Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 121233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121233 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Clay scoffed. “He just hopes the new coach is a pushover so he can bring his phone on the field again. Coach Sanders wouldn’t have it.”
“I’m sure the new coach won’t either.”
Clay sighed, shaking his head. “I’m nervous,” he admitted. “But you’re right. It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
I nodded, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck as I pressed up on my toes, needing more contact. “You know… I’ve been thinking about what you said. About me being an agent.”
He cocked a brow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah… and… I think I want to try.”
Clay smirked, the first real light coming back to his eyes since Coach’s news. “Wait, really? Holy shit, Kitten — that’s epic.”
“Don’t get too excited just yet,” I told him — mostly because it was dangerous for me to get too excited. “I talked to Charlotte about it. She said she’d help me, introduce me to some people, and let me take over leading our guys who have current NIL deals.”
“That’s huge!” Clay said, ignoring my request not to get too excited. He lifted me up, spinning me around as some of his teammates backed away so as not to be hit by my kitten heels. When he put me back down, he grabbed my face in his hands. “I’m so fucking proud of you.”
I flushed, leaning into his palm. “We’ll see what happens.”
“Oh, I already know what will happen.”
“Do tell.”
“We’re going to win the championship next year. And then the year after that, I’ll get drafted in the first round, and you’ll be my agent — negotiating the sickest signing bonus anyone has ever seen.”
I let out a breath of a laugh. “And what about now?”
He frowned, confused.
“What happens before all that?”
Clay inhaled a long breath, his green eyes searching mine as he thumbed a curl behind my ear. That thumb traced my jaw next, and he framed my face, pulling me closer.
“Now, I spend the entire off-season spoiling my girl,” he said easily, and as the crowd around us began to countdown from ten, he leaned in closer. “Starting with giving her her first New Year’s Eve kiss.”
Three… two… one!
With a tilt of my chin up to meet him, Clay’s mouth claimed my own, and my heart floated off on the wings of a million butterflies as fireworks splayed overhead, their booms echoing in my heart.
Holden
The locker room was completely silent on the first day of spring training.
My teammates sat in front of their lockers or leaned against training equipment, eyes on the floor as we waited.
I wanted to pump them up, to have some grand speech that would soothe all their worry.
But the truth was, I was worried, too.
Despite how I’d somehow managed to redirect their energy after our bowl game loss, I knew as much as everyone else in this room how much a new coach would change things. A new coach meant new drills, new ways of doing things, new plays and tactics and — possibly — new starters.
That was what scared everyone in this room the most.
All eyes snapped to the doorway that led into the hall when Coach Dawson, our defensive end coordinator, swung through it. On his heels was our special teams coach, our offensive coordinator, and our trainer staff.
And then, at the very end of the line, Coach Carson Lee.
Coach Lee shared a few similarities with our last coach. He was brutal in his training camps when he coached down south, he had a zero-tolerance attitude when it came to any of his players stepping out of line, and he expected greatness.
But he was different from Coach Sanders in many ways, too.
For starters, he was twenty years his senior, which somehow made me respect him even more just because he’d been coaching ball before I was even born. He also had a bit more of a radical approach, one that got him headlines for doing things like making his team run half the length of the Florida Panhandle one weekend after a loss to a team they were expected to beat easily.
We all stood when he entered, like soldiers coming to attention for their sergeant.
He swept into the room with purpose, talking to our new assistant coach whom he’d brought with him. I watched the two of them conversing as they moved toward the center of the locker room.
That was, until she walked in.
I almost thought it was Riley at first — because she and Giana Jones were the girls we ever really saw in the locker room. But the girl who swung through the door behind Coach was no one I’d ever seen before.
Her long, leather-brown hair flowed over her shoulders like chocolate waves — and that was the only thing soft about her. Every inch of her face was etched into severe precision, her jaw set, bow-shaped lips flattened into a tight line. In a red crop tank top and black track pants, I could tell she was fit, her toned, golden stomach peeking through the gap between the two. She was slight, narrow hips and lean arms, which made her ample bust stand out even more.