BLINDSIDED BY FALLING FOR HIM

Chapter Three

SLOAN

I didn't sleep much.

Between the unfamiliar creak of a house that wasn't mine and the sound of Jax's car pulling back into the driveway sometime after one in the morning — late enough that I definitely wasn't going to ask, and definitely wasn't going to lie awake calculating what time he'd left Harlow's — I was up before my alarm, rehearsing every reason I had to keep my distance from every single person in this house.

By the time I got downstairs, Jax was already in the kitchen, shirtless in a way that felt personally engineered to be inconvenient, eating cereal straight out of the box.

"Morning," he said, not even looking up.

"You couldn't put on a shirt?"

"It's my house too." He tipped the box toward me. "Also technically your house now. You want some?"

"I want you to put on a shirt."

"Duly noted." He didn't move. "You sleep okay?"

"Fine."

"Liar." He said it easily, going back to his cereal before I could decide whether to be annoyed or unsettled that he'd clocked it. "For what it's worth, the noise last night wasn't me being out late for fun. Coach wanted film reviewed before today. Wanted me sharp on your reads before he puts us on the field together."

"I didn't ask."

"No," he agreed. "You didn't."

He left it there. I told myself it didn't matter whether it was true.

Practice was worse than the film room, which I hadn't thought was possible.

Nobody said anything outright Coach had made it clear on day one that anyone with a problem could take it up in his office but I felt it in smaller ways. The older guys running their routes half a beat slow when I called the play. Marks standing a little too close during drills, never touching, just present, reminding me whose spot I was fighting for.

And Jax was, infuriatingly, good at his job needling me between reps with commentary I hadn't asked for.

"You're telegraphing the slant," he said, jogging back to the line after batting down a pass that should've been an easy completion. "Your shoulders give it away before the snap. Marks doesn't do that."

"Nobody asked you to compare me to Marks."

"Somebody should. He's the guy you're actually trying to beat." He tossed the ball back, harder than necessary. "I'm not being an ass. I'm telling you what I'd want to know if I were you."

"You're always an ass. This is just a new flavor of it."

"Fine," he said, backing into coverage. "Do it your way. See how that goes."

I did it my way. The next slant got picked off clean, right into Marks's waiting hands, and the laugh that went up around the field wasn't subtle at all.

"There it is." Marks held the ball up like a trophy, grinning at the huddle instead of at me. "Careful, gentlemen next she'll be calling the plays from the sideline in heels, where she belongs."

The laugh that followed was bigger. Louder. A couple of guys I'd started to think might be on my side joined in before catching themselves.

Heat crawled up my neck, the specific, humiliating kind that made you want to disappear into the turf. I opened my mouth for a comeback that wouldn't have made it better anyway, when Coach's whistle cut through the noise instead.

"Marks. My office. Now." Coach didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. "Rest of you, reset."

Marks jogged off still smirking, like a two-minute lecture was a fair price for the laugh he'd gotten. I stood in the sudden quiet, refusing to look anywhere near Jax to see what was on his face. I didn't want his pity.

"Reset," Coach called. "Run it again. Whitaker, watch your shoulders."

We ran it again. The pass landed clean. Nobody laughed. It didn't make the first laugh disappear.

The ride home was quiet, and I intended to keep it that way.

"You're mad," Jax said eventually, eyes on the road.

"I'm not anything. I'm tired."

"You're mad about Marks."

"I'm mad about a lot of things today. Pick a lane."

He didn't push it, and for once, I was grateful he knew when to stop talking.

I was still in my room that evening, replaying that laugh on a loop I couldn't shut off, when a knock landed on my door.

"What," I said, not moving from the bed.

The door opened anyway just a crack, Jax's head appearing like he wasn't entirely sure of his welcome, which was new.

"Backyard. Ten minutes. Bring cleats."

"I'm not in the mood."

"Didn't ask if you were in the mood." He was already retreating down the hall. "Ten minutes. I mean it."

I told myself I wasn't going, for exactly nine of the ten minutes, and then I laced up my cleats anyway.

He'd set up cones in the backyard actual cones, like he'd planned this before he even knocked, which annoyed me more than I wanted to admit.

"What's the point of this," I said, catching the ball he threw and throwing it back harder than necessary. "It's not like Coach is going to actually put me in. I'm QB2. I'll spend the season watching Marks get his heels comment forgiven every week."

"Maybe. Or maybe he asks you to prove him wrong, and you're not ready, because you spent the season deciding it didn't matter."

"You don't know that Coach is actually considering it."

"I know he told me to get you sharp on your reads before he puts us on the field together." No smirk this time, which made it land harder. "That's not a courtesy, Sloan. That's a plan."

I threw the ball instead of answering.

"You might never get the chance," he said, catching it clean, "and you'll never know if you were good enough, because you spent every night deciding it wasn't worth trying. Or you put the reps in, and when he does ask because I think he will — you're standing there ready."

"Easy for you to say. You've been doing this since you were what, six?"

"Five." No hesitation. "And Marks has been doing it just as long — Pop Warner, varsity captain, offers before he could legally drive himself to visit campuses. That's who you're actually racing. Not me. Him." He threw the ball again, softer. "So if you want to be as good as a guy who's had a football in his hands since before he could read, you don't get to skip nights because you had a bad practice. You get worse. Or you get better. Pick one."

I caught the ball and held it, chest tight, hating him a little for being right and hating myself a little more for needing to hear it.

"Fine," I said. "Show me the reads again."

He smiled not the smirk, something different, something I didn't have time to examine before he was already moving to set up the next rep and we ran drills until it was too dark to see the cones, the silence between us slowly stopping feeling like a wall and starting to feel like something else entirely.

I was pulling my hoodie back on when my phone buzzed on the porch step.

Not Marcus. Not a teammate.

Coach Reyes.

Whitaker — be in my office at 7 AM sharp tomorrow. Alone. It's about the depth chart.

I stared at the screen, heart suddenly loud, and looked up to find Jax watching me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Everything okay?" he asked.

I didn't answer. I wasn't sure yet whether it was.

JAX

I watched her go pale in the porch light and felt something in my chest pull tight in a way I didn't have a category for yet.

I told myself it was about football that whatever Coach wanted at seven was a depth-chart thing, nothing to do with the way I'd spent the last hour finding reasons to keep throwing her the ball a little longer than the drill required.

It wasn't working. I'd felt her grin land somewhere behind my ribs the third time she caught a clean pass, before she remembered she wasn't supposed to be enjoying herself around me. I'd been finding reasons to notice things like that for longer than I wanted to admit the way she chewed on the inside of her cheek when she was concentrating, the way she said fine when she meant the opposite every single time.

This was a problem. Marcus's sister. My roommate though he hardly comes home decided to stay with his girlfriend. The girl I was supposed to be watching out for, for optics, and nothing else.

Harlow had texted twice while I was out here. I hadn't answered either one.

That should have told me something. I wasn't ready to sit with what.

"You gonna tell me what Coach wants?" I asked, mostly to fill the silence.

"I don't know yet. Guess I'll find out at seven."

She looked up at me then really looked, not the wary look she'd been giving me since the parking lot and for one unguarded second, something passed between us that had nothing to do with football at all.

Then she blinked, mumbled goodnight, and disappeared inside before I could figure out what I would've said if she hadn't.

I stood in the backyard a long time after the porch light clicked off, turning the ball over in my hands, thinking about the inconvenient fact that somewhere in the last three days, without any warning at all, I'd stopped being able to imagine this season without her in it.

Whatever Coach wanted with her tomorrow, I had a bad feeling it was going to change everything.

I just didn't know yet that it was going to change it for both of us.