignoring every player and non-player pouring onto the field. I followed him with my eyes to see where he was going and watched as he stopped and dropped to one knee in front of JP, who looked like he was having a little trouble standing upright with his crutches. Out of nowhere, Chris appeared right next to Dylan and dropped to his knee as well.
Holding my breath, I lifted my camera a little higher, my fingers itching to capture just a second of their moment. Then, one by one, all the players on the field kneeled in front of their teammate, a few behind Dylan and Chris, a few to their right.
Before the chanting started, I ran toward the mouth of the tunnel, came to a quick stop, and lined up with JP to the left so I could have Dylan right in the middle of my shot. I focused on Dylan’s hard, unyielding, sweaty face and took the shot that would become one of my most cherished photos.
When it all stopped, I was still standing in the exact same spot, rooted in place.
Dylan got up and went to his friend. Whispering something in his ear, he carefully pulled JP to himself and they gave each other one of those manly hugs. I was having a really really hard time holding back my tears. When the rest of his team swarmed around their injured teammate, Chris included, Dylan’s dark blue eyes met mine, piercing me with his gaze.
As he broke off from the crowd, I slowly lowered my camera and watched him stalk toward me, our eyes never losing contact. He covered the distance between us in no time. When he was standing right in front of me, I stared up at him, just as out of breath as he was, if not more. On top of that, I could feel my hands shaking ever so slightly as I tried not to lose the smile I’d plastered on my face.
Calm your tits, Zoe. It’s nothing more than an adrenaline rush. He is still your friend.
“Who is he?” were the first words out of his mouth.
My smile faltered. “What?”
“Number four.” I must have looked as clueless as I felt because he waited for an answer from me before continuing. “Trevor Paxton—you were in his arms.”
Snorting, I relaxed and my smile tipped my lips up again. I’d been right before—he was jealous. Just the realization eased something in my chest. “My friend from Phoenix. We grew up in the same neighborhood, same high school and everything. Strictly friends.”
At my words, his shoulders dropped down slightly. “Okay. Okay, that’s good.”
I nodded in quick jerks and tried not to grin. Yeah, it was good.
His eyes bored into mine and his jaw clenched. “You’re not looking away. Why are you not looking away?”
I ignored his words and lost the battle with my lips. I smiled big, teeth and everything. “You were amazing, Dylan, really freaking amazing.” Standing in front of me in all those pads, he looked so intimidating, so big.
His frown smoothed out completely and he gave me a boyish smile. “Yeah?”
My eyes dro
pped to his lips for a few seconds as I took in that beautiful, surprised smile—another one to add to the list.
I wish he was mine, I thought as I lifted my eyes back up.
I smiled even bigger, if that was possible. “Yep.”
One of the coaches ran past us, breaking our little huddle. Dylan grabbed my arm and shuffled me back a few steps until I was almost against the wall, bringing us closer.
“Now I understand all the hype,” I continued before he could say anything else. “I feel a little light headed, like I’m a drunk on the game. You guys were amazing.” Another winning—or losing, depending on where you stood—smile from me. “I admit, I know practically nothing about football, and I only watch it on TV for twenty minutes tops before I get bored, but it was different being here. I’m not sure you’d call it fun since you’re the one being chased and occasionally tackled, but I loved it. I didn’t like seeing you get tackled like that, of course, but you know what I mean. It was almost better than watching you work out in the kitchen—almost.” I paused to take a breath. I was awestruck, and I didn’t mind him seeing that in my face. “I want to do it all over again, right now. You were really great, Dylan.”
The deep blue in his eyes sparkled with an emotion I couldn’t name. “You said that already, Flash,” he murmured, his deep voice sending a thrill through my body.
I swallowed and moved my head up and down, because I was having trouble coming up with more words, and yeah, I had said that already—a few times actually. My brain was telling me it was time to leave before I started rambling.
When Dylan looked over his shoulder toward the field, I looked that way too. A few of his teammates had already started to head for the locker rooms.
“I should let you—”
I stopped speaking when Dylan’s gloved hand—his huge gloved hand—cupped my cheek and gently tilted my face up. The world around me slowed down, and I stood still. I swear to you, I watched his eyes roam my face in slow motion.