The Playbook in His Head (Romance Football Anthology 11)

Chapter 1 — The Intake （Nora）

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I pushed through the heavy front door of Whitmore Hall with my tote sliding off my shoulder, and I caught it against my hip the way I always do when I'm running early and pretending I'm not nervous.

The sign-in desk sat right inside the lobby under the tall windows, and the morning glare washed the sign-in sheet almost white.

Three pens lay in the metal tray. All three had rolled out of line.

Tipped sideways. Askew against the tray edge like somebody had grabbed one in a hurry and knocked the rest.

My fingers itched before my brain caught up.

I set my latte down, nudged one pen straight with my fingertip, and felt the cool metal of the tray under my skin. Small click. Better.

“Really?” I muttered. “Somebody just... leaves them like that?”

The radiator under the windows hummed low and steady. Old dust and heat puffed off it, mixed with dry-erase marker and a sharp sweet edge of somebody's cinnamon gum. Sneakers squeaked on the tile behind me. Paper shuffled at the side table where two tutors hunched over a stack of forms.

Nobody looked up. Fine. Good. I liked rooms I could read before they read me.

I signed my name on the sheet, printed the time beside it, and slid the clipboard back square with the desk edge. My tote thumped my thigh. My latte left a damp ring on the corner of the desk and I wiped it away with my thumb before it could stain.

“Sorry,” I said to no one. “Nervous hands. They just... organize things.”

One of the tutors glanced over. A guy in a faded Bears tee with a lanyard chewed through at the end.

“Intake?” he asked.

“Yep,” I said. “Nora Quinn. Peer tutor. New hire, allegedly.”

“Marisol'll call you,” he said. “Chairs over there. She runs early, so don't wander.”

“Wouldn't dream of it,” I said. “I'm excellent at sitting. Ask anyone.”

“Psych major?” he asked, not looking up. “Or, sorry—Ed? You've got ed-person energy.”

“Both,” I said. “Psych major, ed minor. Double the existential dread, half the—”

“Sleep?” he guessed.

“Exactly,” I said. “Wow. Are you psychic or just observant?”

“Both,” he said, deadpan. “It's on my lanyard. Probably.”

He snorted and went back to his forms. I grabbed my latte and took the chair facing the door. Always the chair facing the door. I liked seeing people come in. Old habit. Not explaining that one today.

The lobby air sat warm on my skin. The radiator kept humming. Through the tall windows the light came in hazy and bright, late summer holding on with an early fall edge, and dust floated in it over the scuffed tile.

The wall clock ticked louder than it had any right to. Early on purpose, because early reads keen and keen reads employable. My knee bounced. I pressed my palm flat against my thigh until it stopped. Breathe in cinnamon-gum air, breathe out. I'd sat through harder things than a lobby chair.

I pulled out my phone and did the math I'd already done four times that morning.

Sixteen an hour. Three afternoons a week. My share of the rent I split with Priya. The textbook bill I'd been chipping at one library reserve chapter at a time like a goblin.

“Okay,” I whispered. “Sixteen an hour times three afternoons. Come on, brain. Be useful.”

My thumb tapped the side of my cup. Oat milk, extra shot, cinnamon on top. The one fancy thing I refused to give up even when my bank app gave me that look.

“Rent,” I counted off under my breath. “Lights. Part of textbooks. Gas money for Jessa's next guilt-trip visit. Done. We survive.”

My stomach unknotted a fraction. Barely. A fraction counts.

I needed this job. Not in a cute resume-building way.

In a rent-clears-or-it-doesn't way. Tutoring paid better than the dining hall, it fit my major, and Marisol Vega herself had flagged my application after my ed-psych professor wrote that I was patient with struggling students.

Patient. Me. My sister would laugh herself sick.

“Please don't blow this,” I told my latte. “You're my emotional support beverage. Act like it.”

The office door down the hall opened and a woman stepped out with a folder in her hand. Dark hair pulled back in a low twist. Gold hoops. Blazer with the sleeves pushed up like she meant business but refused to suffer.

“Nora Quinn?” she called.

I stood so fast my tote swung into the chair. Smooth. Very professional.

“Here,” I said. “Present. Punctual. Pen-straightener.”

She smiled. Quick and real.

“Quinn, Nora. Psych and ed minor. Your professors say you're patient,” she said, glancing at the folder. “Come on back, honey. I'm Marisol Vega. I run this zoo.”

“Patient's a strong word,” I said, following her. “I prefer quietly stubborn.”

“Even better,” she said. “Stubborn keeps sophomores alive through midterms.”

“So you're really giving me a—” I started, then stopped. “Sorry. Go ahead. I'm listening. Mostly listening. Seventy percent listening.”

Her office sat two doors down, small and bright, with a humming vent and lemon cleaner and old paper underneath, coffee underneath that.

The whiteboard behind her desk was a rainbow of tutoring blocks, names and times in four different marker colors.

I spotted HALE penciled into the Thursday column with a question mark beside it.

My stomach tipped sideways. A drooping plant leaned toward the window.

A framed photo of two kids grinning with missing teeth sat beside her monitor.

The chair across from her desk faced the doorway.

Bless her. I sat, crossed my ankles, and tried not to fidget.

“So,” she said, flipping my file open. “Twenty-one. Junior. Good grades. Ed minor. You've got afternoons open, which helps me enormously. I've got a student who needs steady hours and a tutor who'll actually show up.”

“I show up,” I said. “I'm aggressively punctual. My roommate hates it.”

“I love her already,” Marisol said dryly. She slid a thicker folder across the desk toward me. Tabbed. A small photo paper-clipped to the inside cover, face down. “I'm giving you Hale. Beckett Hale. Twenty-one. Backup quarterback, junior, Sports Psych.”

My brain snagged on quarterback and shorted out for half a second.

“I'm not exactly a football person, but I can learn the vocabulary,” I said. “I know what a first down is. Mostly. Don't quiz me.”

She laughed. A real one.

“He needs Sports Psych two-oh-one, midterm on October fifteenth, Mondays and Wednesdays and Thursdays at four in Room 214,” she said. “Four p.m. sharp. Room two-fourteen. You sign in, you sign out, no exceptions. Attendance goes to me and to compliance.”

“Four sharp, two-fourteen, sign in and sign out,” I repeated, nodding. “Got it. I can be firm. I once made my sister rewrite an entire essay. Blood was nearly shed.”

“Good,” she said. “Sessions run an hour. Phone on silent. Door open the standard six inches. You log what you covered. And Nora.”

She looked up at me then. Direct. Warm, but with an edge under it that hadn't been there a second before.

“Peer tutors can date students. Grade-tampering is what gets you fired. Remember the difference.”

My eyebrows shot up. My throat went dry.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay. Blunt. I respect that. For the record, I don't plan to date anyone or tamper with anything. I'll explain classical conditioning with hand gestures and go home.”

“Plans are nice,” she said, and her mouth tilted. “Rules are nicer. If anything ever feels blurry, you come to me first. Disclosure form lives in that drawer if you ever need it. Just so you know where it is.”

“Drawer,” I said, glancing at the filing cabinet. “Noted. Hopefully never opened. No offense to your drawer.”

“None taken,” she said. “Now. Your student.”

She turned the folder around and flipped it open, and the photo stared up at me.

“Okay, that's a very serious file photo.”

It slipped out under my breath before I could stop it.

Dark blond hair gone shaggy over his forehead.

Gray-green eyes locked straight on the camera like it had personally offended him.

A thin scar cut through his left eyebrow.

Jaw set. No smile. The file tab read HALE, #14, and my hand stopped halfway to my latte and hovered there like an idiot.

He had that stare-down-the-camera look, and I looked back a second longer than a professional would.

Heat crawled up the back of my neck. Fast and stupid. My ribs went tight. I shut the folder fast, like it'd caught me thinking something I hadn't said out loud.

“Nope,” I breathed. “Tutoring. Nothing else. Professional. Saint-like.”

My ears burned. I tucked a damp strand of hair behind my ear and wished I had drunk less coffee. Or more. The folder sat closed between us like a test I had almost failed. Eyes on the paper, Quinn. Eyes on the requirements sheet. Requirements sheets do not have jawlines.

Marisol watched me with one eyebrow raised and something knowing at the corner of her mouth.

“He photographs intense,” she said mildly. “In person he talks less. You'll get used to him.”

“I'm used to him,” I said. “Completely used. That was me being used to him just now.”

She huffed a laugh and pulled the folder back, and I focused very hard on my latte lid like it held the secrets of the universe. Cinnamon. Oat milk. Don't think about eyebrows. Eyebrows aren't a personality.

“So...” I cleared my throat. “Is he in trouble in the class? Like failing, or just behind?”

“Behind, not buried,” she said. “Missed study halls during camp. Needs structure, routine, someone steady. Your file says steady. Be steady.”

“Steady's my middle name,” I said. “Nora Steady Quinn. It's on my birth certificate. Probably.”

“Mm,” she said. “I'll check.”

She walked me through the rest in her brisk warm way. Sign-in protocol at the desk, sign-out the same, no sessions outside Whitmore without written approval, no doing his work for him, no sharing his records with teammates or friends or podcast hosts with microphones and opinions.

“Podcast hosts?” I asked. “That's weirdly specific.”

“This campus?” she said. “Honey, everybody's got a microphone.”