Chapter Thirteen #2
“Might as well be. The God Squad is baptizing y’all by fire.”
Noah stopped himself from looking at Rachel. She couldn’t be his moral support. He had to show her that Noah Calvary would always be the best. Her plan to take him down would crumble, and he’d line dance through the rumble… preferably with her on his arm.
The next few minutes were brutal. The sound of bodies colliding drew a fair share of oohs and audible hisses. Noah’s team scored another touchdown to even the score, but their energy expenditure on that last play might have drained their collective well.
“Come on, guys,” Noah rallied his buffed army, who looked confused by their current predicament. “We’re better than this.”
“And they’re better than us.” Stroker grinned, his tone light and jovial.
“Leave me out of your critique. I’m not giving up,” Noah grumbled, openly disgusted with his performance. He and his team needed to regroup. Noah signaled a time-out.
While he pondered his strategy, Benji ran a play that moved his team closer to scoring another goal.
Deuce, an affable kid with thick glasses when they were all scrawny and ran up and down the mountain like wildlings without a pack, had undergone a duck-to-less-ducky makeover, with contact lenses and a decent haircut for his chestnut curls. He’d also gotten more vocal.
“Noah, what’s your plan to slow the God Squad down?” Deuce demanded.
Noah lifted the tail of his T-shirt and then wiped the sweat from his eyes. “Why am I the one charged with our rescue?”
Jimmy piped up. “On account of it was your ego that spat us into the direct, and I mean the direct, fire of God.”
“Yeah,” Deuce agreed. “That Benji may be California love, but he tackles like I stole his mama’s purse,” their friend lamented, collapsing in the dandelion weeds sprouting in parts of the field.
Stroker spoke up, his tone more impressed than annoyed. “He catches, runs, and throws as good as you, Noah.”
“Better.” Jimmy frowned. “I haven’t seen a guy our age that fast outside of the NFL.”
“Are you bunch of senior citizens done? Do you want to kill them with kindness or win the game? They’re a fine enough team. So are we,” Noah proclaimed, ignoring the nods of agreement from the hay bale gallery. “We don’t know his moves. So what? He doesn’t know all our tricks.”
“I’m all tricked out,” Deuce said.
Tobias ambled over from the sidelines, the red cross emblem stretching a little prouder across his straight back. “If your team needs medical assistance, brother, I have my first aid kit.”
Noah didn’t take kindly to the ribbing. He didn’t lose at sports, any sport, especially to a plus one and his two brothers.
“Keep your kit, traitor,” he called back.
“Oh, that’s rich, Noah. You’re the one who never picks his brothers for teammates.”
“’Cause I want to win,” Noah snapped.
Tobias’s grin widened. “Yeah, I admit, it feels great to hear my name cheered from the stands.”
“Next touchdown is game,” Rachel smirked.
The portable scoreboard blinked with the news of a tied game. A shrill ringing of cell phones, all from Noah’s team, cut through the cheers and speculations.
The crowd fell silent. Noah’s pulse shot from steady into a full-on gallop. Noah looked past the others to find Rachel. A spark formed in his gut and then spread down his spine.
A fire.
Dangerous and needy called him on two fronts, and Noah would answer.
Behind her focused gaze, the fear flickered in smoky irises.
demanding that he allay her concerns. The other spark burning in Rachel’s eyes, he prayed, would simmer on a slow burn for when he returned.
And he would return to collect on the heat blazing in the taut lines of her body.
As the gravity of the situation strengthened, determination demolished everything in its path.
In an instant, reality reminded Noah that Rachel was more than the woman who’d ripped out his heart.
He risked his life for strangers every day; now he’d wage war for her to rescue him from the urge to pull her into his arms, to take a kiss from her plush lips to cool the wild desire coursing through his veins.
As if drawn, her feet moved in his direction.
“Noah,” she called, her voice trembling with emotion.
Without a word, he made his way across the field. With each step, the weight of years of longing and regret faded.
He took her hand. Rachel looked at their fingers intertwined before looking up into his determined eyes.
“I’m the best at what I do, Six. I’ll come back to you.”
She pressed their joined hands to his chest, right over his heart. “You promise?”
“Promise,” he murmured, his voice barely audible above the roar of energy moving through the crowd.
There was no room for doubt in his words, so he wrapped one arm around her waist and hauled her close.
With her head resting on his chest, she had to hear his heart rushing into a gallop, eager for tomorrow.
Her warm breath brushed against his skin, a sweet goodbye kiss as another wall crumbled away.
Noah forced himself to let go… for now. “Folks are gonna need the basics after a fire. Y’all start digging in your closets and cupboards.
You’ll know soon enough where to deliver your offerings. ”
Several heads dipped in acknowledgment, including Rachel’s. As she vanished from his sight, one thought ruled him. He would fight, battle a thousand fires to hold her again. And a Calvary man kept his promises.