Page 163 of Only in Your Dreams

“I’m very interested. It’s a great opportunity, if it happened.”

“Then I’m confused. How are you not bouncing off the ceiling right now? I mean, it’s theKnights, Zac. The top team in your division. Don’t you want to coach for them?”

“Well, yeah. But—”

“And, more importantly, why are you not thrilled by the prospect of eventually moving there? With me, your girlfriend. Who’s usually the dour one between us, but who’d probably burst into fucking song and dance over this, if you weren’t looking like such a sour puss. Talk to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“If I did get the job… You’d work for me, Mel.”

“We’d be a team,” I say, throwing out my arms, barely able to contain my excitement. “We do it every Sunday anyway, don’t we? I help you with your playbook. You tell me how clever I am—honestly, it’s about time you paid me for it. Besides, I got this job on my own merit. Zac, this is perfect.”

“You’re really happy about this?”

I grip the front of his shirt. “No. I’m freakingthrilled. Excited. Exhilarated. Me, of all people. We’d live together there, and spend our weekends in Oakwood so we could keep seeing our friends. Noah will be off being some hotshot NFL star, but we’d still see him when he visits his mom, and… Please tell me you want this, Zac. Please? Because I kind of described my dream life just now, and you’re looking at me like I’ve lost my marbles.”

“That’s your dream life? You and me working together, the city apartment and this house here?”

I hold his face and watch my fingers thaw whatever doubt was there. “What else could I want?”

That does it. Zac grips my thighs, picks me up and flops us down on the petal-covered bed. He lets me have his full weight only for a second before pulling back to peel off my shirt, just to get another look at my tattoo.

Zac dots a kiss on the tip of my nose. “So, does this mean you’ll get a new tattoo every year, same as I did?”

His smile is blinding, brighter than the moon shining through the window. I trace his laugh lines and I’m glad there isn’t a mirror around, because I’d bet my smile is just absurd.

“In your dreams, Zac Porter.”

Epilogue

Two and a half months later

It’s a weird feeling.

This heavy, sinking thing in the pit of my stomach, the thick disappointment swirling around the Huskies locker room. Players and coaches only half-listening to my championship game post-mortem because at the end of the day, a loss is a loss. Nothing I say will put time back on the clock, give us the opportunity for one last run that could put us on the winning side of this.

What makes it a weird feeling is the simultaneous, absolute fucking thrill of watching a stunning, five-foot-five blonde get pelted with streams of champagne out in the middle of the football field. She’s as elated as I’ve ever seen her, my scowling girl, with purple and silver strips of confetti stuck in her hair. Getting picked up and tossed around by rowdy Knights players twice her size as the team celebrates their narrow win to get that trophy.

I fish out the four-leaf clover Mel handed me before tonight’s game, twirl it between my fingers. I shouldn’t even be up here.

When you’re on the losing side, you tend to high-tail it out of the stadium at your first opportunity. Instead, I’m standing inside the opening leading to the visiting locker room, watching Mel and my future team celebrate their win. Both wishing I was in her shoes, and so fucking glad it turned out this way.

Because she deserves it.

Because she’s had a hell of a few months piecing her life together, a hell of a past six years, and she deserves to have everything good this world has to offer her.

“Hey, Coach. I’m heading back to Oakwood with the team.” Over my shoulder, Noah pauses, presumably catching sight of Melody celebrating her win out there. He’s in his post-game tracksuit, and there’s a small tug at his mouth that wasn’t there in the locker room. “Well, that kind of makes all this feel a bit better, doesn’t it?”

I pocket the clover. “You have no idea.”

It’s been a listless couple of months of long-distance as Mel moved out to the city for her new job. Pair that with my boss’s renewed wrath at learning I’m leaving to coach the Knights at the end of the season, plus that he’s losing Brooks to an NFL comeback attempt, and Noah once the draft comes around in a few months… This game couldn’t have come any sooner.

Never mind that I have the whole house to myself again, now that Noah moved back in with his mom. It’s been painfully quiet. Brooks, Summer and Parker must be sick of my constant company.

Even over the screams from the stands, still full of Knights fans watching their team celebrate, I can make out the distinct yelp of Mel struggling under the weight of the championship trophy someone hands her. They pluck it out of her arms before she drops it and she’s really on top of the world tonight because she actually laughs at herself. Big and unabashed.

I don’t know what makes her turn around. There’s no way she could have heard Noah and me laughing at the sight of her getting crushed by the shiny trophy. But she does, and the moment she finds us hiding out, she splits from her fellow coaches and beelines for us.

Her face goes all funny as she makes her way over. Her cheeks struggling as she wrestles away the joy, trying to tone it down for me and Noah. But the second I crack a smile, probably wider than hers had been out there on the field, she gives up on fighting it. She takes the last few yards at a run, jumps and winds her legs around me when I catch her.

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