I was too excited to sleep.
I’ve been here before, but walking up to the Tigers’ stadium is different this time. Summer conditioning is all about making sure the team is actually in shape to compete. But pre-season practice is about weeding out the great players from the mediocre ones, and I don’t plan to be in the latter category.
I go through the players’ entrance, greeting the security guard. The locker room is at the end of a long hall, and a concrete tunnel leads out to the field from there. I can smell freshly cut grass, hear the sound of sprinklers, and I smile.
This is why I came early. This feeling that’s best enjoyed alone.
But as I make my way into the locker room, I realize I’m not alone. The lights are on, which would be easy to overlook. A custodian could’ve come in and turned them on.
But the sound of running water—and the sudden absence of it—is harder to overlook.
I know I should just turn right back around and wait until everyone else comes along, but it is a locker room. It’s meant to be shared.
It feels like a naïve thought as I skim the lockers, looking for mine. Even more so when I hear the padding of wet, bare feet on the tile floor.
And that feeling reaches its peak when I get an eyeful of the other early riser.
There’s a towel wrapped around his waist, and it’s the only thing he’s wearing. It’s the first thing that catches my eye, and it doesn’t bode well for me. A flush suffuses my skin. My gaze travels up the sharp V of his pelvis, and my mouth dries. His smooth, dark skin is in sharp contrast against the towel, and I feel a strange itching sensation in my hand; a nagging feeling of wanting to touch every inch of him.
And that’s not even taking into account his body. My eyes move over his abdomen—practically an eight pack—up to his defined pecs, solid deltoids, and firm triceps. I swallow hard, feeling my cock wake up in my pants.
“Hey, sorry. Didn’t think anybody else would be in here.”
His voice is rich and deep, and it draws my attention away from his body. What I find, though, doesn’t help my arousal. A handsome face stares back at me. Strong, square jaw, neatly trimmed beard, soft brown eyes. He smiles at me, and my heart slams in my chest.
“Dante Mills,” he says, extending a hand.
It takes me a moment to respond. My hand grasps his in what I hope is a decent handshake. But I realize I haven’t said anything, as if I’ve completely forgotten my name.
“Mitchell Erickson. Mitch.”
I’ve seen him before. We were on the same weight rotation in the gym. But seeing him now is something else, and I have to work hard to tamp down the pure awareness that roars through my veins.
God, I’m a walking stereotype. The guy conservative parents worry about when they send their sons out for sports. The gay guy who ogles half-naked men in the locker room.
That douses my ardor quickly. I let go of Mills’ hand and finally get around to apologizing.
“My flight just got back a couple hours ago. I wasn’t getting any sleep, so I figured I’d come in early.”
“Yeah, same. Well, the not sleeping part, anyway.” Mills grins at me, and I will myself not to flush. “You’re a freshman, right?”
I wonder if it shows. Maybe my naïveté is plastered across my face; written on my forehead in permanent marker like a bad prank.
“Yeah.”
“Cool. You from someplace nearby?”
I let out a rye laugh. “Connecticut. I guess it’s nearby compared to California or something.”
Mills whistles. “Connecticut? What the hell are you doing down here?”
“Pissing off my dad,” I manage to say, and I follow it up with a cautious grin.
Mills laughs, and the tension that’s thrumming through my veins fades to a dull hum.
“Good a pursuit as any.” He gives me a once-over that’s nothing like the one I gave him. “You playing offense or defense?”
“Linebacker. They tried to stick me on offensive line once. Pretty fucking boring.”
The proper speech and good manners I’ve had jammed into my skull for the past eighteen years slowly fade away. For once, I actually sound my age. For once, I actually feel it.
Mills grins again. My stomach flutters. Jesus. I need to get a grip.
“I feel you, man. Never been on offense, but I was up on the line my whole freshman year. If I wanted to wrestle, I would’ve signed up for that, y’know?”
I do know. There’s something so satisfying about ending a play. Every member of the defensive team works together to stop a drive, but the linebackers are usually the most aggressive in that pursuit, taking down ball carriers with the precision of an assassin.
I don’t get a chance to tell Mills any of that, though. Or to realize that the conversation is one-sided. He asked me about myself, but I haven’t asked him anything in return.
I feel like an ass as other players filter into the locker room, but if Mills even notices, he doesn’t act like it.
“See you around, Erickson,” he says, getting lost in a sea of other guys en route to his locker.
Over the next few minutes, everyone strips down to their boxers. It’s like an All-Male Review in here. But to me, they’re just… guys. I don’t stare at them the way I stared at Mills. My body doesn’t react to them. With every bare torso I see, I make myself less and less of a stereotype.
But somehow, that’s even worse. General attraction is something I can deal with. Specific attraction to one man? One man who’s probably very, very straight?
That’s a problem.
4
Dante
The second I step out on that field, the grass crunching under my cleats, I feel in control again.
Weird to think that, when I’m going to be subjected to almost three straight hours of drills designed to break me. But at least I know what to do here; at least I know how to come out ahead. What move to pull to escape from a blocker, when to put on a burst of speed to chase down a ball carrier, how to strip the ball from a running back who’s got a tight hold on it.
At home, I feel like everything my mom and I do is never going to be enough. We’re never going to get ahead.
Out here, everybody works with me, instead of the whole world working against me. My palm skims across a few hands, my knuckles bump against a few others, I get pulled into what could be the definition of a bro-hug.
After my grandma died, these guys became an extension of my family.
“‘Bout time your ass showed up.” Martin pulls me in and our helmets crack together.
“You ready to get your ass wrecked?” I tease, clapping him on the pads.
“The fuck are you talkin’ about? I ain’t even gonna see you, you’re gonna be too busy chokin’ on grass.”
I share exchanges like this with a few of the other guys. There are a lot of new players this year, but I know most every other guy on the team.
“Yo, Mills,” Trent says, raising his voice above the crowd. “Bradford wants your ass downfield.”
I look toward where he points, and see the defensive coordinator—Coach Bradford—gathered with about half of the guys that are on the field right now.
I jog toward the group, and out of the corner of my eye, I see someone else I recognize. Erickson. The guy from the locker room.
“Hey, good luck today, man.”
I can’t see his smile behind his facemask, but I can see the way his cheeks lift.
I’ve seen some “pretty” guys playing football before. Long hair, light-colored eyes, million-dollar smiles. The sort of boy-next-door look I’m never going to get away with.
Erickson isn’t that. Not really. He’s too big and too broad to be “pretty.” But he’s got the kind of face that makes him look like he’d be better off at a photo shoot instead of a football game.
I know better than to judge, though. Some of the guys who look the softest hit like a fucking truck.
“Thanks. You too.”
&nb
sp; We head downfield, and I realize it’s all defensive guys down here. Coach Bradford must be giving out specific drills. Good. That means we won’t have to waste time on shit that doesn’t help us.
“All right, listen up,” Bradford says after making sure everybody’s here. “Y’all know our defense was on point last season.”
Hell yeah it was. We didn’t make it to the championship, just another lower-ranked bowl game. But we led the conference in sacks, and we were third in the league in forced turnovers.
“We’ve pretty much got the same defensive team this year. All the same DTs, DEs, and LBs, plus a few new guys.”
It should be a good thing. It means we’ll have a strong season again; that we won’t let many points through. It gives us a great shot at a championship bowl game, and having that to cap off my last year at Eastshore is just what I need.
But some part of me is waiting for the rest of what Coach Bradford’s going to say; some part of me knows it isn’t going to be good.
“We’re strong enough to dominate, but that means we need the best players out there. So from this point forward, every DT, DE, and LB is going to be playing for the chance to start. I don’t care if you started last season—I don’t care if you started the last three years—if a rookie performs better than you, he’ll get the spot.”
My heart drops straight down, and my stomach lurches. What he’s saying makes sense. We need a strong team, and sometimes the upperclassmen slack off because they can.
But I can’t do this. I can’t have my starting position snatched up by some rookie. I’ve put in too much work, too much time. I need to be in front of the NFL scouts. I need the playtime.
“So what, if we don’t start in the first game, we just won’t start?” Evans asks.
My ears are ringing. I can barely hear Bradford’s answer.
“Rosters will be decided each week. You play well in a game, play well in practice, you’ll be back in. You don’t… well, somebody else is gonna get your spot.”
“Man, I didn’t sign up for this shit,” I hear someone say near me.
“I’m not getting benched for some fucking rookie,” another puts in.
I don’t want to agree with them. I don’t want to be that guy. But I do, and I am. I just know better than to say it aloud.
“If you play well, you’ve got nothing to worry about,” Bradford says. “And if you don’t like it? You can head back to the locker room now, and save us all a lot of time.”
The dissent quiets, but I don’t think it’s silenced. It’s definitely inside me, churning violently. It doesn’t help that I happen to catch Erickson’s eye.
Something flares to life inside of me, like I’ve just been forced to guard what’s mine. I don’t know Erickson. I don’t know his situation or why he’s here. But I do know he has four years to prove himself.
I’ll be damned if I let him take my starting position.
After just an hour of practice, I start to doubt myself.
It’s hard not to watch Erickson. He and I are the biggest guys on the team. Maybe not the absolute tallest, but definitely the most built. Neither of us are getting anywhere near Mr. Universe levels, but compared to the other guys, we both look like tanks.
And there’s something different about Erickson. He plays with an aggression that I didn’t really see in him when we spoke in the locker room. He hits hard. Even when he’s just hitting the dummies, I can feel the contact in my bones.
He’s fucking relentless, too. During a small scrimmage, he chases down one of the backup quarterbacks who’s known for being a slippery motherfucker. Even if he gets fooled by a juke, his cleats just dig into the turf and he pivots like it’s easy to move himself in the completely opposite direction.
When Bradford first made the announcement, I wondered why he even recruited more defense players if we already had too many. Now I see why.
If Mitch were a lineman or a safety, I’d be cheering him on. But he’s not. He’s a linebacker, and from the way he plays, it’s pretty clear he won’t ever fit in any other position.
My position isn’t just in jeopardy—I can already see it being given away.
Unlike some of the other guys, though, I’m not just going to stand around and bitch about it. If he hits hard, I’ll hit harder. If he hustles, I’ll hustle more. If he’s aggressive, I’ll be a holy fucking terror.
It’s not hard to tap into that part of myself. I spend every waking hour trying to bury the parts of my life that piss me off. Football is my outlet, and even there, nobody really knows why I can go from calm and cool to a raging bull in half a second.
Nobody but me.
“Jesus, Mills. What the fuck did I do to you?” Tyson, a running back, asks.
I grab his hand and help him up off the ground. It’s the least I can do, considering I just put him there. I felt the force of the contact rattle through my teeth; I can only imagine what he felt.
A part of me swims with guilt. The part of me that comes from my grandma, probably. But when Coach Bradford yells “good hustle, Mills” I push that feeling away.
“Better talk to your blockers,” I say.
I don’t give him shit about it beyond that. I don’t even give the offensive line shit. Everybody else here is playing like this is a practice; I’m the only one playing like I’m going to lose my life if I don’t make every tackle I can.
“Nice hit,” I hear someone say.
When I turn to look, I see it’s Erickson. We haven’t been in the same scrimmage together yet; it’s almost like Coach wants us to watch each other. Apparently Erickson’s been watching me as much as I’ve been watching him.
I don’t know how to feel about that.
“Thanks.”
The word sounds terse to me. I don’t want to be this way. Everybody on the team knows me as the guy who goes out of his way to make new guys feel welcome. The guy who doesn’t say shit about anybody, and definitely doesn’t start up some stupid-ass feud.
But I can’t be that guy this season. Not with Erickson.
He just smiles at me, though. Without his helmet on, I can see it fully. It doesn’t look fake, so I don’t know if he’s just oblivious to my attitude, or trying to kill me with kindness. It gets under my skin, and I jam my own helmet back on my head, jogging off to the line again.
For a while, we stay out of each other’s way. We’re cycled through different team compositions and different plays. There are a couple instances where Erickson falters. I don’t know what plays his high school ran, but he doesn’t seem to know some of the basics we use.
I’m a little grateful for it. It’s a weakness I can exploit.
But it’s a weakness that also comes back to bite me in the ass. After another hour, Erickson and I are finally in the same scrimmage. There are four LBs on the play we’re running. Erickson and Decker are to the left, me and Oakley are to the right. It’s a rush play — a blitz. The inside linebackers are going to help support the line, while the outside linebackers try for the sack.
I hear Grady call the play in his rough, scratchy voice. The ball is hiked, and my eyes are fixed on him, figuring out his position and how I can get there. Oakley blocks for me, and a hole opens up. I don’t hesitate. I shove my way through it, shrug off one of the guys who tries to stop me, and head for Grady like a freight train rushing down the tracks.
He dips and weaves and scrambles… and then he’s slammed to the ground by a linebacker he didn’t even see. A linebacker who isn’t me.
Momentum carries me forward, and I stop just before having to jump over the tangle of bodies. I’m so focused on the scene before me that I miss the fact that the ball came loose, knocked out of Grady’s hands. Someone else is running it before Bradford’s whistle blows.
But my attention is on the guy who’s helping Grady to his feet. The guy Grady pats on the arm. The guy whose cheeks lift as he smiles behind his mask.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
The words fl
y from my mouth in a harsh growl. My hands ball into fists beside me.
Erickson looks at me quizzically. I want to believe he’s just jerking me around; that he knows exactly what he’s doing. But that look makes me feel guilty. He’s a new guy. I should be guiding him, helping him the same way I helped Derek a couple years back.
I know all this, but I can’t stop myself. If I’m a freight train, I’ve definitely jumped the tracks.
“You’re an inside LB on this play. That sack wasn’t yours to make.”
“Decker was tied up, and I saw an opening. Grady was looking your way the whole time; I figured it would be a good way to force a turnover.”
It had been. I know I sound like a two year old who’s just had a toy taken away, but I can’t stop myself.
“Plays are called for a reason. You can’t just fuck it up because you feel like it.”
I’m in his face. I’m usually a few inches taller than whoever I’m bearing down on, but not Erickson. I can see straight into his eyes. He’s still looking at me like he has no idea what I’m talking about.
“Mills!” Bradford’s voice booms.
I snap out of it after a moment, and finally realize a crowd’s gathered around us. Bradford beckons me over. My stomach lurches. I look back at Erickson, then head over to the sidelines where Coach is waiting.
“What the hell is going on with you today, son?” He asks.
I want to get angry with him, too; tell him it’s his fault for making us compete with each other. But I’m not going to do it.
“Nothing, Coach,” I mumble.
“Yeah, well you better keep that nothing to yourself from now on. You’re a good player, Dante. But if you start shit with your teammates, you’re going to find yourself on the bench.”
I nod. “Yes, Coach.”
He claps me on the pads. I can see Head Coach Garvey watching us. Great. Fucking great.
“Why don’t you hit the showers, Mills. We’ll try it again tomorrow.”
“I can keep going, Coach,” I say, feeling myself on the verge of panic.
False Start (Eastshore Tigers Book 2) Page 2
