CHAPTER 11 #2
Then two figures came into view. A trainer, and beside him, Matty.
He was limping, one arm slung around the trainer’s shoulders for balance.
His helmet hung from his hand, his other arm held tight against his ribs.
Sweat stuck his hair to his forehead, and his face was set in a hard, unflinching line.
He didn’t look at the stands, didn’t acknowledge the noise, just kept walking.
Each step looked like it cost him.
I stood there frozen, the tiger head heavy in my hands, my heart pounding so hard it made me lightheaded. My stomach sank like a stone.
He was coming straight toward me.
I fumbled for the tiger head, trying to lift it, but before I could get it over my face, he looked up. Our eyes met across the stretch of tunnel, and for a second, the rest of the world disappeared.
Shock flickered across his face, halting him mid-step.
The trainer glanced at him in confusion, murmuring something I couldn’t hear.
Then, slowly, his expression changed. The tension in his jaw eased, and a small, crooked smile tugged at his mouth…
the kind that had wrecked me a hundred times before when I’d watched him direct it to someone else.
The trainer said something again, tugging lightly on his arm, but Matty didn’t move. His gaze stayed locked on me. That smile deepened, lazy and warm, and even from where I stood, I could see the faint dimple crease his cheek.
“Well,” he said slyly, “I didn’t realize the tiger was actually the most beautiful girl on campus.”
My face went up in flames. I could feel it, even through the heat still clinging to my skin. His grin widened like he knew exactly what he was doing.
“You’re blushing again,” he said softly, amused, like it was a secret only we shared.
My throat tightened. I swallowed hard and managed to find my voice. “Are you…are you okay?” The words slipped out before I could stop them, my worry too obvious for a person who was supposed to be a stranger.
He tilted his head, considering me. For a heartbeat, the smile faded, replaced by something gentler, almost tender. “I’m okay, baby.”
The word baby hit me physically. My knees went weak. I had to grip the edge of the tiger head just to stay upright, hoping he couldn’t see how my hands trembled.
He chuckled quietly, the charm sliding back into place. “So,” he said, the corner of his mouth curving again, “you gonna tell me your name yet? Feels like since we’re both so into school spirit, I deserve to know who’s behind the stripes.”
I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even breathe. I just shook my head.
And when he laughed, I realized…he didn’t think it was weird. He didn’t see it as anything more than a coincidence that I was the tiger.
The relief that flooded through me was dizzying. He didn’t know. He had no idea.
He smiled wider, his eyes glinting. “Alright, then, Tiger. Keep your secrets.”
“Adler,” the trainer said exasperatedly, pulling on his arm again. “Let’s get that ankle looked at.”
Matty exhaled through his nose, still watching me like he wasn’t ready to move. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” he muttered, his grin lingering as he continued past me.
He’d barely taken three steps when a voice echoed from the far end of the tunnel…the spirit coordinator appeared, her tone clipped and impatient.
“Five minutes are up, Ophelia!”
Her voice cracked through the air like a gunshot. My whole body went still.
Matty stopped. The trainers did, too, glancing at each other. Slowly, he turned his head back toward me.
“Ophelia?” he repeated, his voice soft, almost curious. The name rolled off his tongue like he was testing it, tasting it…savoring it. “That’s your name?”
For a heartbeat, his grin flickered, half amusement, half disbelief. Then it shifted, tightening at the edges, something darker creeping in beneath the charm.
My stomach twisted.
He didn’t say anything else, just looked at me for a long moment before the trainer tugged him forward again. But that look, sharp and knowing, followed me long after he disappeared down the tunnel.
By the time the fourth quarter rolled around, the ache in my chest hadn’t faded. The crowd pulsed with a wild kind of energy, the bleachers shaking under the weight of stomping feet and shouting voices. It felt like the whole stadium was breathing in unison—loud, fevered, unstoppable.
But all I could feel was that last look he’d given me…etched behind my eyelids, sitting heavy under my skin. I’d replayed it a hundred times between cheers and tumbles, between the fake energy and the forced exuberance. Every time, my stomach flipped the same way it had when he said my name.
“Alright!” the spirit coordinator shouted, clapping her hands as the scoreboard flashed 21–17, South Carolina on top. Losing Matty had been a big blow, even with all the offensive weapons on the team. “Last push! Big finish!”
Groans rippled through the sideline, but the girls still forced bright smiles, shaking out their pom-poms as the band kicked up another fight song that sounded a little too hopeful for how the game was going.
I nodded, though the world outside the mesh was a blur of lights and sound, a haze of orange and white. My legs ached. My throat was dry. And every so often, when the noise died down between plays, I thought I could still hear his voice.
I forced my arms to move, my head to nod in rhythm, but my thoughts were nowhere near the field. They were on him. The tunnel. His voice when he’d said baby.
The crowd suddenly erupted again, a surge so fierce it vibrated through the turf and up my legs.
I scanned the field until I spotted him…Matty, jogging back onto the field, his stride uneven with the faintest limp.
He jogged to his spot on the line, shaking out his hands as the offense reset. Parker shouted something to him, and Matty turned his head, nodded once, and settled into position.
My breath caught. He shouldn’t have been out there, not after limping off like that, pain etched into every move. But there he was, determined as ever, his jaw tight…eyes locked downfield like he could will the game to bend his way.
The line shifted. The center snapped the ball, and the roar of the crowd fell into a strange, suspended hush…like the whole stadium was holding its breath.
Helmets cracked, bodies slammed, and through the chaos, I caught a flash of him. Matty. Breaking free. His stride uneven but relentless, driving forward as if pain didn’t exist. Parker launched the ball, a perfect spiral slicing through the sky.
And Matty caught it.
He dodged the first defender with a quick side step that shouldn’t have been possible on that ankle, the second with a twist that left the guy grabbing at air. Two more came for him, closing fast, and Matty cut left, slipping through the gap like he’d rehearsed it a thousand times.
The field opened up ahead of him. Forty yards. Thirty.
The crowd’s noise climbed, a rolling thunder that shook through the turf and into my chest. He shouldn’t have been that fast. Not when he’d limped off barely an hour ago.
A defender dove, fingertips grazing his jersey…but Matty didn’t break stride. He drove forward, the ball locked tight against his side, every step defying reason.
And then he crossed the line into the end zone. Touchdown. The scoreboard flashed. The Tigers won.
Momentum carried him a few more feet before he dropped to one knee, his head bowed, clutching the ball to his chest like he could feel the heartbeat of the win inside it.
The crowd had gone feral. Students vaulted over barriers. The band screamed out the fight song like it was a war cry. Gold-and-white confetti cannons exploded somewhere to my left, dusting the field in a storm of color and light.
But Matty wasn’t looking at the crowd as he stood up, he wasn’t taking in the way they were worshipping him.
His gaze cut through the noise, searching…and then locking. On me?
My feet stuttered to a stop, the heavy tiger head bobbling slightly as heat prickled down my spine. He was still twenty yards away, his teammates slapping his back, shouting, celebrating…but he still didn’t take his eyes off me.
A nervous laugh caught in my throat as I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see someone else behind me. A cheerleader, a reporter, anyone who actually belonged in his world. But there was no one in particular I could see. Just me.
My lungs forgot how to work.
He started walking. Then jogging…slow, uneven steps at first, the limp still there. The helmet came off with one easy motion, his dark hair curling at the edges, sweat glinting along his neck. The lights hit his face, and that grin, completely devastating, spread across his mouth.
Cameras might’ve been everywhere, the whole stadium watching—but it still felt like he was moving through the noise just for me.
My breath caught behind the mesh as he closed the distance between us, stopping right in front of me. His gaze traveled over the ridiculous suit like he could see straight through it.
Then he smiled. The slow, dangerous kind that usually meant trouble. I’d learned that after all my months of watching him.
“I have to say,” he murmured, leaning closer, “finding out you’ve been here on the sidelines with me all season? It feels like fate.”
The words sent a rush through me, hot and dizzying. I took a small step back, the tail of the suit brushing the turf.
He didn’t let me retreat.
Matty reached out, his gloved hand catching the side of the tiger’s head, holding it steady. His thumb traced the painted cheek, and the world tilted on its axis. The crowd, the band, the deafening roar…all of it blurred into silence.
Then he leaned in.
His mouth pressed against the mesh, not my skin, but close enough that it didn’t matter.
The faint scratch of fabric, the heat of his breath, the pressure—it stole every thought I had.
The kiss wasn’t soft or careful. It was fierce, unapologetic, the kind meant to leave a mark even through layers of foam and fur.
Some part of me knew he was kissing the tiger’s grin…that our lips weren’t actually touching. But my heart didn’t seem to care. It felt like the whole world had just shifted around that single impossible moment.
So impossible, it felt like I would wake up any second now and find out I’d been dreaming this entire time.
I was vaguely aware of the stadium getting even louder…of students screaming, and the band losing their rhythm entirely. Somewhere close by, I think someone shrieked Matty’s name.
All of it was background noise, though. Nothing compared to the fact that his arms were wrapped around me and he’d pulled me against him even though everything about my tiger costume was awkwardly shaped.
He pulled back with that grin that could end civilizations. “Guess I’ll have to do that again when you’re not wearing twenty pounds of fur,” he said, his voice low enough that it was meant only for me. “Gotta let everyone know who my lucky tiger really is.”
The words had barely left his mouth when a sideline reporter rushed in, shoving a microphone toward him as her camera crew swarmed closer. “Matty, how’s the ankle? What was going through your head on that play? Was that kiss planned?” she fired off.
Matty didn’t even blink.
He snatched the mic right out of her hand.
“Ophelia,” he said into it, his voice amplified just enough to carry over the nearest cameras and sideline noise.
That grin curved slow and certain, the kind that said he knew exactly what he was doing…
and that he wanted everyone close enough to hear it.
“You can run if you want, but everyone here just saw it. I’ll find you.
Tunnel, dorms, hell, even the moon, if I have to. ”
The crowd detonated. The reporter gaped. Cameras flashed like lightning.
I froze, my heart slamming so hard I thought I’d pass out right there in the suit.
Then instinct kicked in.
I turned and ran, sprinting for the tunnel, the tiger head wobbling, foam paws thudding against the turf. The roar of the crowd followed…screams, laughter, the echo of his voice chasing me down the field like a fire I couldn’t put out.
The kiss still burned through the mask, seared into my skin, into my pulse.
And beneath it, one thought pounded hard and undeniable in my head.
I don’t think Matty Adler is ignoring me anymore.