Page 114 of Near Miss

Greer tips her head to the side, chin angling upwards the way it does when I know she wants me to kiss her but she’s too stubborn to ask. Her voice drops, just a tiny rasp against a loud world, but something I think might be a bit like a lighthouse beam in the dark. I’ll always be able to hear it. “They’re saying other things, too.”

I lean down, mouth kicking to the side. “Oh yeah?”

Her eyelids flutter, and her chin rises further. “I didn’t realize you were professional football’s most eligible bachelor. I was harbouring under the delusion that you were a pariah forevermore, but they’re saying you’re not so eligible anymore.”

“Well, am I?”

“You are very, very much not.” She takes this tiny inhale before she kisses me.

First. Enthusiastically. Like she loves me. Probably entirely inappropriately for the venue.

But most of all, real.

Greer

I can’t be entirely sure how long the kiss lasts. I lose track because it’s just me and him on Sunday like we promised.

My sister cheers with everyone else when it first happens, and eventually she starts clearing her throat loudly, but I can hardly hear it because there’s this thing happening in my body that’s never happened before—the start of this new sound, my heart and my brain in harmony.

Sunlight, my brain whispers.

We love him, my heart echoes.

“Davis.”

I do hear that, because it’s a new voice and it sounds irritated.

Beckett doesn’t seem to, judging by the way his tongue sweeps against mine and his hand fists the hair at the nape of my neck.

“Nineteen. Enough. This isn’t a fucking movie.”

He must hear that, because he does pull back, but it’s begrudgingly. He drops his lips roughly to the corner of my temple before he turns and looks down to the field. “Could havefooled me. Come on, boy breaks the record, boy gets the girl? This is riveting stuff, Coach.”

He does sound a bit like a boy, and he looks like one, too—sharp planes of his face softer somehow underneath the stubble dusting his jaw, green eyes wide and brilliant, chocolate hair matted and tumbling every which way. There’s even a tiny grass stain on the bottom left corner of his jersey.

Shoulders raised and straight, like they’ve never held anything at all.

His coach pinches the bridge of his nose, all of him exasperated, but I think those are smile lines trying to score across his skin. “This is how you want to celebrate a record-breaking win? One that only proves you’ve got fucking work to do because it should have belonged to you last year?”

A lazy grin rolls along Beckett’s mouth. “Can’t think of a better way, really.”

His coach claps his hands together before jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “Post-game. Let’s go. You’re holding everything up.”

Beckett turns to me, one hand brushing across the top of my earmuffs. “Wait for me?”

I would, for the rest of my life, I think.

And I do wait—it’s fun to watch, actually.

It’s this other thing he’s so good at that he’s never thought was really worth anything. He walks out for the interview, one hand raised and a lazy smile on his face that puts everyone at ease.

He’s a man of many talents, but I do think this one is one of the loveliest—the way he makes everyone feel special, feel seen, and he does it without effort.

They mostly ask about the kick. What it felt like to reach it, and to do it against Baltimore.

Eventually, they ask who I am—not in the general sense of the phrase, because everyone knows all there is to know about menow, all my deep dark secrets and my scars—but who I am to him.

To everyone’s delight, he grins, that dimple digs in, and he runs a hand through freshly showered hair and says, “Just the love of my life.”

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