Page 1 of How to Score Off Field

PROLOGUE

TESS

I waseleven years old the first time I met the Colter twins.

My brother Grady had been signed up to play league football because our mom didn’t think he socialized enough, and she was sick of him sitting in his room, gaming all the time.

She wanted him to get exercise.

And meet people.

So that third week of football, she invited all the players over for a pizza party, and I remember the team arriving, one by one, getting dropped off by their parents for the two hours my mother had arranged—and I remember the Colters walking through the door.

Tall, even at the age of thirteen.

Tan from always being outside.

One was quiet and had braces; the other was talking and being loud as soon as he stepped foot in the kitchen where the pizza was being served.

I’d been on the other side of the room, hovering in the doorway where the laundry room was, too intimidated by all the teenage boys to grab a slice of my favorite—cheese, sausage, and pineapple. Mom had ordered it specifically for me, knowing most of the boys wouldn’t want pineapple on their pizza, but I was too chickenshit to steal a piece.

“Who’s that?” one of them asked. I can’t remember who.

Grady had looked in the direction of the kid’s finger, glancing at me over his shoulder.

“Oh. That’s my sister.”

Oh.

That’s my sister…

But I mean, I was his little sister, and I was kind of small at that age. And shy.

I remember that once they’d all lost interest in staring at me, and they’d gone back to devouring the pizzas, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the twins.

They were so cute.

Literally the cutest boys I’d ever seen in my entire life.

My face turned bright red as soon as the one in the gray tee shirt scanned the small group of boys and caught my eye in the corner, smiling after a few seconds of awkward staring.

I was too freaked out to smile back.

That had been Drew.

I found out his name later—the one with the braces—and lay in bed that whole night, staring up at my bedroom ceiling while saying it to myself. Drew.

Drew Colter.

I wondered what his middle name was.

He was the quiet Colter, who didn’t have much to say about anything unless asked. He usually let his louder, more obnoxious brother speak for them, as twins sometimes do.

And I watched number twenty-nine at every game of my brother’s that I went to, silently clapping when he blocked a play or took a hit and got back up on his feet without a scratch.

Drew Colter.

Sigh.

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