Chapter 14 #4
Drew jogged back toward the sideline. Dante said something to him, then pointed up toward our section.
Drew looked.
Found me.
Stopped.
Not fully. Just one broken step in the middle of the field, like his body forgot the next instruction.
Even from the stands, I saw his face change.
The grin came slowly.
Dangerously.
Then he lifted one hand and tapped two fingers to his chest, right over where his number would be.
The student section screamed like he had proposed.
My face went hot.
I rolled my eyes and sat down.
But I was smiling.
I hated that too.
I told myself I would be bored because football had always seemed like a sport designed by men who needed more excuses to run into each other.
But watching Drew changed it. I started seeing the patterns.
The spacing. The timing. The way he used his body to sell one route and cut into another.
The way Dante trusted him before the ball even left his hand.
It was violent.
Strategic.
Beautiful in a way I had not expected.
Late in the second quarter, Drew lined up near our side of the field.
A girl two rows down stood and blew him a kiss.
Something inside me went feral.
I did not even know her name. She was probably nice. She was probably a perfectly decent person with friends and hobbies and maybe a family that loved her.
I still wanted to yank her ponytail so hard her ancestors felt it.
Which was insane.
Drew did not see her.
Or if he did, he ignored it.
He looked up at me instead.
Then winked.
I sat back so fast Lana cackled.
“You are so gone.”
“I am not.”
“You just looked at that girl like you were about to commit a felony with your hoop earrings.”
“She was distracting him.”
“From eighty yards away?”
“She had bad energy.”
“You are jealous.”
“I am strategically invested in the believability of this arrangement.”
Lana laughed so hard she had to grab the seat in front of her.
On the next play, Drew exploded off the line.
The defender reached for him and missed. Drew cut inside, then outside, so fast the guy’s hips turned wrong. Dante dropped back, scanned, and threw deep.
The whole stadium rose before the ball landed.
Drew stretched.
Caught it.
Kept his feet.
Touchdown.
The place erupted.
I was on my feet before I realized I had moved, screaming with everyone else, hands in the air, heart pounding like I had just scored myself.
Drew tossed the ball to the ref, then turned toward our section.
Toward me.
He pointed.
Right at me.
The camera caught it on the big screen.
My face appeared for half a second in his oversized jersey, flushed and wide-eyed and entirely too happy.
The stadium lost its mind.
I covered my mouth.
Drew laughed from the field like the absolute menace he was.
And for one perfect, terrifying minute, it felt real.
Not campus optics or pity repair or Thanksgiving leverage or New Year’s expiration dates.
Drew Travers scored, looked for me first, and I stood in the stands wearing his name like I had a right to it.
I wanted that right.
The thought hit so hard I sat down.
Lana’s smile faded a little. “Isa?”
“I’m fine.”
She did not believe me.
I did not believe me either.
Because this was the problem with pretending.
Do something long enough and the body started to learn it.
My hand had learned his.
My mouth had learned his.
My day had learned the shape of him moving through it.
Class. Coffee. Lunch. Quad. Field-house. Stadium lights.
Drew kept showing up in all the places Tristan had left half-empty and acting like it was no effort at all.
Like wanting me was easy.
Like being mine, even fake, was not something he had to think twice about.
Down on the field, Drew jogged back to the sideline, helmet in hand, teammates slapping his shoulders. Another girl yelled his name. Someone else screamed that she loved him.
He did not look.
Not at them.
At me.
I pressed my fingers to the edge of the jersey where it rested against my thigh and tried to breathe.
Drew Travers was prime candy.
A campus-wide public health crisis.
A six-foot-four walking bad idea with dimples, hands, and a terrifying habit of making fake things feel safer than real ones.
And I was keeping him at arm’s length because I dated country club types, not creatine muscled lumberjack jocks. Right?
The game ended in deafening noise. The kind that poured out of the stadium in one hot, living wave—students screaming, band horns blaring, helmets cracking together near the sideline, boys in jerseys losing their minds like Drew Travers hadn’t just turned a football game into a personal highlight reel.
He’d had two touchdowns.
One impossible catch in the third quarter that made half the stadium grab the person beside them.
And me?
I had stood there in his jersey like a complete idiot, screaming until my throat hurt.
For strategy.
Obviously.
Everything was strategy now. Wearing his number.
Letting Lana take a picture of me in the stands.
Pretending I didn’t feel the camera catch me when Drew pointed straight at me after his second touchdown.
Pretending my whole body didn’t go bright and warm when the student section started chanting his name.
Drew. Drew. Drew.
Like the whole campus belonged to him.
Like I was insane for thinking I could keep a man like that at arm’s length.
By the time I made it down near the players’ exit, the night air had turned sharp and damp off the Pacific. Stadium lights still glared behind me, making everyone look too alive, too polished, too eager to be part of the after.
Girls clustered near the barricade in tiny tops and expensive denim, pretending they were just waiting for friends while fixing their hair every seventeen seconds.
A few football parents hovered farther back.
Reporters drifted near the rope line. Guys from other teams slapped palms and shouted names.
I stood a little off to the side, Drew’s jersey hanging loose over my shorts, my brace hidden under the hem badly enough that I probably looked like I’d escaped a team store with mobility issues and emotional damage.
I checked my phone.
Drew: Don’t run, Cinderella.
I rolled my eyes.
Me: I am literally waiting outside a locker room like one of your football wives. I hope you’re grateful.
Drew: Wear that jersey again and I’ll build you a shrine.
Me: Creepy.
Drew: Hawt.
I was smiling when the doors opened.
The first wave of players came out loud and damp-haired, smelling like soap, sweat, and victory. Jace saw me first and let out a wolf whistle.
“Damn, Texas!”
“I have a name,” I called back.
“Not anymore,” he said, grinning. “That jersey legally changed it.”
I flipped him off.
He clutched his chest like I’d wounded him and kept walking.
Dante came out next, phone already pressed to his ear, and gave me a small nod. Not teasing. Not smirking. Just one of those quiet quarterback looks that said he saw more than he planned to say out loud.
Then Drew appeared.
Freshly showered. Hair damp and curling at the ends.
Black team sweats low on his hips, white compression shirt clinging to every unfair inch of him, duffel slung over one shoulder.
He looked exhausted and lit up at the same time, body still carrying the violence of the game, grin loose and sharp when his eyes started scanning the crowd.
For me.
My stomach did something truly unfortunate.
I started toward him.
But another girl got there first.
She came from the side, cutting through a gap between two players like she knew exactly where she was going. Blonde. Pretty in a chaotic way. Not polished like Stella. Not sorority perfect either. Her hair was too wild, her lipstick too red, her smile too bright at the edges.
She touched Drew’s arm.
Not casually.
Possessively.
His entire face changed.
The grin vanished so fast it was like someone shut off the lights behind his eyes.
He looked panicked.
Drew Travers—six-foot-lot, built like a structural support beam, smug enough to irritate weather patterns—looked panicked.
I slowed.
He said something to her. Low. Sharp. His body turned, not toward her exactly, but between her and the crowd, like he was trying to block something.
Or someone.
Me.
Because when his gaze flicked past her shoulder and found mine, everything in him went tighter.
For half a second, relief flashed across his face.
Then fear.
He lifted his hand subtly at his side.
Not a wave.
A warning.
Stay back.
I stopped dead.
Confusion hit first.
Then humiliation.
Then something hotter.
Because from where I stood, it looked bad.
Really bad. Drew and the blonde were too close, their faces tight, his jaw flexing, her hand still on him even though he clearly wanted it gone.
Their body language screamed history. Not friendly history.
Ugly history. The kind with old passwords and late-night fights and one person who still knew where the bodies were buried.
The girl tossed her hair and laughed, but the sound didn’t reach her face.
Drew said something else.
She went still.
Then she shoved his chest—not hard enough to move him, but hard enough to make the gesture public—and snapped something I couldn’t hear over the crowd. Her eyes cut around him like she was trying to see what he’d been looking at.
My pulse jumped.
Drew shifted again, blocking her line of sight with his body.
Okay.
That was not nothing.
The blonde’s expression sharpened.
For one terrifying second, I thought she was going to step around him.
Then Jace appeared at Drew’s side, clapped him on the shoulder a little too hard, and said something with a giant fake smile. Dante drifted in from the other direction. Not obvious. Not aggressive. But suddenly Drew was no longer alone with her.
The blonde saw it too.
Her mouth twisted.
She said one last thing to Drew.
Whatever it was made his face go cold.
Then she turned and stormed off into the crowd, heels clicking against the concrete like she wanted the ground to know it had disappointed her.
Drew waited until she disappeared.
Actually waited.
Eyes tracking her until she was gone.
Only then did he come toward me.