Page 36 of Forever Offsides

He ruffles Nolan’s hair. “I leave for a couple of weeks and by the time I come back, he’s grown like ten inches.”

“Did you see Serena when you were in Paris?” Sorel questions.

Hayes tenses and shakes his head. That’s it. I don’t know what happened between them. All I know is that Serena is no longer working for Monroe Fashions, which is Hayes’s family’s company, and it seems as though there was a falling-out between them. They used to have a casual thing a while back, but now it’s all cold.

“Are you still dating that woman?” I ask.

“You mean Helene?” he deadpans.

“Yeah, we know her name,” I snark. “Doesn’t mean we’ll use it.”

“Whatever.” He rolls his eyes at my dismissive tone.

No one likes her. Probably not even Hayes.

“Yes. We’re still dating.”

Sorel shifts her weight, and yeah, something I don’t know about happened there.

“Damn, it’s hot out here.” Forest joins us, tucks his phone in his back pocket, and rolls up the sleeves of his work shirt, revealing his dark ink as he tactfully changes the subject. “Are you okay in this heat?” he checks with Skylar.

“I’m fine. I’ve been hydrating.” She holds up her massive pink metal water bottle. “I likely won’t stay too long.”

Hayes tries to steal Nolan from me, and I won’t let him. “Come on. My turn,” he whines. Nolan thinks it’s hysterical and giggles as he clings to me.

“See. He’s mine.”

Hayes pokes my ribs, making me squeal and laugh since I’m legit the world’s most ticklish person, and he snatches Nolan from my arms.

“Hey! No fair.”

I playfully jab Hayes’s shoulder when a sharp, shrill whistle pierces the air. All of our focus whips over to the field in time to see a play being called dead. I guess that’s what that was. But a moment later, a player goes down and grabs his foot.

The training staff runs onto the field.

“Looks like you’re up,” Forest says to me. Great.

11

RHETT

Day fucking two and I fuck up. I wasn’t watching the field. I was watching her with that guy. Watching his arm around her shoulder and how they smiled at each other. How they laughed, and he touched her and stole the baby from her arms to her protest.

I was watching all of it.

Instead of watching the field.

I was jealous like a goddamn high school kid. I wanted to break that guy’s hands because he could touch her, and I couldn’t. I don’t even know him.

And because of that, a player got hurt.

I saw it out of the corner of my eye a split second before it happened. If I had been doing what I was supposed to, it wouldn’t have happened. Our star cornerback, Noa Colsen, was all over Avery, the receiver. A rookie. It was a position Colsen played in college before he came to the NFL, and his first coach on another team decided he’d be a better corner than receiver.

Colsen was playing a little too hard and a little too close for no pads. He gave the rookie no breathing room. He was letting him know that he was bigger, faster, and better. I blew the whistle to end the play, to let the ball fall dead. The rookie stopped. Colsen didn’t. He went up, intercepted the ball, and came down on the kid’s foot.

With all his weight.

Intentional? Maybe. I don’t know. Could have been a fuck-up moment of showboating. The egos of football players are bigger than my dick and filled with enough hot air to cause an environmental disaster.