: Chapter 15

Mason

Now, August

Arms crossed, fingers digging into my biceps, I glare at the little fucker on the field.

Originally, I had agreed with Coach’s plan to use the second string to start us out. Toss them out there, throw off the opposing team, let them think they have a shot for a quarter of a quarter, and then make the swap. Show them what we really got and crush their little dreams of leaving here with the victory.

Now I wish I would have pushed back, because of course this dickhead hits the field in my position and does what he damn well pleases, game plan be damned.

The plan called for a pick play, and his receivers executed perfectly, feet flying forward, one putting himself in the defender’s path, leaving the other wide open, but what does the punk do?

He tucked and ran, doing all he could to show off his twinkle toes. He cut man after man, not only picking up the first down but an extra six yards on top of it.

The crowd cheered, he got hyped, and Coach tore into him from the sidelines. Alister looked our way with a nod, threw out some excuse he knew we couldn’t hear, took the next play call, and went back into the huddle.

Next play, same thing, but this time, instead of juking the outside linebacker who came down on a blitz, flying right toward him, he leapt into the air, coming down over his head. He gained three more yards.

Everyone went wild that time, and instead of tuning them out and focusing on the task at hand, the freshman fame chaser turned to face them, threw his hands up, and begged for more.

He’s a fool, and a move like that will end his career before it even begins.

Jump too low, too late, or too high, you risk getting flipped in the air and landing wrong. Break your wrist or injure your arm for a bit of crowd chasing, and it’ll be game over.

Coach Rogan and I look at each other at the same time, both shaking our heads. The clock ticks down, and finally, it’s time. I tug my helmet on and get ready to take my position. Because it is my position.

All eleven of our boys on the field jog off, the first-string crew jogging on for the first game of the season.

Alister slams his shoulder into mine as he passes, and our glares meet. “Let’s see if they like you half as much as they like me,” the smiling bastard spits.

“Don’t worry, second string.” I smirk, snapping my chin strap. “They won’t see you enough to like you.”

Alister’s face falls, and I spin, laughing to myself as I join my team on the field, and the second my feet plant on the turf, all thoughts of him fall away.

This is it.

I look across my teammates’ faces, each of us nodding, all of them waiting for my instruction, eager to follow my lead, to take themselves where I need them and make the play happen. The air is charged, and call me Electro, because I’m powered the fuck up.

This is what I’ve been waiting for.

What I’ve trained my whole life for.

I’m the starting quarterback at a D1 college, and I’m about to show every person in this place exactly why it’s my picture hanging in the halls.

And that’s exactly what I do.

I ball out, all my boys right there with me, and by the time the clock runs out in the fourth quarter, the scoreboard reads thirty-four to thirteen, Avix U Sharks.

I’m keyed up, jumping with my teammates as we enter the tunnel like a pack of wild wolves after a hunt. We’re loud and rough, laughing and joking, blasting rap music in the locker room as we listen to Coach deliver a fiery speech that has us banging our lockers in victory. When he leaves us, the speakers bump even harder, and we go about our own business.

I pull my phone from my locker, my smile wide.

It falls a split second later when my eyes focus on the screen.

There’s a message from my dad, my sister, and even Lolli…but nothing from the girl who started a routine I clearly became dependent on.

After every game last season, Payton would message me, without fail. If she was able to watch, it would be a joke about home runs or nothing but net, playing up her lack of knowledge of the game that she knew drove me crazy. If she didn’t, she would search for the results, coming back with a sassy little remark, and I just knew she was smirking that cute little smirk when she sent it, usually because she was teasing me, talking about how so-and-so’s tight pants being the reason the tackle was missed that led to the game-winning touchdown she found on the Avix Inquirer Instagram page. None of it made much sense, and I knew she understood more than she let on—I spent a ton of time breaking it down for her, after all—but that was the fun of it. Playful teasing she started. It was our thing. I never wondered if her message would be waiting for me. I knew it would.

It was a guarantee.

Keyword was, my man.

Frustration claws at my skin, and I toss my phone in my locker with an angry huff, doing a double take when I spot Chase a few lockers away, grinning down at his screen.

Without realizing I’m doing it, I’m rushing over, tearing the phone from his hand. “Who are you talking to?” I snap.

“Bro, what the hell?” He yanks it back, shoving me away, but not before I see the name on the screen.

Guess Lolli messaged him, too.

Chase studies me with narrowed eyes, but I spin away, squeezing my lids closed a moment.

I don’t hit the showers.

I grab my shit and get the fuck out.

Payton

Lifting my camera, I follow the newest addition to the team as he flies off the starting line, sprinting to the end and blowing his opponent out of the water.

I’m pretty sure it’s in good fun, a locker room bet maybe, seeing that they tugged their pads off their shoulders and dropped them to the turf.

He spins, smiling as he swipes his hand through his dark hair.

The team is shouting and shoving on number thirteen, heckling him for losing to the new guy, I’m sure, but Noah only shakes his head, walking over to where the receiver coaches have gathered.

It’s late August now, more than a month since the one-year anniversary—such a ridiculous expression—of Deaton’s death, and I’m feeling a little more like myself again. The weeks leading to that day were unexpected, the months before that even more so.

But what a beautiful mess it was.

I shake off the thought.

After Deaton died, I was stuck in a state of disarray. Confused and unable to get past the shock of it all. For the longest time, I didn’t quite feel real. A few months after his death, I found I wasn’t crying every single day anymore, and the days I realized this, I’d cry out of guilt.

Who did I think I was, walking around and having lunch with my friends, taking breathers on the beach while he was lying cold in a coffin?

A sharp pain flickers through me, and I wince.

It’s such a strange thing, to lose someone, and as sad as it is, I’m kind of seasoned in it as if it’s a sport I willingly participate in. Technically speaking, I lost my dad when he divorced my mom, which led to losing my brother. I lost my friends when my mother began to meddle in my life, and I lost my free will at the same time. I lost my senior year when I got pregnant, and then I lost Deaton.

Every one of those instances, I mourned in one way or another. I knew I had to take it a day at a time, and I did. Slowly, things got better. I could think of him and smile or laugh, missing him without complete misery.

But the one-year mark of his death? That was like nothing else I’ve experienced, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t have something to do with an entirely different dark-haired man.

Regardless, it was as if after a year of compartmentalizing, my boxes were full, the overflowing weight too much to hold strong. They tumbled to the floor with a heavy crash, the latches splitting from the locks and pouring over me until I was a body with no heart, lungs with no air.

I felt dead inside, guilty beyond measure.

He was dead, and I lived a whole life in one year’s time.

I carried a baby to full term. I got my GED. I started an internship at the job of my dreams, and I made it to my eighteenth birthday with a little less weight on my shoulders.

I created a home in the home my brother and found family offered me. I took their hands, and I held on for dear life.

Instead of sinking under at the thought of Deaton, I trained my brain to swim, to tread the endless waters of grief until I found a way to breathe easier.

I untied the rope around my wrists and broke the surface of my woe whirlpool. I had a little boy to bring into this world, to protect and cherish, and a fractured girl wouldn’t be strong enough. He deserved more. So as time passed and I discovered where the light I felt within me was coming from, I leaned in ever so slightly.

It wasn’t my intention to fall off the cliff, but I did.

I fell headfirst, but I never hit the ground.

Strong hands held me steady.

It didn’t take long for the guilt I lived with to grow from a warm, wieldy pit in my stomach to a volcano of vast proportions.

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, he’s dead, right? So what does any of it matter?

I’m here, and he’s not.

A humorless laugh leaves me, and I shake my head, lifting my camera once more and peering through the lens.

If only it were that easy, girl.

“Shoot, I am late!”

I whip around, smiling wide at the sight of Ari.

“Hey! I didn’t know you were coming to town today.” She beams, skipping down the steps and throwing her arm around me. “I was hoping I’d catch their practice, but looks like they’re about done.”

Both our eyes move toward the field, and as if an invisible string is tied from her to him, Noah looks up into the stands in the same exact moment. The smile that breaks across his lips has us both laughing, and a softness blooms in my chest, a teeny, tiny thread of jealousy tugging within me.

It takes her several seconds, but she finally looks my way again. “So you’re back at work?”

“Thank god for that,” I admit with a light scoff. “Too much time on my hands without it.”

She tips her head, eying me for a moment. “Have you ever thought about taking courses at the college? Maybe they have some photography or business classes that could help?”

Tucking my hair behind my ear, I shake my head, snapping a few shots of the running backs and their coaching staff as they close out their day.

“My internship comes with full-scale training in the equipment and software, and now that I’m on year two, I’ll be working on the film side as well, moving into live shorts for social media.”

“How exciting!” She lights up, and when she looks out at the field, a softness falls over her. “I wish I could just…be out here with him every day.”

“Why don’t you transfer to USD with Nate?”

She lifts a shoulder, not taking her eyes off the blue-eyed, black-haired man ahead. “I was more thinking along the lines of…dropping out.”

My eyes widen, and she laughs lightly, shrugging once more.

“I never wanted to go to college anyway, but I knew I should. Now, though? After everything that’s happened?” She shakes her head, emotion heavy in her voice, and I don’t know if she realizes it, but her palm presses to her belly. “I just want to be where he is.”

I can understand that. She almost lost the love of her life in a completely different way than most, but still she almost lost him. She understands, now more than ever, that life is short, and we should spend every moment we can with the ones we love most.

Unless you know what it feels like to lose that person for real and are certain you couldn’t survive it a second time…

I swallow, glancing at Ari once more. “Does he know?”

Her smile is sassy now. “That man knows everything I’m thinking with one look.” She sighs sweetly. “He’s just waiting for me to be the one to say it first.” She looks to me then. “It’s funny how the literal opposite he is of my brother.”

Both of us laugh at that.

“Yeah, Mason is…”

“Mason” we say at the same time.

We grow quiet, and when I drop down onto my butt to pack my things, she follows.

“The boys played their first game today,” she whispers, and the note of caution in her tone has my muscles bunching. “Mason threw for over three hundred yards.”

Unease stirs in my gut. I don’t know exactly what that means, but she says it with a tentative pride, so it must be good. Does that mean he won his first game as a starting quarterback?

Anxiety tugs at my conscience, my eyes slicing to where my phone hangs around my neck. Did he check his phone after?

I’m sure he did, but he’s probably way too excited to notice I didn’t reach out. If they won, I mean. He’s the starter now. Things will be different for him this year. Busier.

He’s the man everyone will look to. The one they’ll chase after.

The one the girls will want.

“I have to go.” I jump up, offering Ari a quick hug.

Her lips curve, a question in her pretty brown eyes she doesn’t ask. “Maybe I’ll see you before I head back to campus on Sunday?”

“Maybe.” I nod. “Have fun at Noah’s game this weekend.”

She nods back, and I spin, quickly escaping before anything else can be said.

But before I head into the child center at the team’s headquarters, I pause outside the door and pull up Instagram. The Avix Inquirer, the newspaper page dedicated to Avix University, pops up, and the photo brings tears to my eyes.

It’s him. Of course it’s him.

His hair looks nearly black, from sweat or water I couldn’t say, but it looks good on him, the front tips flat against his forehead. His jersey is littered with green stains, the giant number four in the center having met the field at some point today. He has his helmet lifted high into the air in victory, but it’s the familiar cocky tilt to his lips and wild gleam in his dark eyes that has me inhaling deeply.

I don’t have to read the headline. It’s clear as day he came out on top.

Backing out, I tap the search engine and type out the question burning in my mind.

What are the average yards thrown in a college football game?

I wait and wait, and when the answer pops onto the screen, a mixture of sorrow and happiness flickers through me. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. “Way to go, Superstar,” I whisper.

Maybe one day he’ll forgive me for the mess I’ve made of us.

Or maybe he’ll become so famous he won’t even remember my name.

Maybe that will be for the best.

Maybe Mason and I aren’t meant to be, and there’s someone else out there who can give him what I can’t and better.

The mere thought is as devastating as the others.

Maybe I’m an idiot, and the story of us is not that serious.