Page 97 of Fair Catch
“Come on, Zeke, take it to the house!” a fan cheered from the front row, and his entire section lit up with their agreement.
I noticed the tilt of Zeke’s lips, how he cracked his neck.
And then the ball was sailing toward him.
It was slow motion, tilting and turning and flying over the field. Distantly, I heard the crunch of pads meeting, heard the stampede of feet as players on both teams sprinted down to where Zeke waited.
He caught the ball effortlessly, tucking it into his side.
And he ran.
Even through the thick lining of the brick red padded pants he wore, I could see the muscles of his thighs rippling with every explosive run and every quick juke he made to avoid getting tackled. He zigged and zagged through the special team’s defenders, the roar of the crowd growing more and more as he made it past the thirty, the forty, the fifty, well into Louisville’s territory.
“Go! Go! Go!”
Our teammates yelled in unison, jumping up and down like crazy on the sidelines as Coach wound his arm in circles and screamed the same.
Zeke narrowly escaped being wrapped up at the forty, and all eyes were on him with what seemed like an open path to a touchdown.
Until a gunner swung in out of nowhere and tackled him from behind.
The hit was brutal, Zeke unsuspecting as the player’s shoulder pads crashed into the small of his back. He bent in an unnatural way, nearly losing the ball in the process, but he somehow managed to tuck it under him before he hit the ground in a sickening crunch of body meeting turf.
There was a unified oohhh from the crowd, the hit hard enough to garner a gasp from me without any chance of taming it. The gunner hopped right up once the whistle was blown, jogging over to the opposing sideline.
But Zeke didn’t move at all.
He lay half on his side, half on his stomach, the ball still tucked under him.
Motionless.
“Shit,” I heard Coach Aarons mutter, and then I watched in horror as our trainers jogged out on the field, the referees clearing everyone else from the area.
He didn’t move.
Zeke wasn’t moving.
He didn’t roll over onto his back, didn’t groan in pain, didn’t so much as move a finger. His body lie limp and lifeless on the ground as the trainers surrounded him, carefully assessing.
And none of them made to move him, either.
I didn’t realize the shock I was in, how my breath had lodged in my throat, how my hands trembled where they hovered over my mouth. None of it registered until Leo gently touched my shoulder, making me jolt violently.
“He’s probably just unconscious,” he said, and that was supposed to soothe me.
That was the best-case scenario.
Because the only other reason he wouldn’t be moving…
I sucked in a cold breath, tears flooding my eyes, and Clay was there in the next instant, rubbing my back, too.
“It’s okay,” he promised. “He’s okay.”
But it was a promise he couldn’t make, one no one could make — not with Zeke still lying on the ground with a team of trainers around him.
One by one, I watched my teammates take their helmets off, watched them lower to one knee on the field or the sideline — wherever they were. Half of them watched where the trainers were huddled around Zeke. The other half watched the ground.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I lowered, too, knee sinking into the cold turf as my heart hammered in my ears.
Come on, Zeke. Get up. Get up.
The prayer repeated itself in my head, in my heart, in my soul as every player, coach, and fan alike held their breath and waited.
Tears built in my eyes again, and I didn’t bother trying to stop them as they silently slipped over the apples of my cheeks.
“I should have told him,” I whispered. “I… I should have…”
Someone squeezed my shoulder, and I didn’t realize I was speaking out loud until I felt that squeeze.
“He’s okay.”
Another empty promise from a voice I didn’t have the energy to identify.
All I could do was kneel, and stare, and wait, all the while feeling my chest split open with the possibility of what the injury could be.
My eyes focused on his left cleat, the only part of him I could clearly see through the trainers gathered around him. I stared and stared and willed it to move.
Please, I begged. Please.
It was too long. It had been too long that he’d been lying there.
But then, his foot tilted, toe bending down to the turf.
I let out a gasp of a breath, one that only intensified when Zeke rolled over onto his back, the trainers adjusting around him. I caught a glimpse of his face through a clearing, saw his eyes blinking slowly through the visor of his helmet.
