Page 3 of Red Zone

“You never told us why she broke things off,” Ares pushed.

“It didn’t make sense.” That last conversation played in my head as it had all those years ago.

My mind tripped back to freshman year, when Coach came down on me for a shitty practice.

“Listen up, Cartwright,” Coach Macintyre had said. “You’re distracted and gonna fuck this up. Is the NFL your goal, or isn’t it?”

“Yes, Coach.” My stomach churned with worry. I had a scholarship to play football at a D1 university and a firm goal to make it professionally—which meant I had to make the scouts notice me during the games. If he benched me for screwing up in practice like I did that day, I could kiss my dreams goodbye.

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

I winced when images of what Skye and I had done all night long—resulting in my lack of sleep and several fumbles on the field today—flooded my mind. I didn’t need to confirm anything to Coach. He saw it on my face.

“Girls are dream killers, Cartwright.”

“We’re just casual.” I rubbed my chest as I said it, trying to downplay how much she consumed my thoughts.

“That girl is in your head. If you’re distracted by ‘casual,’ you won’t have a future.”

Body sore from a brutal football practice and Coach’s words replaying in my head, I’d exited the athletic building to find Skye waiting for me. My gaze crawled over her long legs, lingering on her curves to her gorgeous eyes and plump lips. I wanted to bury my hands in her dark, wavy hair. She was the only girl who had ever held my attention. With long strides, I closed the distance between us, my hand going to her hip and the other sinking in her thick hair to pull her close.

She slapped her hand against my chest and pushed. “Hey, we need to talk.”

Halfway to her lips, I froze at the phrase no guy wanted to hear. Her mouth turned up in a shaky smile as she backed up a step, and I leaned against the side of the building. The bricks were warm from the afternoon sun.

The memory was like quicksand, and I extracted myself from it as best I could. “It didn’t make sense. She’d asked me an impossible question.”

“Which was?” Kylian prompted.

“She wanted to know if we had a future together. It was totally out of the blue. Of course, I told her no.” Coach’s lecture had been fresh in my head when she’d asked me—and the conversation about girls being dream killers was too similar to what my dad would have said, which was a mindfuck in itself. “My goal was, and always had been, a career in the NFL. Nothing would change that.”

“And she didn’t elaborate? Was she talking marriage or just an exclusive relationship? Or did she have something against your NFL goals?” Ares scrubbed his hand over the stubble on his jaw. “Some girls don’t want a life with a professional athlete because of all the bullshit from other women, late hours, or the travel.”

I shook my head. “No. That doesn’t make sense. We weren’t at a point where the future was relevant because we’d only been together a couple of months. And she even proved that point when she said something crazy like, ‘Well, it was fun while it lasted. See you around.’”

“You didn’t try to stop her?” Kylian leaned forward.

I scowled, my fists clenching all over again. “It was a goodbye. I saw it in her eyes. Then that fuckhead Calvin walked by and made some smart-ass comment.”

“That was the fight? It was right after you talked to Skye?” Ares’s gaze locked onto the scar that ran along my left cheekbone from that day.

“Yep. That was when it happened.”

Calvin had run his mouth about Skye dumping me for someone better, and his cousin Mav’s name had come up. I’d lost it. Things were already heated. Mav wasn’t far and intervened.Things went from bad to worse. Mav tried to break us up. Calvin grabbed Mav’s hockey stick and wacked me in the face, resulting in my scar. And the kicker was, I saw Mav later with his arm around Skye.

Silence hung heavy between the three of us until Kylian broke it. “Maybe it’s for the best. Unless her being around changes something for you.”

“She changes nothing,” I snapped. I couldn’t let her. She’d turned my world upside down. I had too much riding on the year for her to mess with my head again.Still…“Why the hell is she here after all this time?”

“She probably never left.” Kylian kicked his feet onto the coffee table. “We’re at a D1 school with fifty thousand students, and she’s a different major than any of us. It’s not surprising you never ran into her when she didn’t want you to anymore.”

“And now she does?” I scowled. “Don’t sugarcoat it for me, QB1.”

Kylian rolled his eyes. “I get it. This sucks. After she ditched and blocked you, the last thing you expected was for her to invade our turf.”

“Yes, that.” I was screwed. “How can I concentrate with her there during practices, games, and who the hell knows what else?”

“You do your job.” Kylian’s game face snapped into place, and he leveled me with the same high intensity that got us to perform our best on the field and win. “You’re a legend in the stadium. You have nothing to worry about. Don’t let her get in your head. Just focus on the game.”

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