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He didn’t have time for a grand speech because the clock was bleeding out. Foregoing the locker room, he pulled the guys into a tight huddle right there on the sidelines. I watched them from the bench, feeling like a ghost. They didn’t look defeated, though. They looked pissed off.
They were about to go back out there and give Springfield a war they hadn’t bargained for, and I was more than ready to watch it happen.
The third quarter exploded right out of the gates. Dylan took the handoff from Ethan and ran like a man possessed, lowering his shoulder to steamroll through a gap for eleven yards. It was a statement. The sideline erupted, a brief flicker of hope cutting through the fog of my pain.
But Springfield wasn’t stunned for long.
On the next snap, two huge, snarling defenders shot through the line. They tackled Dylan hard, burying him five yards behind the line of scrimmage.
The game turned into a dogfight. The score was deadlocked, and I could see the panic starting to set in on the Springfield sideline. We were the nobodies, the scrappy team from the wrong side of the brackets, and we were making the national champions sweat. They started playing dirtier, hitting later, desperate to protect a legacy that was slipping through their fingers.
Then the floor fell out. Ethan dropped back for a long shot, but the defense read him like a book. The interception was clean, a gut-punch that shifted the momentum instantly. Springfield took the gift and ran with it, marching down the field with a clinical, cold-blooded efficiency that ended in a touchdown.
14-7.
The scoreboard silenced our visiting fans and made my stomach turn over. I shifted on the bench, and a fresh pang of agony sliced through my shoulder, a brutal reminder that I was a spectator to my own destruction.
The fourth quarter was a slaughter. Dylan tried to push, gaining nine yards on a gutsy slant, but a Springfield linebacker caught him right on his lead shoulder. I saw him wince, his face pale as he scrambled up, trying to hide the stitch in his arm. It didn’t matter. The defenders smelled blood. They started targeting the injury, swarming him like sharks in a feeding frenzy.
Ethan tried to pivot, hurling a bullet to Lucas. The kid was a blur, putting eight yards behind him in a heartbeat. But just as he broke for the open field, a defender launched himself helmet-first into Lucas’s ribs. The sound of the sickening thud echoed all the way to the bench.
“Come on!” Coach threw up his arms. “That was an execution!”
“Do the practice play!” I screamed, my voice raw.
Ethan heard me. He tightened his gloves, barked the signal, and took the snap. His footwork was flawless, but without me under center to draw the secondary away, the play was a sitting duck. The defender jumped the route, snagging the ball out of the air.
Springfield scored again, putting an exclamation point on our graves. The final whistle rang out across the field, the scoreboard blinking 21-7. A humiliation of epic proportions.
The air rushed out of my lungs, leaving me hollow. We’d lost. The season was over. Everything we’d bled for over the last few months felt like it was evaporating in the cold night air.
“We did it!” Dylan yelled, his voice cracking as he reached the sidelines.
Suddenly, I was being swarmed. The guys weren’t hanging their heads like a bunch of losers. Yeah, we were the team that was supposed to be a joke, the ones who wouldn’t win a single game. But we had just taken the national champions to the final seconds of a playoff battle.
Ethan and Lucas grabbed me by the jersey, their faces flushed and grinning through the dirt and sweat. They pulled me into the center of a jumping, chaotic mass of teammates.
“Playoffs, Prescott!” Ethan shouted over the noise, slapping my good shoulder. “We actually made it to the fucking playoffs!”
The pride hit me harder than the pain. We had lost the game, but we had won back every ounce of respect. I tried to laugh, to join the shouting, but as Dylan bumped into my right side in the excitement, a blinding flare of white heat shot through my shoulder.
“Come on, big guy,” Tara said, her voice unusually soft as she hooked an arm under my good side to keep me up. “Let’s get you inside.”
“Find Dakota,” I said, feeling sore all over but also numb. “I want her there.”
“She’s already waiting, Trace.”
The walk to the med bay was a haze of fluorescent lights and the distant, muffled sound of the Springfield fight song. Dakota was there the second the door opened, her face a mask of contained fear. I sat on the exam table, and she immediately slid her fingers into mine, her grip the only thing keeping me from crying.
The exam itself was a descent into hell. Tara didn’t hold back, pushing and pulling my arm into positions that made my stomach flip. I ground my teeth together, my knuckles turning white as I squeezed Dakota’s hand, dark spots dancing in my vision. Then came the final, sickening pop as Tara realigned the joint.
I nearly blacked out, my breath coming in jagged, pathetic pants.
“Well,” Tara said, her voice dropping the professional veneer as she sat back, looking at me with genuine pity.
“Now what?” Dakota said, her voice sharp enough to draw blood.
“You should be glad your season is over,” Tara said, wiping her hands on a towel. “Because this isn’t just a dislocation anymore. Trace, you tore the ligaments. All of them. It’s a mess in there. I’m honestly surprised you didn’t pass out on the sidelines.”
