Page 39 of Look What You Made Me Do

A few minutes after play started, Jake joined her on the bench. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About the breaking a leg thing.”

“It’s fine,” he dismissed, his gaze intent on the game.

Except it didn’t seem fine. “I just wanted to be… succinct but I’m not au fait with football stuff.”

Of course, it was hard not to have some knowledge of the game growing up in America. And with Cam the last two years, there’d been more football in her life than she cared for. But she’d never been sports inclined. Any sports. The sports segment on the news each night was her only regular consumption.

“Uh huh.”

“But I want them to know I’m rooting for them and not just because of the school but for their individual growth, too. They’ve all been so committed so the least I can do is?—”

“Ella.” Jake’s interruption cut her short as he dragged his gaze off the field. “Must you talk?”

Sick to her stomach with nerves, Jake’s testiness was like nails down a chalkboard. Annoyed at his tone, Ella felt testy herself. “What?” she faux cooed. “Can’t do two things at once?”

His eyebrow lifted. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

Ella blushed. Okay, yeah, she’d so picked the wrong man for that quip. He’d multi-tasked his ass off two years ago. “Sex doesn’t count.”

He snorted. “Sex always counts.”

They stared at each other for a moment. “Don’t you have a game to be watching?”

“Are you going to let me?”

She held his gaze for as long as she could, wondering if he was thinking about sex now too? Given the impatience bubbling in his eyes, probably not. “I won’t say another word.”

For the rest of the game, Ella sat on the edge of her seat. Rosie and Simon had joined her and she clung to Rosie’s hand like the lifeline it had always been. Occasionally Jake would sit and explain things but more often than not he was wearing a path up the sideline, yelling encouragement and direction.

Pete also trekked endlessly up and down, video camera in hand. Jake explained that he’d use it to review the team’s performance during the week. Cerberus shadowed Pete’s every move, barking when things got exciting, whining when Jake’s encouragement got particularly animated, and taking shameless advantage of spectators who threw the mangy-looking hellhound their hot dog leftovers.

Every successful throw, kick or pass from the Cats earned a massive roar from their supporters and triggered a peppy routine from their cheer squad. The squad was irritatingly perfect, with short blue skirts and tight yellow tees encasing all their youthful perkiness.

Blonde and bouncy, all twenty of them.

“Jeez, I didn’t realize public high school science budgets ran into the millions,” she murmured to Jake at one stage.

He frowned. “Huh?”

Ella nodded in the direction of the cheer squad. “Some genius at the Cats has managed to clone Barbie.”

“You don’t approve of cheerleaders?”

“Absolutely not.” Ella shot him a disgusted look. “Talk about taking the women’s movement back two hundred years.”

Just then the Cats’ quarterback made a break for the end zone so she was spared his response as he ran up the sideline, calling to his team, strategizing on his feet.

At half-time, the Cats were ahead by twelve and Deluca weren’t even on the board. Ella watched with trepidation as the Demons walked off the field, all red-faced and sweaty, their shoulders slumped. Cameron didn’t even look at her, his dejection arrowing straight through her soul. She sat on the bench, powerless, wanting to build the team up but not having a clue how to go about it.

Luckily Jake seemed to know. He talked non-stop in the fifteen-minute break, reviving their spirits, praising them, encouraging them. Reiterating their goals, focusing them on the next half.

By the time the Demons ran back onto the field they were standing tall again.

And Ella was officially turned on.

Jake had been magnificent. He’d been articulate and passionate, his belief in his team and his passion for the game blazing from his eyes.

It was a potent combination.

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