Page 134 of Fair Catch

“Hey, Fuller! Get your ass over here!”

The sound of my name drags my attention behind me. Confused, I turn to find Holden, Luca, Harrison and Noah walking along the sidelines of the field.

I try to look not as confused as I’m feeling while I jog their way. After all, I’m more than happy to see them, but still not sure what they’re doing here.

Or more importantly—

“How the hell did you get down here?” I ask, pulling up short of the four of them.

“Holden sweet talked his way down here,” Harrison replies with an eye roll. “I swear, some people must think he’s got gold shoved up his ass, they want him to reconsider not declaring so bad.”

“Bold of you to assume I don’t have a few gold nuggets stashed up there,” Holden counters, which makes Harrison’s nose wrinkle up in disgust at the visual.

“You and Phoenix have some weird fucking foreplay if that’s the case.”

Holden just shrugs. “Yeah, you’re right. We use a twenty-four-carat plug for that instead.”

And there are some things I just don’t want to know about my best friend’s sex life—jokingly or not.

“I can’t believe you guys actually drove down to Indy for this,” I remark, doing my best to change the subject toanythingelse.

“Well, duh,” Noah says, a ridiculous grin on his face. “We have to show support for the only one on the team dumb enough to try going pro this year.”

Holden socks Noah in the shoulder and gives him a dirty look. “Just because you’re too much of a chickenshit to be rejected.”

Noah grumbles something under his breath I can’t quite make out, though I think I catch the phraseshould’ve stayed homein there somewhere.

“What he means to say is we thought you could use some moral support.” Holden bites his lower lip before adding, “Phoenix wanted to be here too, but—”

“He’s got games this weekend, I know. That’s why I’m surprised you’re here.”

“They’re over in Michigan this weekend, and there’s not a chance in hell I was driving up there just to freeze my ass off.” He holds his hands up in resignation. “I love him, but I also have limits.”

“Right,” I say dryly, knowing damn well that Holden would do just about anything for Phoenix. That much has become obvious in the past few weeks I’ve been living at the house with them.

“Well, he also wanted you to have someone here to cheer you on,” Holden states, his signature smirk on his lips. “He was the one who insisted we come, actually, since it was only a couple hours drive.”

“He asked us to give him a play-by-play of how the entire day goes. All the stats and times you put up, videos of whenever we can sneak them,” Noah relays before shaking his head. “If he wasn’t gonna be on the field for a good chunk of the day for their double header, I’d bet he would ask us to FaceTime him so he could watch.”

Luca glances over at Noah, muttering, “Yeah, and we’d much rather have him here than you, considering how fucking obnoxious you were the entire ride here.”

Holden and I share a look—one we often give each other when it comes to these two—before Holden gives them a tight smile.

“Can you guys grab us some seats, please? Somewhere down in the front?”

Noah and Luca share a disgruntled look before Noah heads back the way they came, Luca following a few paces behind.

Harrison looks some mixture of unamused and annoyed before asking, “You’re really gonna make me go babysit them, aren’t you?”

“Unless you’re wanting to bail one of them out of jail for killing the other,” Holden retorts with a shrug.

“Who’s to say I wouldn’t just help bury the body?” Harrison replies, and for the briefest second, I think he’s considering letting the two of them head off on their own. But then Luca calls for him to hurry his ass up, and he relents, jogging over to catch up.

“How’re you feeling?” Holden finally asks now that the others are gone, his tone becoming far more serious than I’ve ever heard it.

I blow out a long breath. “Nervous.”

“Honestly, I’d be worried if you weren’t.” He offers me an encouraging smile. “Just don’t get in your head about it. You’re gonna kill it out there and make the rest of us look like slackers.”

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