Page 7 of The Player

At first, the crowd was just a low rumble. Then it got louder and louder until he could feel it in the dirt under his back, and nobody lost their damn mind like that over an incomplete pass.

We fucking won.

He lay there trying to get his breath back. The first one wouldn’t come at all. The second dragged warm air into his chest and lit his ribs on fire. With the whole stadium going nuts around him, Drew thought about Boston.

His parents had to have seen that throw. They were probably both on their feet in the living room, yelling at the television like the refs could hear them through it. They couldn’t get to every game, not with what flights cost, but if one was on TV, they were watching. The thought of them seeing him make that play made the next breath come a little easier.

Hands grabbed Drew and pulled him up. His teammates closed in around him, helmets and shoulder pads banging together, everybody yelling at once.

Dayshawn got there first. He grabbed Drew’s face mask and yanked their helmets together. “Yeah, baby! That’s what the fuck I’m talkin’ about!” His grin was wild, sweat running down his face.

More bodies piled on. Guys slapped Drew’s helmet, shoulders, and back. He looked past all of them toward the sideline, where the cheerleaders had quit pretending to hold a formation and were jumping and screaming. Kayla stood near the fifty with her dark red ponytail whipping around and her pom-poms on the ground at her feet. She spotted him and blew him a kiss.

They’d fucked on and off the year before. It had been fun while it lasted, but he’d moved on, and Kayla kept trying to start it back up anyway.

The clock had run out during the play, and the student section came over the wall and onto the field, navy and gold everywhere, streaming right past security guards who’d given up trying to hold anybody back. Drew caught himself searching the crowd for Nicole.

Which was crazy. He’d talked to the girl one time.

But he kept looking anyway.

He wasn’t even sure what he planned to do if he found her. Wave? Walk over and say something smooth while trying not to breathe too deeply because his ribs felt cracked?

Yeah. Real fucking impressive.

Somewhere in all of it, the band struck up the fight song. A camera crew shoved its way over with a light on top of the rig bright enough to make him squint. Drew had gotten used to cameras sometime in the last two years, around the same time scouts started showing up at practice and sportswriters started calling him a first-round pick.

A reporter reached him with her microphone out, shouting over the noise. “Drew! That last throw—can you walk us through it?”

He pulled off his helmet and leaned toward the microphone with one hand pressed flat against his ribs. Every breath hurt, and sweat burned his eyes, but the camera was live. He stood up a little straighter, smiled, and acted like none of it bothered him. That was part of the job too.

“They brought pressure up the middle, and the play broke down. Dayshawn kept moving, found some room in the back corner, and made a hell of a catch. I just put it where he could get it.”

“The Heisman talk is getting louder every week. What do you say to the people who think you’re the front-runner right now?”

He’d been getting that question for months, so the answer pretty much came out on its own. “I don’t think about that stuff. I just try to help the team win. Individual awards take care of themselves.”

That was the coached answer. The truth was, he thought about it all the damn time. How could he not? He’d worked his whole life to be in that conversation.

“One more question. There are reports that several NFL teams have been sending scouts to your games. Any thoughts on your future at the next level?”

Everybody already knew the answer to that one. This was his last season of college ball. He’d be in the NFL draft come spring. The scouts knew it, his coaches knew it, every guy on that field knew it, and so did his family. They’d given up enough to get him here that the whole thing didn’t feel like just his anymore. Drew tried not to think about that part too hard. It was tough enough not letting himself down.

“I’m focused on this season,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of football left to play.”

The camera light went dark, and the reporter thanked him and took off, probably to find Dayshawn, who’d be entering the draft too.

All around Drew, people were still going crazy over the part they got to see. They heard Heisman and NFL and pictured everything that might be waiting for him. What they didn’t see was all the shit it took to get there. The mornings Drew dragged himself into the weight room before the sun came up. The hours of film. The playbook he studied until his head hurt and the words ran together. August practices in that Southern heat, when guys went down and trainers came running with water. They didn’t see how scared he was of losing any of it.

Football had taken over his whole life until there wasn’t room left for anything else. He’d built it that way on purpose. He loved every exhausting, painful, brutal fucking piece of it.

And as his teammates hauled him toward the locker room, Drew looked for Nicole one more time.

Chapter Four

“You son of a bitch!” Phallon’s palm cracked across Drew’s face, snapping his head to the side.

“Ah, shit.” He worked his jaw back and forth, then glared at her. “What the fuck was that for?”