Page 2 of Touchdown, Tennessee

Does it get you off, seeing just how good I am with a ball?

There’s a whole fucking lot more where this comes from. Soak it in.

The football slammed into me like a bullseye, right in the pocket I made with my hands and my chest.

Finally.

I took off for the endzone, my thighs building up fire as I ran.

This was what I was made for. The crowd was already going wild by the time the football touched me, but I had dozens of yards to run now. I kept my head up, focused forward.

Eye on that prize.

I kept my breathing even, my lungs heating up as I ran for it.

I saw the line of the end zone coming closer with each footfall as I ran.

I couldtastethe touchdown about to happen right in front of me. I could hear the crowd getting ready to explode.

Please, give me something good tonight.

Something good for this cocky bastard to write about.

The past few weeks of my life had been… punishing.

I hated keeping secrets, but I had been hooking up with Coach’s son Danny, so that was the first boulder on my back.

Then Danny cheated on me. Multiple times.

Then I’ddiscoveredDanny cheating on me, in a bar, with a blond guy who rubbed it right in my face, saying something to me I couldn’t forgive.

That’s when I’d gotten too drunk and made the first big mistake of my life.

I’d clocked Danny’s new blond boytoy in the jaw.

Mistake, mistake, mistake.

All of that needed to be kept very, very secret. Which meant that as of tonight, it was now my full-time job to keep Gray Gilman from finding out a single shred of that information.

Something went cold in my chest.

No.Right now my job was to run this fucking football.Get the touchdown, no matter what.

I sucked in air and pushed harder, trying to dig deep and run faster to the end zone.

I was less than twenty yards off now.

So close.

It was already mine.

And then my next mistake came up on my right.

No shot.

He can’t fucking be there.

I was too close to Dev Bailey, Kansas University’s best cornerback. He’d gained on me, and I’d been doing the one thing I knew I shouldn’t do: thinking too much. So distracted by one guy, sitting on the sidelines, watching my every move.