Chapter 24 — Frost Bowl （Beck） #2
“I'm yours, so don't you dare let go,” she said it laughing, crying, snorting once through the laugh, that sound I loved best in the world.
“You stayed in,” she whispered, hands shaking on my jersey. “Your ribs, Beck, I watched you go down.”
“And I got up,” I said. “Told you. Not leaving this. Not leaving you.”
I grinned, held her tighter, and pointed at her with my whole arm. “That's her!” I shouted, and the band section caught it first, then a thousand voices had it, rolling down the bleachers. “Picasso's girl! Picasso's girl!”
“That's right!” Deon shouted beside us, arm in the air. “Say it louder!”
Her cold hands slid inside my jacket against my shirt, and I warmed them there and never said a word about it.
Kip Farley pushed through the sideline scrum with a mic shaking in his hand and a student camera light burning white on his face. He looked sick. He looked seventeen kinds of sorry. He lifted the mic and stared straight into the lens.
“Thirty seconds, that's all I need,” Kip said, and the camera light steadied.
“Kennel listeners, I posted the correction the night Coach Pruitt cleared them, but a line on a feed wasn't enough.
I ran a story that said Beck Hale leaked his own playbook and Nora Quinn carried it out of the building.
I was wrong. The upload timestamps cleared them both twelve days ago.
Somebody else stole Beck's work, and I never checked before I talked.
I'm retracting every word again—on camera, on the air, where the whole crowd can hear it.
Beck, Nora, I'm sorry. You never deserved that from me. Both corrections stay up permanently.”
“We're good,” I called back, arm tight around Nora. “Leave it up. We're done with it.”
“Done,” Kip said, nodding fast. “Thank you. Seriously.”
Thirty seconds, and he used every one. The team went quiet around him, and then somebody clapped, and then the whole sideline clapped, and Kip lowered the mic with his ears red as frostbite.
Pruitt grabbed my facemask then, both hands, and pulled my forehead to his. Mint rolled off him in a wave. “That's my quarterback!” he shouted into my face, shaking my helmet till my teeth rattled. “That's my damn quarterback, you hear me?”
Deon crashed into me sideways in his giant parka, arms around my neck, nearly taking us both down on the bad ribs. I grunted and he eased off fast, laughing, holding my shoulders instead.
“I told you, kid, you've always had it.” Deon's eyes shone wet under the lights. “Win it, Picasso. And damn if you didn't.”
“Bus is whenever you say,” Pruitt told the team, toothpick jumping. “Tonight he's yours. Tomorrow he's ours again.”
“Tonight he's hers,” Deon corrected, pointing at Nora, and the whole sideline howled.
The trophy noise kept rolling without me. Flashbulbs popped. Somebody lifted silver over the crowd. I found Nora through the crush and tipped my head toward the equipment alcove off the tunnel.
She followed with my jacket around her shoulders and victory bright in her eyes. I shut both doors behind us. The stadium roar dropped to weather on another hill.
“Before you say anything,” she said, pressing one palm lightly to the tape over my ribs, “you sit. You took three hits on that side and I watched every one.”
“I won.”
“You also limp. Bench, quarterback.”
I sat because she was already unfastening my chin strap and because being ordered around by her sent heat straight through me.
She stood between my knees, cold fingers at my jaw. “Color?”
“Green. Ribs are yellow if you lean on them. Everything else is yours.”
“Good. I brought a plan.”
Her mouth crashed into mine. I caught her waist, careful of my side, and she climbed onto my lap with her knees braced outside my thighs.
“This is your plan?”
“Opening drive.”
She kissed me again, deeper, fingers dragging through my sweat-damp hair while the trainer's radio crackled behind the mesh. My hands slid under her shirt and found bare warm skin.
I cupped her breasts, thumbs circling her nipples until they tightened beneath my touch. She gasped into my mouth and rocked against the hard length trapped in my football pants.
“You won that game with your head,” she whispered. “Now let me make you lose it.”
“Threatening the quarterback after a victory?”
“Rewarding him. Keep up.”
She dropped to her knees between mine and opened my pants. Cold air hit, then her hot mouth closed around my cock, and every joke died in my throat.
“Nora.” I braced one hand on the bench and tangled the other in her ponytail. “God.”
She took me deeper, tongue sliding under the head, eyes lifted to watch exactly what she did to me.
I stopped counting. Stopped hearing the crowd. There was only her mouth and the sharp sweet pressure building low in my spine.
“Up,” I managed. “I want to taste you before I come.”
She rose with a wicked smile. I opened her jeans, pushed them and her panties down just far enough, and pulled her onto the bench beside me.
Then I knelt despite her protest, one knee on the rubber floor, and spread her thighs.
“Ribs,” she warned.
“Not using them.”
I licked through her wet pussy, slow first, then harder when she gripped the pad rack and begged. Her clit swelled under my tongue. I sucked it gently while two fingers pushed inside her.
“Beck, yes. Right there.”
I held the pattern until she came against my mouth, thighs shaking around my shoulders, her cry swallowed by the distant roar.
When I stood, she reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and held up a condom.
I stared. “You planned the whole drive.”
“I study film.”
She rolled it down my cock, then pushed me back onto the bench. “Hands on my hips. Protect the ribs.”
I obeyed. She climbed over me, guided my cock to her entrance, and sank down slowly until she took all of me.
The stretch dragged a groan out of both of us. Her forehead touched mine while her body adjusted around me.
“You okay?” I asked.
She rolled her hips once, deep and perfect. “More than.”
Nora rode me in the dim alcove, slow enough to torture, then harder when the win and the weeks of fear caught up to us. I held her hips and let her set every angle.
“Look at me,” she said. “Not the door. Me.”
I did. Her hair had come loose. My jacket slipped off one shoulder. She looked fierce and flushed and completely mine because she had chosen every step that put her there.
“Every route ended with you,” I said.
“Then finish this one.”
I slid my thumb over her clit. Her pussy clenched around my cock, hot and tight, and her rhythm broke into desperate little circles.
“Come with me,” she gasped.
Her body seized around me. I followed seconds later, holding her steady while the condom caught my release and her name broke out of me louder than the radio.
We stayed joined until our breathing slowed. Then I tied off the condom, pulled my jacket around her, and held a water bottle to her mouth.
She drank, then checked the tape on my ribs with gentle fingers. “Best night of my life. You hurt?”
“Worth every hit. You're here. That's the whole math.”
“And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow I wake up cleared, starting, and still yours.”
“Correct answer.”
The radio behind the mesh replayed the final call, the announcer's voice cracking with the crowd: “Hale keeps it—Hale breaks the line—Hale wins the Frost Bowl!”
Nora rested her forehead against mine. “That's my quarterback.”
I held her closer while the call played again. The winning play had never lived on paper. It lived in my head, and she was the only person who had ever read all the way through me.