BLINDSIDED BY FALLING FOR HIM

Chapter Two

By the time Coach let us out of the film room, I'd learned that our offense had more moving parts than I'd memorized in four years of high school ball combined and that somehow, none of that was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about.

"Okay, guys, that'll be all for today," Coach had said. "We'll continue next week, see you all on the field tomorrow."

Chairs scraped. Cleats squeaked against the tile. I grabbed my bag and got out before anyone could ask me anything else, my head still ringing from off-campus house and whenever she's needed and forty-three pairs of eyes that hadn't stopped assessing me since the second I walked in.

I made it almost to the end of the hallway before I heard my name.

"Sloan — wait up."

I didn't need to turn around to know who it was. I turned around anyway, arms crossed, because apparently my body hadn't gotten the memo that ignoring him would've been so much easier.

"What," I said, when he caught up to me.

"Just wanted to talk."

"I don't have time for that."

"You will." He fell into step beside me anyway, easy, like we hadn't just been assigned to each other for the next four months by a man with zero regard for my personal boundaries. "You good?"

"Don't."

"Wasn't going to say anything." A pause, and I could feel him looking at me sideways, cataloguing. "You looked like you were about to throw up on Coach's shoes, is all. Didn't know you played football, by the way. Marcus never mentioned it."

"Oh, wow." I kept my eyes forward. "Thought you knew everything about me." I replied sarcastically "Fair enough." A ghost of a smile, low and unbothered. "Do you have to be like this all the time, or is it just for me? I just wanted to know how good you actually are."

"I'm a little busy being in Coach mood, if you hadn't noticed—"

I didn't get to finish. Somewhere between one step and the next, I realized every person we passed had gone quiet, heads turning, a low murmur trailing behind us like we were something worth whispering about.

"Okay, this is weird." I slowed down, glancing around at the sea of not-quite-subtle staring. "Why is everyone looking at us?"

Jax didn't even blink. "Because you're walking next to the one and only star cornerback and captain of the Wolverines. Get used to it."

"Oh, there it is." I rolled my eyes so hard it physically hurt. "I was wondering how long it'd take you to say that about yourself."

"I didn't have to say it. They did." He nodded at a cluster of girls near the lockers who very much had not stopped looking. "I'm just translating."

"Must be exhausting. Being this important."

"You have no idea." But something in his voice had shifted — quieter under the cockiness, like he'd let the mask slip half an inch and then caught himself doing it.

I was about to say something back, something sharp, something to put us back on the footing I actually understood when a voice cut through the hallway noise, warm and delighted, aimed directly at him.

"There you are." She came around the corner like she owned the hallway, which, judging by the way three separate people immediately made room for her, she basically did. Effortlessly pretty in the specific way that made you angry at genetics, dark hair falling in a curtain she definitely didn't have to try for, a smile that landed on Jax first and then slid, curious, toward me. "I texted you like four times."

"Practice ran long." Jax's whole posture changed not dramatically, but enough that I noticed, the easy arrogance sliding into something looser, more familiar. Whatever this was, it wasn't new.

"Mm." She looked at me again, and there was nothing unkind in it if anything, her whole face brightened with the kind of open curiosity that made you want to like her against your will. "You're her. The quarterback everyone's been talking about."

"Sloan," I said, because apparently I existed now, and stuck my hand out like a total stranger at a job interview.

"Harlow." She shook it, warm, easy, no hesitation at all. "Okay, I love that. A girl who actually shakes hands. Everyone here just kind of nods at each other like we're too cool to touch."

I laughed before I could stop myself, and beside me, Jax went very still — that particular kind of still that meant something was happening that I didn't have the context for yet.

"You two know each other?" Harlow asked, glancing between us, delighted, like she'd just found the good gossip early.

"Unfortunately," I said, at the same time Jax said, "She's basically my sister."

Harlow's eyebrows went up. "Interesting way to describe someone you were just staring at like—"

"Harlow." Jax's voice had an edge to it now, sharp enough to cut the sentence off clean.

"What? I'm just saying." But she was smiling when she said it, easy and unbothered, already looping her arm through his like it was the most natural motion in the world, like she'd done it a thousand times before and would do it a thousand times again. "Anyway. I like you already, Sloan. We should get coffee sometime — I want to hear everything about how you ended up here."

"Sure," I said, and meant it, mostly, even as some small, unhelpful part of my brain was doing math it had no business doing the easy way her hand fit into the crook of his elbow, the way he didn't move away from it, the specific, practiced comfort of two people who'd stopped needing to ask permission to touch each other a long time ago.

"Great. I'll find you." She was already pulling him down the hallway, glancing back once with a wave that felt genuinely warm. "Bye, Sloan!"

"Bye," I said, to her back, and then stood there a second too long, watching them go, watching the way he bent his head toward whatever she was saying, easy and familiar and not mine to notice.

I didn't know her. I didn't know him, not really — not yet. But I filed the whole interaction away in the part of my brain reserved for things I was going to need later, the same way I filed a defense's tendencies before a snap, and I told myself that it didn't matter to me either way.

He was leaning against his car by the time I made it out to the lot, arms crossed, sunglasses pushed up into his hair like he'd been waiting long enough to get comfortable about it.

"You drove?" I asked, stopping a few feet away. "Thought you'd still be with Harlow."

"She had class." He pushed off the car, popping the trunk without being asked, nodding at my bag like that settled the matter. "Get in. Unless you'd rather walk to a house you don't know the address of."

"I have legs. I could've figured it out."

"Sure you could." But he was already rounding to the driver's side, and after a second of standing there being stubborn for no reason that actually served me, I got in.

He was leaning against his car by the time I made it out to the lot, arms crossed, sunglasses pushed up into his hair like he'd been waiting long enough to get comfortable about it.

"You drove?" I asked, stopping a few feet away. "Thought you'd still be with Harlow."

"She had class." He pushed off the car, popping the trunk without being asked, nodding at my bag like that settled the matter. "Get in. Unless you'd rather walk to a house you don't know the address of."

"I have legs. I could've figured it out."

"Sure you could." But he was already rounding to the driver's side, and after a second of standing there being stubborn for no reason that actually served me, I got in.

The drive was quiet in a way that wasn't quite comfortable and wasn't quite awful either — just two people who didn't know yet what kind of quiet they were supposed to have. He drummed his fingers against the wheel at a red light. I watched the campus give way to a quieter street, older houses, trees starting to lean over the road.

"You didn't have to wait for me," I said, eventually, mostly to fill the silence.

"Didn't have to." He didn't look over. "Coach would've had my head if you got lost on day one, though. Optics, remember?"

"Right. Optics."

"That's the only reason," he said, and something about the way he said it too fast, too flat — made me wonder if he was trying to convince me or himself.

He pulled into a driveway a few minutes later, cutting the engine, and for a second neither of us moved.

"Home sweet home," he said, finally, and got out before I could ask him what he'd almost said back at the light.

The house was smaller than I expected and somehow still felt like too much — two stories, a kitchen that looked like it had survived several generations of college guys, and a staircase Jax took two steps at a time like it personally owed him something.

"This one's yours." He pushed open a door at the end of the hall, stepping back to let me in first, which felt almost polite, which felt almost wrong coming from him. "The bathroom's shared, but there's a lock. Use it."

The room was a plain bed, desk, a window that looked out over a patchy backyard but it was mine, and after a day that had rearranged my entire life twice, mine was the only thing I wanted to hear.

"Thanks," I said, and meant it, and hated a little bit that I meant it.

"Don't get used to the niceness." He was already backing toward the door, phone buzzing in his hand, and I watched something shift across his face as he glanced at the screen, a small, private smile that had nothing to do with me at all. "I've got somewhere to be."

"Somewhere," I repeated, flat.

"Harlow." He said it easy, unbothered, already grabbing his keys off the hook by the door like this was any other Tuesday. "We've got plans."

"Right. Of course you do."

Something in my voice must have carried more than I meant it to, because he paused in the doorway, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't read — not the smirk, not the arrogance, something quieter underneath both.

"Get some sleep, Whitaker," he said instead of whatever he'd almost said. "Big day tomorrow."

Then he was gone, and I was alone in a house that wasn't mine yet, in a room that barely felt like mine either, listening to his car pull out of the driveway and telling myself, very firmly, that the hollow feeling in my chest was about exhaustion and nothing else.