Sugar Rush (Offensive Line #1) (10 page)

COLT

Charlie Windt Stadium

Los Angeles, CA

Lilly beats me to the stadium. Either she lives closer than I do or she drives faster. I’m hoping it’s the former, because if it’s the latter that is fucking terrifying.

I know the old silver and black Jeep Cherokee is hers because it’s the only car in the parking lot. I pull up next to her so my driver’s side window is across from hers. Kat immediately shoves her face out the window the second I roll it down.

“Oh, so you have a
big
dog,” Lilly comments when she sees her.

“You know what they say about guys with big dogs.”

“Big egos?”

“Big bills. She eats like an elephant and she’s expensive as shit to fly anywhere.” I shift the car into gear, slowly rolling forward. “We aren’t parking here. Follow me to the back.”

She nods, turning her engine on. I gun it across the empty parking lot toward the back of the stadium, watching admiringly in my rearview the way she cuts a hard U-turn and doesn’t hesitate to match pace behind me. Kat keeps her head out the window, happily licking the wind.

When I park I shoot a quick text to my man on the inside. Even though I’m a player on the team, that doesn’t mean I have keys to the stadium. After hours like this we’ll have to be let in by the security team, but not a single one of them would turn me away. More than once I’ve come here in the middle of the night looking to blow off some steam in the weight room. In fact, there’s a familiar blue Blazer not far from where I’ve parked. Matthews is here somewhere.

I don’t bother with a leash when I open the door and let Kat go bounding out onto the asphalt. She sniffs quickly around my feet before running to meet Lilly at her door.

“Hey, Kat,” Lilly greets her sweetly, her voice high and sing songy, the rasp lost in the pure melodic tone. “You’re a pretty girl, aren’t you?”

Kat wags her tail in eager agreement.

Lilly kneels down to get face to face with my girl. She takes Kat’s head in her hands so she can scratch behind her ears. “She really is beautiful.”

“And she knows it.”

“Like father, like daughter.”

I smirk. “You sayin’ I’m beautiful, Hendricks?”

“I’m saying you know you are, Avery.”

Lilly presses her forehead to Kat’s briefly before standing up. Her black leggings are dusted in yellow dog hair, the sleeves of her purple fleece pullover covered even worse. She brushes at the hair ineffectively before giving up all together.

I grimace at her apologetically. “One of the dangers of loving her. Sorry.”

“It’s no big deal. I came here to see a couple dogs. I expected to get dirty.” She gestures to the stadium towering over us. “Can we really go inside after hours like this?”

“Yeah, sure. Security is here all night. They’ll let us in.”

I lead the way to the door. It’s the same one we come out of after games when there’s family and press waiting for us. It’s crazy then but eerily quiet now. Dark and deserted. The rhythmic click of Kat’s claws on the asphalt follows me closely on my left. Lilly falls silently in step with me on my right.

The door pops open when we’re a few paces away. Ray stands in the open space, his short, round body draped in security blue and black. He smiles when he sees us.

Right up until he spots Kat.

“Whoa, you didn’t say you were bringing a dog, man,” he complains.

“She’s cool.”

“Not in here she’s not.”

“Dude, it’s a football stadium. What is she going to hurt?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.”

“Look, if she damages anything they can take it out of my paycheck, alright?”

He eyes Kat doubtfully. “Yeah, alright. Just as long as they don’t take it out of my ass.”

“You never saw her. That’s my story.”

“Then I’m not in trouble for letting a dog inside, I’m in trouble for being so fucking bad at my job that I didn’t see a dog walk in with you.” He opens the door wider. “If she shits on the field, pick it up. You hear me?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He nods at Lilly, giving her a friendly smile as she walks by. “What’s up?”

She mirrors his expression. “Hey. How’s it going?”

“You know how it is. Enjoying my last night of employment before this guy gets me fired.”

“You’ll be fine,” I groan, getting tired of the argument.

“We’ll see. Y’all have a good night. Make sure the door is closed tight when you leave, alright?”

“We’ll make sure,” Lilly promises.

He points at her as he walks away. “You, I trust. Thank you.”

“G’night, Ray!” I shout after him.

“Fuck you, Colt!”

Lilly’s smile widens. “I like him so much,” she tells me earnestly.

“Yeah, I thought you might. Come on. This way.”

I lead her to the tunnel that will take us to the field. It’s wide, meant to house fifty big men made even bigger by pads and helmets and adrenaline. At this time of night it’s barely lit. Only every other light tracking along the ceiling is burning, leaving dark sections that we get lost in before emerging in the light again. I feel Lilly close ranks next to me, pulling in tighter to my side in the first dark section. She’s nearly close enough to touch, her hand swinging a breath away from mine. I could extend my fingers to touch her but I don’t because I don’t want her to pull away. She seems like she spooks easy.

I’m surprised she showed up. I’m surprised she answered the phone when I called. I’m surprised by a lot of things about her, the biggest one being how much I like her. How psyched I am that she’s here with me.

When I was seven I saw
Aladdin
for the first time. It was by far the greatest movie I had ever seen, maybe still one of the top ten I’ve seen to date. Even now if I catch it playing on the Disney Channel you better believe I’m stopping to check it out. I got addicted to it when I was a kid. I played it over and over again until my mom nearly went insane. Then I played it some more. I couldn’t control how much I watched it. I just wanted it on all the time. I liked it that much.

Being with Lilly feels like that. Like loving
Aladdin
. I just discovered her, just saw her the other day, but tonight I had to call her. I had to see her again. And in the morning I’ll probably feel the same way.

I don’t have an addictive personality. I don’t flip my shit over everything I see, but there are things that stick with me. That make me feel high. Things that make me feel so damn good inside that I can’t get enough of them.

Football is one of them.

Aladdin
is another.

And tonight, there’s Lilly.

From the glow at the end of the tunnel I can tell Ray has turned some of the field lights on. Not everything, not like it’s game night, but enough to get by with. When we come out of the entrance and set foot on the field I look down at Lilly to catch her reaction.

Her eyes are big and round, light with wonder at the scope of it all. The height of the goal post, the unending rise of the seats around us, the sprawling length of the field at our feet. It looks big on TV, but get down on the field and it feels huge. Gargantuan. Put thousands of fans in the seats and set ‘em to screaming and it feels like the end of the world. The first time I walked onto this field as a pro player I literally peed myself a little, I was that kind of excited.

“What do you think?” I ask her.

She grins at me, shrugging her shoulders helplessly. “I think your office is pretty cool. Great view.”

“High ceilings.”

She laughs, leaning her head back to look up at the sky. Through the lights burning down on us you can’t see much. Black sky, expansive and humbling.

Kat dances at my feet. She’s seen the field and she’s eager to run it, but she’s like me. She wants a ball to chase. I pull a yellow tennis ball out of the pocket of my pants. Kat absolutely loses her mind when she sees it.

“Too bad you don’t have one of those chucking things,” Lilly comments, pantomiming ‘chucking’ I guess. “The ones that help you throw the ball really far.”

I pause, my arm cocked back, my eyebrows cocked high. “Seriously?”

She laughs at herself. “Right. Football player. I forgot.”

“How?”

“I really don’t know. My brain is kind of fried right now. This is really kind of surreal.”

I toss the ball with a grunt. It flies far downfield, no chucker needed. Kat digs in deep to go after it at a dead sprint.

“Do you watch a lot of football?” I ask Lilly.

She shakes her head ardently. “No. Only with my dad on Sundays. He’s a huge fan.”

“Kodiaks fan or football fan?”

“Both. Die hard Kodiaks fan, though. He even stuck with you guys when you had that one-win season, what? Ten years ago?”

“Seven. That was before my time.” I cast her a cocky grin. The one she loves to hate. “I would never have let that happen.”

She snorts. “What in the world did they do before you?”

“Lost, mostly. Are you and your dad close?”

“Yeah, we’re—“ she hesitates, her eyes narrowing like she’s trying to see something clearer. Something distant and downfield. When she speaks her voice is lower, her tone heavier. “You know what? No. We’re not. We used to be. But then… I guess things change. We stopped connecting. We don’t recognize each other anymore.”

My shoulders droop under the weight of her honesty. I’m taken aback by it. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” She takes a deep breath, holding it in, trying to buoy herself back up. “What about you? How are you and your dad?”

I tuck my hands into my pockets, my chin into my chest. I decide to give her an eye for an eye. Truth for truth. “We’re strangers. I never got to know him. My mom raised me alone until I was ten, then she got married to Charlie. He’s cool. He’s good to her. He came with a daughter, Mackenzie. She’s nineteen now.”

“Do the two of you get along?”

“Charlie and I, yeah. Absolutely. Mackenzie and I, pretty much only when we have to. Do you have any siblings?”

“A brother. Michael. He sucks. He refused to beat you up for me.”

“What?” I laugh. “What’d I do to deserve a beating?”

She grins, her cheeks blossoming rosy from the cold. Or maybe it’s embarrassment? Either way, it’s beautiful.

“You were nice to me,” she accuses. “Multiple times.”

“Oh shit, I earned a beating for that? What happens after tonight? I lose a knee cap?”

“We’ll have to wait and see.”

“I’ll try to be a dick. Save myself on hospital bills.”

Lilly chuckles softly. I could listen to that sound all day; her throaty timbre works its way into my mind, into my blood, until I’m humming with it. With her. With the magnetic pulse that is Lilly, a feeling under my skin that I couldn’t ignore tonight. I had to see her again and now that she’s here I’m running at a lower RPM than I ever have before. I’m idling steady and slow. Happy.

She looks downfield, her eyes scanning the stadium. She’s probably trying to picture it. To imagine what it’s like on a Sunday night when the world is watching. I can’t even start to tell her how exciting it is. It’s a high like nothing else in the world. Nothing you can understand until you’ve lived it and you love it the way I do. I’m always itching for game day, even in the middle of the night on a Sunday with the hurt from a game only hours before still aching in my bones. I want it again. I want another shot at making the magic happen. I want another hour in the spotlight making the fans scream my name.

But not tonight. Tonight I like the quiet and the cold and the company.

“How much time do you spend here?” Lilly asks curiously.

I groan thoughtfully, leaning back to stretch my arms up over my head. My back is tight from today’s practice. I can feel it every time I throw the ball. I’m just glad it’s not my knee. “A few hours a day for practices. Sometimes we have two of them. That’s five days a week. On game days we eat breakfast as a team at least five hours before the game. Then we’re here doing whatever we feel like doing to get ready.”

“What do you do?”

“I warm up with Tyus. We’re tight. We came onto the team at the same time, right out of the Draft. I’m the only person he’ll talk to before a game.” I drop my arms, gesturing to the field. “I run sprints with him, trying to keep up. I’m fast but he’s faster. Even on a Sugar Rush.”

“What’s a Sugar Rush?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest, a shiver coursing through her. “Is that a play?”

“No, it’s my thing. It’s what I do. I eat a shit ton of sugar before a game and get all amped up. It helps me run faster. Be more explosive.”

“And that really works?” she asks, her voice slightly tremulous.

“That’s what it feels like. Are you cold?”

She shrugs, the gesture turning into another shiver. “A little.”

“Do you need to go home? I’ll walk you out to your car.”