Page 20 of The Perfect Pass
I can’t believe I’m doing this. Once a week in this place wasn’t bad enough?
Her eyes darted to the turf logo on the thirty-yard line where Ethan’s name was spelled out in crisp lettering. She wondered what her brother would’ve thought about the fact that they’d rechristened the stadium after he’d passed away. Knowing Ethan, he would’ve felt it was undeserved. He’d always given his all on the field, and he took pride in his place in Bulldog history—not just as a player, but as a coach too, even though his tenure on staff hadn’t lasted as long as he’d hoped. He’d wanted to be named head coachsomeday, and if he hadn’t passed away so prematurely, Calla knew he would’ve made that dream come true. But Ethan’s spinal cord injury had damaged the nerves that controlled his respiratory muscles, which made pneumonia especially risky. In the end, he hadn’t stood a chance.
As a boy, Ethan had idolized the players on the Bulldogs who’d gone before him. Their father had played for Bishop Falls High, and so had their grandfather. Ethan left his own legacy on the team he loved so much, but he’d have been the first to point out that he’d never been part of a state championship team. In his eyes, there were others more deserving of the honor of having the stadium renamed.
Calla disagreed, of course. Ethan had made the ultimate sacrifice. For what, though?
It’s only a game.
Why didn’t anyone in this town seem to understand that? In the darker hours of her grief, her brother’s injury and his death five years later hadn’t felt like a sacrifice at all. It had felt like a waste. Regardless, if it were up to her, Ethan’s name would’ve stretched all the way from one end zone to the other.
No one cared what Calla thought, though. They just wanted her to cheer along on Friday nights and write glowing editorials insisting this was the year the Bulldogs would finally bring home another championship.
Well, that wasn’t going to happen. She could barely stomach writing that kind of drivel twice a week, much less every single day, Monday through Friday. She’d already decided that the inaugural installment of her expanded column would attempt to give readers insight into whether Jackson’s disastrous press conference might have a negative effect on the team’s morale heading into theseason opener. It was the question on everybody’s minds, after all. Why tiptoe around a delicate issue when she could tackle it head-on?
Calla pulled a face.Tackle it head-on? Ugh, I’ve been doing this for so long that I’m thinking in football metaphors without even realizing it’s happening.
She needed to get off the sports page before she completely lost her mind. But first, she had to sit here and watch Jackson Knight do his thing, regardless of her personal feelings about the sport. As a professional, she was grateful for the invitation, but if he thought she was going to go easy on him just because he was being nice to her, he was sorely mistaken. Telling the truth was the entire basis of her job as a journalist.
She planted her boots on the metal stadium seat in front of her, flipped open her notepad and propped it on her lap. Then she shielded her eyes from the late-afternoon sun and squinted down at the vibrant green turf. Her gaze immediately zeroed in on Jackson without even trying.
The man had a commanding presence on the football field; she’d give him that much. Gone was the casual air of indifference he’d given off when they’d first met before the parade yesterday. He paced the sidelines like he owned the place, barking orders loud enough for her to hear all the way at the top of the stands.
She jotted down a few notes.
“Bossy, smug and overly confident. No surprise there.”
He’d displayed those exact same qualities at the start of the press conference, albeit with much less intensity. It was strange to see him this way again after he’d treated her with such gentle kindness at the coffee shop.
Anyone could be nice for twenty minutes, though.Especially when their reputation was on the line. She’d do well to remember that.
She’d gotten a little caught up in the unexpected intimacy of their conversation earlier. Jackson’s willingness to talk about Ethan had cracked her open and tapped into a vulnerability she hadn’t allowed herself to feel for a long, long time. Her boss’s humiliating reminder had put an abrupt end to all of that, though. She and Jackson would never have any sort of relationship beyond a professional rapport. Calla had known that all along…she’d just had a tiny moment of weakness, that’s all. It would never happen again.
But when Jackson lifted his face toward the stands, she could feel his gaze on her as real as if it were a caress, despite the fact that his eyes were shielded behind mirrored aviator sunglasses. Electricity crackled between them, even from all this way. Calla didn’t like it. Not one bit. If she kept feeling like this every time he looked at her, she was going to have to pay one of the student trainers to dump the contents of the sports cooler over her head. Nothing killed chemistry quite like an ice-cold Gatorade shower.
She redirected her attention back to her notepad without giving Jackson the satisfaction of a wave or even so much as a smile.
“Easily distracted,” she wrote. “Has the attention span of a goldfish in a room full of glitter.”
He should be focusing on the players, not on her.
But as practice unfolded, Calla couldn’t help noticing things that challenged her preconceived notions about him. He wasn’t actually yelling, more like explaining. Compared to the other coaches on the field, he spoke with a leveled calm. And he seemed to have an uncanny ability to knowjust when to pause and let a command settle like a weight in the silence.
“Keep your knees up, Davila,” he called out as he ran the wide receivers and running backs through a ladder drill. “Let’s pick up the pace, Jones. This is football practice, not a Sunday stroll.”
His tone was sharp but never demeaning, and half an hour in, Calla hadn’t seen him glance at the clipboard tucked under his arm. Not even once.
“Appears to already know all the players by name.”She hesitated, pen poised over the page before finishing her thought, more reluctant than she cared to admit. “Impressive.”
Next, Jackson broke the team into groups. Cade Montgomery led the quarterbacks in practice precision throws with the receivers, while Bob Simmons worked with the linemen on blocking techniques. Jackson alternated between the two squads, giving encouragement and correcting form. Calla jumped and looked up from her notepad at the sharp blow of his whistle to find him grabbing a helmet and jamming it onto his head.
What was he doing? Wasn’t he still injured?
She held her breath as he stepped onto the line with his players to show a hesitant kid how to execute a proper block. The impact of his solid form as he threw himself against a blocking dummy reverberated up from the turf.
“Nice hands-on coaching technique,” she scribbled. “These kids could learn a lot from a player of his caliber.”
When she glanced back, she could detect a slight limp in Jackson’s gait. He looked like he was trying to walk it off, but as she leaned forward and narrowed her eyes, shecould spy a grimace behind the helmet’s face mask. He was definitely in some degree of pain.
