Page 98 of Fair Catch
And then I fell.
I couldn’t help it, couldn’t fight against gravity as it took me down onto the earth. My hands shook as I covered my mouth, as I breathed a million thank Gods.
“He was just unconscious,” someone said, and I blinked, clearing the haze in my mind as I peered up and found Holden beside me. “He’s okay.”
He’s okay, my heart echoed.
It seemed like hours or even days that Zeke stayed down, the trainers touching his limbs and moving him around, running tests before they finally helped him up.
And when he made it to his feet, I jumped up to mine, willing him to find me across the field.
Players on both sides began to stand, the crowd cheering as Zeke let the trainers help him walk off the field. He watched his feet for a long moment, but when his eyes lifted.
He found me.
I choked on a sob, holding his gaze and praying with everything left in me that he could see every word I couldn’t say in that moment. When his expression cracked, when his jaw quivered and he swallowed, offering me just one, slight nod, I knew he did.
He didn’t come back to the sideline. The trainers took him through the tunnel, and I watched him go every step of the way until his back disappeared from view.
Then, the whistle blew, and the game resumed.
But my heart wasn’t on the field anymore.
It was with the boy who’d just been walked off it.
Zeke
It felt like an eternity before I was allowed back on the field, the trainers keeping a watchful eye on me even after I insisted I was fine. They took me back to the locker room to do every test in their book, including a full concussion protocol. It was just a hard hit — one that knocked me clean out — but I was okay.
Bruised, sure to be sore, but okay.
Even with no clear signs of a concussion, they pulled me for the rest of the game, which was torture enough on its own. But added to the fact that I had missed most of the fourth quarter because I was stuck in the locker room with them, it was hell.
They finally let me back on the sideline when we had four minutes left in the game.
I checked the time on the clock as soon as my cleats hit turf, and then I saw the score, cursing when I realized they’d pulled ahead by a touchdown and extra point. That curse had barely left my lips when my field of vision was interrupted.
By Riley.
Her eyes were still red and swollen, her cheeks pink from the biting cold as she stood there in front of me, arms at her sides, shoulders slumped. She scanned me from head to toe, rolling her lips together against another wave of emotion I knew she was trying to ward off.
I wanted so badly to pull her into me, to crush her to my chest and assure her I was okay.
To ask if we were okay.
But all I could do was stay rooted in place, waiting.
“I…” she started, but then the words died, and she clamped her mouth shut. For a long moment she just stared at me, and then she shook her head, fighting back tears as she buried her face in her hands. “God, I thought…”
“I’m okay,” I promised.
That seemed to break her more, but she sucked in a breath, sniffed, held her head high, did her best to hold everything together as we both watched our offense take the field.
We couldn’t talk — not now.
We had a game to win.
Without a word, I nodded toward the field, and we both walked over to stand beside our teammates. Defense was catching their breath as Coach mouthed something into his headpiece, covering his lips with his clipboard. On the field, Holden clapped to break up the huddle, and offense sprang into action, lining up for the play.
The last three minutes went by in a flash, one that ended with us scoring a touchdown and Riley kicking the extra point with only forty-two seconds left. Louisville tried a Hail Mary to finish it all off, but it was unsuccessful, and for the second time this season, we found ourselves heading into overtime.
When the whistle blew and Holden ran out on the field for the coin toss, Riley’s pinky brushed mine.
I shuttered at the touch, looping mine around hers briefly before we both had to break away — her to run kicks, me to jog over to where Coach Aarons had just called me.
But our eyes lingered, and my heart pounded in my chest with a dangerous thread of hope.
By a miracle, we won the coin toss, which meant we got to defer and see what their team did first. With a start at the twenty-five-yard line, it was assumed they’d get a kick at the very least, a touchdown if we couldn’t hold them.
