Maddy

  I do.

  Me

  [pic of Cam shirtless in bed, lazy grin on his face]

  That’s my happy, “she wants me” face.

  Maddy

  [pic of Maddy in bed with giant bag of snack sized M&M’s pouches, wearing a Celine Dion T-shirt and gold undereye masks]

  For a second I considered a sexy picture, but then I decided I am who I am.

  Me

  Who you are is sexy as fuck. There’s an orange soda on your nightstand, isn’t there?

  Maddy

  Like I said, I am who I am.

  Me

  I like who you are.

  Maddy

  I like who I am too. And who you are.

  Goodnight, Cameron. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you dreamed of me.

  Me

  Goodnight, Maddy. I couldn’t stop myself if I tried.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CAM

  “Come on,” Coach yells, stalking up and down the sideline and chewing his gum so aggressively I’d be shocked if he doesn’t crack a molar as Cleveland’s rookie running back crosses into the end zone, having slid through a hole in our defensive line so big you could see it from space.

  Swaying side to side to stay warm in the unseasonably frigid November air, I cross my arms over my chest and look up at the score. After that touchdown, we’re down three with three minutes left in the game. I’m surprised it’s even that close considering how shitty we’ve been playing today. The only consolation is that Cleveland is playing just as bad.

  After thirteen years in the NFL, I know some games are just like this. It’s freezing cold and windy, the sky the steel gray that is synonymous with Pittsburgh in the winter. We changed the clocks last night, so at four p.m. it’s already dusk. We’re sluggish and out of sync and frustrated because of it. It’s not our day, so we just have to get through the next three minutes and regroup for next week.

  Without me realizing it, my eyes drift to the left. To Maddy. It’s like I know where she is without consciously knowing, my body and mind constantly aware of her. Of where she is and what she’s doing. Like she’s a part of me, and I of her.

  I like that thought. A lot.

  Right now, she’s surveying the sidelines in that focused way of hers, looking for anyone who might need her. She’s wearing a short black winter jacket and a black beanie with the Renegades logo on it. Her bright hair is in two braids that fall over the shoulders of her jacket, and when she turns to look at me the way she often does when I’m already looking at her—like she can feel my eyes on her—she gives me a little grin that makes me feel like I could lift a damn car.

  Fuck, I’m so gone for her.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, this game needs to be over already.” Drew sidles up next to me, helmet in hand, as Cleveland sets up for the extra point.

  “No shit.” I turn back to the field and watch as the football sails straight through the uprights. “Three minutes feels like a goddamn eternity.”

  “Now gentlemen, that doesn’t sound like the kind of can-do attitude we need to finish this game strong.”

  Drew and I turn in unison to see Maddy standing there, smirking at us. I would like to say I’ve gotten used to her being a fixture on the sidelines of our games, especially since, today notwithstanding, the team has never played better or more cohesively in all the years I’ve been here than we have since she started working with us, but the truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to her being anywhere near me. My pull to her is too strong for that.

  “I would have expected better from a couple of veterans,” she says, handing us each a water bottle, her eyes landing on me.

  I squirt the sports drink into my mouth, my eyes never leaving hers. When I swallow slowly, that flush I love crawls up her face. To anyone else, it just looks like she’s cold, but I know better.

  I’d be lying if I said this secret thing between us hasn’t been sexy as hell in the few weeks since Halloween. The long glances across the training room, texts at all hours of the day and night, kisses stolen in dark corners of the practice facility and, a couple of memorable times, a random empty office we discovered on the bottom floor of the stadium. We haven’t been on a date or had a repeat of our night in the hotel, and we haven’t talked much about what happens next or how we’re going to find our way to the other side of the subterfuge. How to navigate her job and my kids and all the different complicated pieces of us.

  For the time being, we exist in an in-between. Together but not. All in but undefined. In a space that belongs to us and us alone. And I like it. A lot. I like anything that involves her and me because in my deepest depths, I know that she is the missing piece of me. But with every passing day, the tension between us builds. The air crackles, and there’s a heaviness to it. Like an electric charge, just waiting for its ignition.

  When it finally lights up, we’re going to level the damn building.

  “Are we ready to win this?” Tyler’s cheerful voice breaks our spell, and all three of us turn as he comes bounding over, radiating puppy-dog energy as he grins and slaps his helmet over his head as Cleveland’s field goal unit makes its way off the field, and the TV timeout coordinator signals for a commercial break.

  “Now there’s the attitude I’m looking for,” Maddy says with a smile.

  “These assholes giving you trouble Mads?” Tyler tosses a friendly arm around her shoulders as he bounces on his toes, practically vibrating with that familiar game day energy of his that says Let me out there.

  “Who are you calling an asshole, little Ty Ty?” Drew asks with a smirk.

  I chuckle as Tyler’s face turns mutinous at the nickname Drew adopted after that day on the field with the kids. Tyler hates it, and he hasn’t figured out yet that the more he protests, the more it eggs Drew on. When Maddy laughs and looks at me, rolling her eyes playfully, I know she has, and sharing this quiet little joke with her has my chest warming.

  “Nah,” she says, ducking out from under Tyler’s arm and eyeing Drew and me. “I can handle a couple of lazy veterans who’ve decided to give up on a game before it’s even over.”

  “No fucking way,” Drew says, his face turning stony as he glares across the field at the Cleveland sideline. His spine straightens, and every muscle in his body grows taunt, like he’s bracing to burst out onto the field and kick some ass. Drew has a near pathological aversion to being called lazy—nothing activates his competitive edge faster. In four years of college football and thirteen years in the NFL, I’ve never been able to figure out why, but it seems like Maddy has him accurately pegged.

  I raise an eyebrow at her, impressed as fuck, but she just smiles and shrugs like it’s no big deal that she kicks so much ass at her job.

  God, I fucking like her. I more than like her. I need her with an intensity that borders on mania. That thing I said about liking the in between? The secret looks and swift touches and stolen kisses in the dark? It’s true but also not because I’m ready for more. So, so much more.

  Everything.

  I’m ready for everything.

  Some of what I’m feeling must be on my face because, in a single beat, Maddy’s eyes darken and swirl with an emotion that has me swallowing hard, my heart pounding.

  And I know she feels it too.

  My eyes stay on hers, and the cacophony of the stadium and the buzzy sideline energy fades into the background until it’s just Maddy and me, and I know she knows what I’m thinking without me having to say a single word.

  When, Maddy?

  She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, a kind of sureness building in her eyes that has me reaching up a hand to rub over my chest, trying to settle my racing heart.

  Soon, Cam.

  The wave of the ref’s hands over his head and Coach’s sharp, “Let’s fucking go!” as he slaps my shoulder pads shocks me out of my Maddy-induced haze. And then, with one more long look at her, I jog onto the field, Drew by my side.

  “Holy fuck, dude, you are so gone for her.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” I mumble, glancing around to make sure no one overheard, even as I get a little thrill because, yeah, she fucking owns me and I’m here for it. I want to be owned by her.

  “I like it,” he says with a grin, bumping his shoulder with mine as we huddle up.

  Our special teams was not immune to the total suckage of this game, so we’re taking possession at our own twenty, and we have a long field to contend with. Tyler glances over at where the ref spots the ball and then turns back into the huddle, looking at each of us and opening and closing his right hand methodically, the way he does when the play clock is ticking down. “We’re winning this fucking game,” he says seriously, all traces of my happy-go-lucky friend gone. This is Tyler in do or die mode. The record-breaking quarterback who can conjure a win on sheer determination alone. “A field goal is not an option because overtime is for suckers and not one single one of us is a sucker. We’re getting this ball into the end zone.” He turns to Drew. “You’re getting this ball into the end zone.”

  “Fuck yeah,” Drew says, clapping his hands together.

  Tyler nods and calls the play, and then we break the huddle, lining up for the snap. Three plays later, we’ve moved one single yard and there’s just under a minute on the clock. The frustration on our side of the line is so intense we’re practically vibrating with it as we line up in shotgun formation to go for it on fourth and nine. I crouch down, my hands closing over the rough surface of the football as I wait for Tyler to call for the snap.

  “Blue eighty, blue eighty, set, hut!”

  I snap the ball into Tyler’s waiting hands and shoot straight up, getting ready to block as one of the Cleveland defensive linemen tries to plow through our offensive line. With a quick look back, I see Tyler with plenty of room in the pocket, looking for Drew far downfield. I hear, rather than see, Tyler fire off the pass.

  The second the ball leaves Tyler’s hand, Cleveland’s outside linebacker shakes off his blocker and jumps so high it should be impossible. He gets a gloved hand up in the air, and I watch him stretch, making just enough contact with the football to stop its forward momentum.

  Fuck.

  His fingers tip the ball right at the line of scrimmage, causing it to wobble and start to fall, straight in my direction. Time slows, as years of training and habits and skills hammered into me by countless coaches over more than two decades take over, my arms shooting up as I shove my body through the scrum of players jockeying for position under the ball.

  But no one is any match for me.

  Not today.

  Not with the girl I want to make mine watching from the sidelines.

  Not when I can feel her eyes on me.

  The ball lands softly in my hands, and I pull it into my chest, spinning and taking off down the field. The roar of the crowd is background noise to the sound of my heavy, panting breaths. Centers aren’t runners by trade, but right now running is my one and only job. Sweat pours down my face and my heart pumps wildly as I keep my eyes fixed straight ahead, trusting my teammates to do what they need to do to give me the clearest path they can.

  As I cross the fifty-yard line, I see Drew throw his body at a Cleveland player trying to get to me.

  Forty. I zig, avoiding a near miss.

  Thirty. I stumble a little as a defensive tackle gets a hand on my jersey but right myself and keep on running.

  Twenty. “Fucking goooo.” Tyler’s voice filters in, and I’m pretty sure he’s right behind me, running with me as I try and finish this game.

  Ten. Adrenaline kicks in, and I find a gear I didn’t know I had, amused and awed that even after all these years as an athlete, I can still be surprised by my body’s ability to do the impossible.

  Five.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Touchdown.

  Holy. Fucking. Shit.

  I let the ball drop as momentum carries me for another couple of yards before I slow down, bending with my hands on my knees, sucking in a couple of deep breaths as my brain tries to catch up to what just happened. The entire stadium erupts, the noise so intense the ground shakes, and Tyler and Drew crash into me on either side.

  “WHAT A FUCKING BOSS!” Tyler screams, jumping up and down with an arm around my shoulders.

  “Didn’t even know you knew how to run,” Drew says with a smirk before he grabs my shoulders and presses his helmet to mine, his eyes intense behind his facemask.

  “I don’t,” I manage, feeling deeply emotional now that I have oxygen going to my brain again. It’s my first career touchdown, and because of the position I play, it’ll very likely be the only one I ever score. My throat tightens and my eyes burn, and it’s a good fucking thing the clock ran out as I crossed into the end zone and the touchdown gave us the lead, making the extra point unnecessary, because my feet are glued to the grass.

  As I stare down at the ground, trying to get my spiraling emotions under control, I’m not thinking of stats or records or what the announcers must be saying right now or my career that is, more than likely, almost at its end. Instead, as the fans roar and the stadium shakes and the field swarms with post-game media, it’s three names that play in my brain on repeat.

  Riley.

  Ethan.

  Maddy.

  “Look up,” Drew says quietly. At first I think he’s telling me to look at the fans, who are still celebrating like we just won the Super Bowl instead of a regular season November game where we played like shit and probably would have lost if not for a tipped pass, a lucky catch, and the fact that I managed to run eighty yards without dying.

  But that’s not it.

  Because when I look up, standing in front of me is a beaming Maddy, her green eyes sparkling under the stadium lights and a grin splitting her face. She’s so beautiful it makes my chest ache, and I have to clench my hands into fists to keep myself from reaching out for her.

  “Here he is!” she says, and for the first time I realize she’s holding up her phone, which she hands to me.

  Our fingers brush when I take it, and the electric shock zings up my arm.

  “Holy shit, Dad!” Riley’s voice snaps me out of it, and I turn my attention to Maddy’s phone, my throat tightening when I see both my kids grinning at me through the screen. I glance up at Maddy, her eyes full of understanding, and I have to swallow hard to keep my roiling emotions from bubbling over.

  I told her earlier that my kids didn’t come to the game today. I’ve been playing for a long time, and I always let them decide when they want to come and when they don’t. They always send me my pre-game picture, and it’s never a big deal for them not to come, except today something unexpected happened that was a very big deal and somehow, Maddy understood that I would want to talk to them and see their faces more than I want almost anything else.

  She understands me, and I had no idea how badly I needed to be understood.

  Phone in hand, I look back up at her. She gives me a soft smile, and I know that I don’t have to say any words because somehow, she just knows. And in that loud stadium, with people everywhere and cameras circling and my two best friends looking on, my heart, which had been tucked away safely in my chest for a decade, is utterly and irrevocably lost to Maddy Wright.

  “Dad!” At Ethan’s voice, I turn my attention to my very excited kids. Five minutes later, I hang up, promising to call later, then turn to find five microphones being shoved in my face, eager reporters ready to talk to the offensive lineman who made the unlikely game-winning touchdown.

  By the time I finish talking to them, the crowd on the field has thinned out a little, and I head over to where Tyler and Drew are standing with Maddy, Brian, and my coach.

  “Maybe you should have been a wide receiver,” Coach says with a rare smile, slapping my shoulder. “That was a hell of a run.”

  “Not fucking likely,” I return with a laugh, handing Maddy back her phone and letting my fingers linger on hers for a beat.

  She takes it and shoves it into the pocket of her jacket, sliding an inch away from me to put some space between us. I immediately reclaim that inch, dropping my hand to my side and grazing the back of it over hers. She jolts and whips her hand away, her eyes flashing and narrowing before sliding over to Brian, as if to say Not here. But I just scored the winning touchdown and I’m feeling dangerous, so I do it again, this time briefly linking our pinkies, smiling when I feel hers tighten around mine for a brief second before she lets go, and I turn my attention back to the group.

  “That was a one-time thing.”

  “A really beautiful thing,” Brian says with a grin. “A thing that is definitely going to be top billing on every single week ten highlight reel. Way to fucking go, Cam.”

  I shrug, even as those leftover emotions try to resurface. “I just got lucky.”

  “You didn’t,” Maddy says quietly, turning to me. “Nothing about that was luck.”

  For a second we get lost in each other before Drew’s voice breaks the spell. “So, we’re celebrating, yes?”

  Yanking my gaze away from hers, I look at Drew, his eyes clearly saying Get your shit together before giving Brian and Coach a meaningful glance. I follow his gaze to find both men looking at me with what I could swear are questions in their eyes.

  Shit.

  “We’re definitely celebrating,” I say quickly. Too quickly, probably, but my brain is still scrambled from the touchdown and the smell of Maddy’s shampoo.