Chapter 8
Hadley
I didn’t expect the field to be this loud.
Or this chaotic.
Or this . . . sweaty.
I hadn’t noticed it yesterday; my nerves had been riding my senses then.
But apparently, when you embed yourself inside a Division I football program, you accept that half your morning is going to smell like grass, rubber, testosterone, and whatever unholy mix of supplements the strength coach insisted the players chug at six a.m.
I stood on the sideline of the practice field with my notebook out, the spring sun warming the back of my neck. My assigned freshman — Mike — jogged onto the field with that wide-eyed, terrified energy of a kid trying not to die under Coach Sutherland’s whistle.
I liked Mike. He was polite. Quiet. Zero ego. A total cinnamon roll trapped in a defensive end’s body.
He was an easy subject. A safe subject. Fortunately for my sanity, he practiced on the other side of the field from Dustin Slater. The other guy, Noah, practiced with him, and, Jesus, was he easy on the eyes.
I wasn’t here for Noah. Or Dustin.
They weren’t my story, I reminded myself approximately every five seconds.
But even on the other side of the field, which I kept at my back, Dustin was impossible to ignore.
Because he ran everywhere. His speed was wicked fast. He ran routes up and down like a hyperactive cocker spaniel with limitless energy.
If the NCAA didn’t administer all the drug testing, I would seriously consider dropping an anonymous tip to check those sludge smoothies Mike told me they all drank every morning.
They had moved into some kind of formation that had both ends of the field moving together.
Offense and defense, I reminded myself. I mean, I knew what football was.
I knew that it took forever to play, and it was all about strategy.
I winced as Noah laid out a guy across from him.
Or maybe it was just about hitting people hard and tossing the ball around under the pretense of playing, other than knocking guys on their asses.
Noah laughed as he helped pull the guy to his feet.
“Hey, freshman!” Dustin called, smacking Noah on the helmet as he jogged past. “Keep those elbows in — you’re windmilling like an inflatable at a car dealership, dude. You’re giving Matthews all he needs to grab you.”
The freshman nodded and adjusted his stance.
I scribbled a note about team dynamics, even though I knew damn well Slater’s commentary wasn’t the dynamic I needed.
Then he noticed me. Dustin slowed, glanced at me, and looked me over like he’d spotted a snake in his shoe. His eyes narrowed. My pulse didn’t care for that at all. He turned, and his attention was back on the field.
Dante called out something unintelligible to anyone who wasn’t a football player, and then the ball arced through the air, and Dustin was running like a cheetah down the sideline.
Some poor bastard was running after him like his life depended on it, and even my inexperienced self knew he had no chance of catching him.
Dustin twisted around while he was running straight, his arms came out, and then he had the ball cradled in his arms, and he was still running forward.
The whistle blew, and I glanced back at Dante, who was grinning as his teammates whooped and hollered over Dustin’s run.
When I turned back to look at Dustin, he was walking toward me, his helmet pushed up over his face, resting on his forehead.
He had a slight sheen of sweat and a flush to his cheeks from the exertion, but his eyes were flat.
The energy that he had just run with, all of it, was gone. Like a switch had been flipped.
“You’re paying too much attention to the wrong team member,” he muttered as he passed.
“You know I’m not here for you,” I shot back.
He snorted. “Could’ve fooled me. You’ve been watching me all practice.”
“Along with every other player on the field,” I snapped. His smirk was arrogance personified. God, he loved himself far too much.
But unfortunately, he was photogenic. He would have been a perfect feature piece, which was an infuriating thought to have.
Like him.
Infuriating and photogenic. The worst combination known to journalism.
By the end of their practice, I’d learned more about football than I even knew was possible, and I knew it still wasn’t enough. I’d followed Mike through things called drills, sled pushes, and positional work — which conveniently placed me right in the same orbit as him again and again and again.
Everywhere I turned: Dustin’s laugh. Dustin’s muscle. Dustin’s ‘I see you trying not to look at me’ swagger.
I ended up looking at the ground a lot.
“Hadley?” I looked up at Mike, who was towering over me. “Coach Holt says you’re okay to come with me to the weight room.”
“Why?” I stared at him blankly.
“I do weights after warm-ups.”
I looked at the field and then at Mike. “That was a warm-up?” I asked him incredulously. “Are you kidding?”
Mike flushed. “That was warm-up and practice routes.” He scratched the back of his head. “Then I do weights.”
“Weights, right.” I gave him a big smile. “Let’s go lift stuff.” I picked up my tote bag and tried to juggle my notebook, phone, and pen. Mike leaned over and took my bag off me. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” His hands were massive.
“Your hands are so big.”
He beamed at me. “Yeah, handspan is important,” he said, holding his hand out. “It gets listed as one of your stats.”
I looked around quickly, checking to see that no one was nearby, and back up at Mike. “Mike, I need to confess something, and I don’t want to offend you.”
He grinned. “You know nothing about football,” he supplied with a conspirator’s whisper.
I bit my lip. “Who told you?”
“You have the same expression on your face as my sister does when I talk to her about stats.” He shrugged like it was no big deal. “But that’s good, right?” he asked. “The article is something about the player, not the stats, so you don’t need to worry about not knowing everything. Right?”
He was giving me an out. I nudged him with my arm. “Yeah, but I think if I’m doing a feature about the ‘man behind the stats,’ I should probably know yours.”
He laughed and started writing in my notebook. He handed it to me moments later. “There. Now you can’t say you don’t know.”
We were back in the facility, and Mike led me into the largest gym I’d ever seen in my life. “Holy crap.” I looked around. “Is this for everyone in the athletic department?”
“Nah, this is just the football team’s.”
Jesus Christ. Players were scattered everywhere, and coaches or trainers were beside them, barking orders or monitoring them. It was all so busy. Where did they find the energy?
“This way, Hadley.” I followed Mike into a smaller room full of metal, benches, and more metal.
It was half empty, and I breathed a sigh of relief. This was better than the practice field. That thought lasted five minutes before I had the grim realization that the weight room was worse.
So much worse.
Mike was doing his lifting workout, a trainer passing him regularly, shouting orders, which meant I was tucked against the wall out of the way, like a very determined shadow recording his reps . . . while Dustin benched directly across from us.
There was nowhere else to look. It wasn’t like he’d picked it on purpose. He had looked as pissed off as I felt that this was his only option.
His bar clanged against the rack; he sat up, sweaty, flushed, arms ridiculous in that unfair-genetic-lottery way that made my jaw clench. He wiped his face with his shirt. I looked away so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.
“You good over there?” he asked, smirking.
Of course he’d seen me ogling his abs.
“Shut up,” I snapped. “I’m working.”
“Sure. Working. Looked like you were overheating, Peterson.”
“I’m working.”
“Uh-huh.”
Ignore him. Ignore him. Ignore him.
He lay back down and lifted the bar. I couldn’t ignore him. But I should. But those shoulders and those arms . . . Mike pretended he didn’t hear any of our bickering, bless him.
“Now it’s locker rooms, but you’re not allowed in there.” Mike looked embarrassed.
“I have no desire to walk in there,” I told him honestly. I needed out of this building, fresh air in my lungs, air that wasn’t packed with testosterone.
“So we done for the day?” I waved my hand in the air to the room. “With, you know, this.”
Mike half nodded. “Yeah, until four.”
What? “Four?”
“I have classes, then we’re back at four and stay until six, for film study and practice.”
I don’t think I kept the horror off my face. “You do it again?”
He couldn’t stop his laughter. “Yeah, Hadley, every day. It’s busier during spring training and, of course, if you’re first team, it’s really intense during the season.”
“What is wrong with you?” I blurted, and this time his face screwed up. “Sorry, sorry. Jesus Christ, Mike, I’m exhausted already. You do this every day? Twice?”
He looked me over, but not in a sleazy way. “You just need conditioning, you get used to it.”
“I need caffeine,” I mumbled. “Back here at four?” I checked the time. “When I come back later, we’ll talk through schedules, I’ll shadow some days here, some days classes. Yeah?”
“Sounds great.”
It sounded like a huge commitment, which would be fine, but I was so busy with Mike, when would I have time to dig? I said goodbye and headed for the front door.
Coach Sutherland just happened to be walking the other way, and I didn’t think it was a coincidence. He stopped in front of me. “Why are you alone?”
“Mike just left me to go to the shower. I’m heading to class.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
Yay.
“I have a new appreciation for football players,” I told him, hoping to appeal to his humanity with some light conversation. “That was an intense practice, and they come back and do it again later.”
He didn’t even crack a smile. “When you come back, remember, you shadow Whittaker. You don’t walk around alone. Stay with him or don’t come back.” He turned his back and walked away.
“Asshole.”