Chapter 24
PACE – MID-OCTOBER
St Louis Archers at San Antonio Bears
I. Am. So. Fucking. Conflicted.
Fucking charged for this game.
I’m fired up against the whole Archers team because I get that injuries happen but they are the reason Tommy will never play again.
But it’s not only that. Not by a mile.
Every chance I get, I’m looking to the box where Annie will hopefully be sitting with Sas and her dad, desperate to see my…
friend at my game, wearing a Bears’ jersey.
Hating on the dick who’s been warming up on the same field as me.
Wanting to rip his goddamn head off for everything he’s done and continues to do to Annie.
The lies in the past, this week to the press saying he and Annie are working things out.
His complete lack of fucking effort when he has everything that I’m terrified to admit to myself that I might want.
Standing next to me, in the middle of our pregame huddle, Quinn is a reminder of just one of the reasons I can’t chase anything with Annie.
“Listen up,” I say.
Until Lamar finds his voice with the team, I’ve promised Coach I’ll exercise mine with extra vigor.
Every person who watches football is talking about the Bears against the Archers playoff rematch. Every fan who follows social media is pitching this as the Quinn against Rogers rivalry. But every man on our squad feels like…
“We’re doing this one for Tommy,” I tell them. “There are no more Bears going down to these guys. Fuck the Archers. We’re bigger than them, we’re faster than them, and today is our time to show them exactly what we’re made of. Tommy on three. One, two, three.”
Every player drops his hand to the circle. “Tommy!”
As the rest of the guys scatter to their positions for a Bears’ kickoff, I lock my fingers into the grill of Quinn’s helmet and bring my headgear to his. “And for Annie.”
“For Annie,” he says, thumping me on the arm as he runs to the line of scrimmage, the sellout stadium erupting around us.
I watch from the sideline as our kicker prepares to get play underway. The Archers take the catch inside the twenty-yard line but their advance is stopped quickly by Trent Daniels.
Both teams set up on the line of scrimmage and Auston Rogers gets his first play of the game. But as he prepares his team, it feels as if the entire Alamo Stadium unites in a deafening chorus of boos for the deserving quarterback and all-round shit excuse for a man.
The ball is snapped to him. He dances in the pocket but our defense is man marking the hell out of the Archers’ receivers. Rogers searches for the pass as our guys round on him. The entire Bears offense takes a second to appreciate the sack that follows.
We delight even more when our safety intercepts the ball on the next play and we take to the field.
As I set myself up at the end of the offensive line, opposite the Archers’ strong-side linebacker, I think of Tommy and I see Annie and Nelson playing in my lounge.
I hear “Hut” and run my route harder and faster than I have in recent times, like fury shoved a rocket booster up my ass. Before I see it, I know where the ball will be. I catch it, tuck it and make another five yards before I’m taken to the ground, making thirty yards for the down.
As I’m thumped on the back and knocked on the helmet by the guys, I look up to where Annie should be sitting. We’re winning this rematch, for her.
Colton then Omar get us the yards we need on the next two plays, then we’re first and goal. Lamar calls the play. I want the ball bad. Despite this being an early game in the season, I want this touchdown as much as I’ve wanted some of the biggest touchdowns in my career.
“Hut one. Hut two. Hut.”
I drive through the defense, twisting and turning until I’m in the end zone and Lamar’s bullet pass fires right into my arms. I slam the ball down on the Bears’ red, white and blue logo and before I ask myself why, I’m mimicking driving a car in celebration for the woman I’m teaching to drive. The woman I can’t get out of my head.
If she’s agreed to come to the game and hold her head high in defiance of Auston and the situation he’s created for her, maybe she’s also agreed to come back to my place a day early, too. Her, Nelson and Betty. Their presence in my postgame routine might top my effervescent, candlelit soak.
Hell, I’m even enjoying listening to the hammering Rogers takes from the fans when the Archers have possession. Especially since he’s playing like crap. Every interception feels like a chocolate-dipped churro. Decadent. Tasty as sin.
Lamar calls a play for me on a second and seven and I’m running full tilt out wide by the time I take the catch, but I’m tackled hard and momentum has me flying out of bounds, crashing into the Archers’ restricted area.
I run into someone on their team and it’s only when I’m looking into his eyes that I appreciate it’s Auston fucking Rogers.
I can’t help myself…
“Enjoying the game, Rogers?”
“Fuck you, Pace.”
“Aww now, don’t be ratty with me because even your own fans don’t like you. That’s what happens when you screw over someone who doesn’t deserve it and play like a bag of dicks.”
He squares up to me, fisting my shirt in his hands, and I hold out my arms, letting the officials think this isn’t on me. But I give him a tooth-bearing grin, enjoying how riled he is.
“Truth hurt, Rogers?”
He scoffs, shoving me in the chest. “The Bears’ fans might not like me, Pace, but d’you know someone who does? Yeah, that’s right. All I’ve got to do is click my fingers and Annie will come running back to me.”
I step to him – to an outsider, appearing to wave the proverbial white flag. “I hope your soul burns in hell when our defense kills you, man. Even that would be too good for you.”
“He’s not worth it,” I hear Quinn call when we reset on the field.
I mutter to myself, “No, but she is.”
We annihilated the Archers in our first deserved win of the season, despite being six and nothing. A remarkable start to the season, all things considered. Lamar showed more signs of promise but too few if this team is to have any chance of making the playoffs.
After the game, when interviewed, I tell the media, “The win was for Tommy.”
When I’m asked about my run in with Auston, I say, “He didn’t like that I trod on his toes.”
They mutter in amused tones because they don’t know how much I’ve started to want to step on his toes, off the field.
“Adrenalin was high going into the rematch,” I tell them.
But they don’t know that my surge of the hormone was due to Quinn’s sister watching from the stands and there’s a very real, dangerous possibility that I’m falling for the wittiest, kindest, smartest, prettiest cowgirl in Texas.
When Sas and Harris bring Annie to the locker room after the game, my heart starts racing faster than when I scored a touchdown, because she knows that driving celebration was for her. She knows that I fronted up to Auston because I want to protect her.
“Hell of a game, stud,” she tells me quietly, and it feels like there’s something special in her words. Ours.
Leaving the ground with my arm around her shoulders – mostly as a walking aid – is like being propped up by a unicorn. Extraordinary in a way I can’t fathom, much less explain. It means so much to me that she was at the game, even if she wasn’t only there for me.
We reach the parking lot where mine and Colton’s cars are parked, as well as the Archers team coaches. I sense Rogers before I even turn to see him, motionless, watching our group, staring at Annie.
She’s still joking with Sas, Harris and Colton over quips they’re making about me being an old man and she hasn’t noticed Auston.
For a moment, I contemplate not telling her that he’s here.
He’s no good and he’s no good for her, or the Quinns, but Annie is a grown woman and it’s her decision to make, not mine.
I’m not in charge of her and while I might beat my chest on the gridiron – or on the sidelines – I won’t be the manipulative asshole that Auston has been with her.
I also don’t want to cause a commotion, even though there shouldn’t be anyone lurking around the parking lot for sneak recordings. Still, I lean into her ear, taking my arm back to prevent any insinuations flying around later, and tell her, “Auston’s over there.”
Her shoulders jerk as if she’s startled but she turns to see him. There’s a falter in her step and I wonder if she’ll go to him, but she keeps moving away, with me.
“Waiting to catch me after a game I happen to be at, while his ego is low, isn’t the proof I need that meeting him would go any differently next time. Let’s go home,” she tells me.
Home.
Despite the circumstances, her reaction to Auston and that four-letter word leaving her mouth are the thermal wrap my body needs right now.
I’m slipping somewhere way out of my depth.
Not least because, when I look back to the opposition coach as I close Annie’s car door, Auston is still watching her, us.
I’m not going to pity the guy. He doesn’t deserve it.
But he looks genuinely miserable and I can’t help wondering whether he wants her back.