Page 149 of Forever Offsides

At the very least, I need more information, and he’s not going to give it to me willingly.

I enter the practice room, and I can already see all the questions in every player’s eyes. Mason is standing straight—Crew is still with Quinn, and I won’t fault that—but Mason is the quarterback, and when you’re the one in charge, the one everyone looks at to lead them, your responsibilities are different.

He comes and stands beside me, and it has me winded. I don’t deserve his respect. I don’t deserve their trust. But I have it. By some miracle, I still have it, and it’s not something I’ll ever take for granted. Not again.

“Listen up,” I call out and with all my players sitting around me, I break everything down. Everything except my relationship with Quinn because they asked me not to divulge that yet and holding that is the least I can do for them. I also understand the wisdom of it.

It might be too much. The straw that broke the team’s back.

So it’ll come out when it comes out but it won’t be the highlight of our season. Our playing will be. Our on-field presence will be our voice and the thing that speaks loudest for us.

And that’s precisely what I tell the team.

Yes, we’re down some players from injury and poor life choices.

Yes, we’ll have reporters in our faces and stories spread about us all over the news and radio.

No, we can’t avoid it.

But it’s how we choose to live and breathe on the field that will make or break our season, and no one gets to dictate that to us but ourselves.

The guys go out—led by Mason—and give us a hard practice. Asher joins us on the practice field and stands beside me the entire time. It’s shocking for me, but the players see it, notice it, and feel it. This team will grow stronger because of this adversity. Sometimes that’s all we can do when faced with the fucked-up-ness of life.

We persevere.

We tackle it.

And we show it where our fucks to give lie.

Mine are with this team. But they’re also with the girl in the hospital bed who opens her eyes for me when I come back that night. She blinks at me, not moving a lot, and I can tell she’s in pain.

Evidently, they got her up two more times during the day and even got her walking. She’s wrecked. I simply hold her hand and talk to her and tell her all about what happened. There’s regret in her eyes. But she shouldn’t have any.

“Just so you know,” I start, “you’re going to marry me.”

“Is that so?” she asks, though she’s so done she can barely manage to roll her eyes at me.

“Yep. When you’re feeling better. When you’re out of the hospital and staying with me or I’m staying with you at your place—we’ll have to figure that out, though I’m inclined to go with your place because it’s more updated—and you get to the point where you understand we can’t live without each other, I’ll propose.”

“I’m going to say yes?”

“Without a doubt,” I tell her as if it’s a foregone conclusion that I’m shocked she hasn’t already reached. “I’ll make it romantic. So romantic ‘no’ won’t even be a word in your head. I promise.”

“We’ll see.”

I smile. Because yeah, we will. Then she’ll be mine. Forever.

EPILOGUE

QUINN

Four months later

Nerves wrack through me to the point where I’m about to throw up. My dad is standing beside me, holding my hand. My mother is on the other side of me doing the same. Not a single person in the entire stadium here in Arizona is sitting down, not even the influencers or celebrities who don’t care about the game but want to be photographed here.

This Super Bowl, for all its show, is a gridiron, pounding game.

We’re also fucking tied with less than two minutes left, and San Francisco is driving the ball down the field. Our defense is gassed but is fighting to their last breath.