Page 144 of The Hot Shot

Finn grasps the back of his neck with both hands and begins to pace. The camera zooms in on him. A strangled sound leaves me, because the look in Finn’s eyes has ripped open my heart. Although his expression is tightly controlled, I know him. Terror, agony, helplessness, it’s all there, swimming in those blue depths. He’s crumbling inside.

I grab my coat, slinging it over my shoulders. “I have to go.”

James rises. “Chess.”

“No,” I shout, then take a breath. “No waiting. He can’t be alone like this. I won’t let him be alone anymore.”

James nods. I don’t wait to see if he and Jamie follow. I run straight out the door. The night is bitterly cold. My breath leaves in white puffs that obscure my vision. A cab comes down the block on the opposite side of the street. Without pause, I whistle high, lifting my arm.

It starts to slow, and I run to meet it.

Call it sixth sense, call it self-preservation, but the second I step out onto the street, my body tenses all at once. I feel the danger before I see it. Or maybe I hear it.

Someone shouts my name, unhinged and desperate, but I don’t turn that way. I turn toward the rushing sound at my side. All I see is a blur before impact. Something hits me so hard my brain registers it as sound: shattering light bulbs dropping from a great height. Stars sparkle behind my lids.

I think of Fred slamming into me in a smoke-filled hall, and for a second I don’t know where I am.

Finn’s frowning face flashes in my mind, and then there is nothing.

Finn

What the fuck just happened? What thefuckjust happened!

The thought cycles through my skull as I pace the halls in the bowels of the stadium. It had been a perfect pass, a sweet forty-yard spiral straight into the end zone. Jake had caught it. Perfect catch. A thing of poetry.

That ball had landed in his hands, and I swear I felt the contact. We’d been connected in that play, one mind. Fucking poetry.

Then he went down.

Panic skitters up my throat. I can’t breathe. I’m going to be sick. I halt and bend over, resting my hands on my thighs as I take deep breaths.

We deal with injuries all the time. Pain and football go hand in hand. But neck injuries, spinal damage—it’s the thing you don’t even want to think about. Not just career ending, but life altering. He could die.

The ground beneath me sways. I grip my thighs tight.

Breathe. Breathe.

A door opens with a squeak. I don’t look up as footsteps approach. Charlie stops beside me. “Been looking for you.”

I’d done my part. Finished the game. Bucked the fuck up and buckled down to win it. Nothing less would satisfy any of my guys. The fact that Jake had been joking at halftime about a “Win one for the Gipper” speech, almost made me lose it a couple of times.

But I’d held it together. Kept my game face on through the postgame interviews where reporters clamored to know how Jake was doing. I’d wanted to know, too. It fucking killed me, not knowing, waiting to hear what the doctors had to say.

Was he paralyzed? Would he play again?

“You hear anything?” I ask Charlie as I stare at the floor.

“I don’t know much, but they think he’ll be okay.”

My knees sag. “Okay?”

Charlie knows what I’m asking. “No spinal damage.”

I let out a gust of air. “Okay. Okay.” Standing straight, I face Charlie. And then I’m hugging him. He pounds my back, and I pound his, both of us breathing too hard. I let him go with a final squeeze then step back and rub my eyes.

“Coach wants to see you,” Charlie says when we head back toward the locker room.

“Now? Jesus.”