Page 89 of The Quarterback
“Until I say stop.”
Sweat stung Colton’s eyes and fell over his cracked, chapped lips. He tasted salt and the tang of his own blood. All around him, the weight room was still, crackling silence building like a thunderstorm as he felt twenty pairs of eyes scour his skin.
He spread his legs and hefted the weight. Breathed in, sucking oxygen through his burning lungs.
Wilson got right up beside him, hand hovering over his back with his lips almost against Colton’s ear as he started his first squat. Some part of Colton recognized that Wilson was close enough to grab him and the weight if he collapsed, but that knowledge was drowned out by Wilson’s voice. “What’s the point to this, Hall? What point are you trying to make? You should give up while it’s still easy, like Hobbs did. He’s the quarterback for the team now, anyway. Not you. You lost the team because you quit over the summer, and now they gotta follow him, and he’s decided to quit, too.”
“Three,” Colton choked out. He closed his eyes on the push upward.
“Why did you bother to show up today? I already crossed you off my list. I shouldn’t even have let you in here. I don’t let quitters in.”
“Four.” Wilson’s voice echoed inside him, his words tangling with Justin’s voice, with the words he’d said that day. With the anger and the rage and the hurt. God, Justin had been so hurt by them. By Colton. By what he’d done.If you hadn’t kissed Nick, none of this would have happened.
“What happened to you, Hall? You used to never quit on me, but here you are, ahas-been. What made you do it? What was the moment you decided something else was going to come before this team?”
“Five.” His body moved almost automatically as his mind drifted away. He felt something run down his face. Sweat? Tears? He didn’t know.
He had put Nick in front of the team. He had, and he’d known he was doing it. He’d made the choice—Nick, not football—every day. He’d wanted, and he’d chased, and he’d hoped for a future built out of unstable dreams with a man who’d never thought he was worth more than a few months of fucking.
“Was it pussy? Did you finally find some pussy over the summer? Fuck, I hope she was good enough to trade this entire team for.”
“Six.” Colton’s vision blurred. He saw Nick’s face. Saw Nick in front of him like he was really there. Like all those dreams he’d had of Nick in the stands and on the field, right there when Colton turned and sought him out.
But he wasn’t there. No one ever was. A sob broke from him, turning into a scream as he squeezed his eyes closed.
“What’s keeping you going? Why are you pushing, Hall? You havenothing. You’re not a quarterback anymore. You have no team. You don’t even have friends, do you? You’re all alone here. There’s nopointto this.”
He roared as he pushed through the seventh rep. Tears were raining down his face. He could taste them, feel them soaking into his hands as he gripped the weight. Agony tore through him, deeper than physical pain.
“You arealone—” Wilson shouted.
He was alone. He was so fucking alone. All he wanted, in the whole world, was for one person to love him.Nick.
“No. He’s not.”
Colton’s eyes fluttered open. Even lifting his eyelids took a physical effort he almost couldn’t spare.
Wes grabbed a hundred-pound dumbbell from the rack, the same weight as Colton was hefting, and held it in front of his chest as he spread his feet into the squat position. “He’snotalone.”
Wilson craned his head to Wes. “No?” he breathed.
“No.” Wes dropped into a squat, mirroring Colton’s moves. Their eyes met and held.
Colton’s next breath came out as a raw, broken sob. His muscles were being flayed inside him, and he didn’t know if he could keep moving, but having Wes there made it easier to breathe. Like part of him could lean on Wes, even if it wasn’t physical.
Wilson jerked his chin at Colton. “You think he’s worth following for a game?”
Wes stared at Colton. His nostrils flared. “Yes.”
Wilson’s lips curled. On someone else, it might have been called a smile. “Then we’re gonna do all sixty minutes of a full game in here. We’ll see who gives up first.” He turned to the rest of the weight room. “Anyone else think this man is worth following?”
Orlando grabbed a set of dumbbells. So did Art. Josh and Patrick each went to the row of monster tires and grabbed on to the tread. Dante took hold of the climbing rope. Anton sat on the rowing machine.
Clarence cursed. He started toward the chest press—
“Not you!” Wilson bellowed. “You do nothing. You watch.”
For sixty minutes, Wilson led the team—except Clarence—on a circuit workout, barely giving them more than sixty seconds of rest between exercises. Squats, lunges, burpees. Rows, jumping jacks, push-ups. Orlando and Anton puked. Colton had to crawl to the pull-up bar, and he nearly fell to the floor when his shoulder failed after three pull-ups. He switched his grip and hooked an elbow over the bar, catching his breath until he could lower himself to the floor one-handed. He wouldn’t let go and drop, though.
