"Didn't like the neighbors?" Rick asked Noah with a smile.
He was saying it innocently, but it caused my neck to go hot regardless. Noah, to his credit, kept his face completely impassive when he answered. "Neighbors were just fine. The house was too big for us."
I pointed at Rick and Marty. "It's not a big deal, so don't make it one."
Rick held up his hands. "I'd never."
I gave him a look. "Okay, so I'll schedule with a few of these listing agents and make sure Marty is available to film. Do you need to be there, Rick?"
He shook his head. "I'll only be around about half the time. Marty is fine on his own for most of it, and you'll pick up fast what works and what doesn't in my absence. I'll be going back and forth between here and Tampa. We've got a rookie down there that we're filming right now too."
I nodded. "Besides house hunting, do we need anything else off field?"
Rick looked at Noah. "That's up to him. What do you like to do when you're not here?"
Noah folded his hands on the table and shrugged. "I work out. Watch film. Go for runs. Swim if I can."
"So, you work more," Rick supplied.
I smiled again.
Noah grimaced. "Nothing I do is all that interesting, trust me."
"They call you The Machine, right?" I asked.
His eyes sharpened, landing hot and fast on my face. "Yeah."
"Even machines need to be refueled. There has to be something you do, somewhere you that recharges you." I kept my gaze on him. "No one here is going to judge you, no matter what it is. But there has to be something that you keep for yourself, that isn't about football. Everyone has something like that."
"Your brother did?"
"Sure. He had us." I shrugged. "My sisters and I were his life, and it was a part of his life he kept private for a really long time. But once the stadium lights were off, and he’d showered off the sweat, he was back home, picking up toys and watching Disney movies and learning how to braid hair. His family refueled him."
Noah worked his jaw back and forth. The way he looked at me, it felt like it was just him and me in the room as he tried to decide if this was a place he could be honest. "The stars," he said gruffly.
"What about them?" I kept my voice gentle, like he'd spook at any second.
"I like astronomy. I would've minored in it if my dad had agreed." He cleared his throat. "My assistant in Miami will send my telescope as soon as we find a house."
Now this is a surprise, I thought pleasantly. This was the layer we needed to peel back, even if it took us the entire time to show what was underneath. "Where's your favorite place to go? To look at the stars."
"Here?"
"Anywhere. If you could go anywhere to look at the stars, where would it be?"
Noah let out a slow breath, his eyes taking on the hazy look of someone who'd just mentally transported somewhere else. Somewhere they wanted to be very, very badly. "My grandma's cabin in the Black Hills, South Dakota."
Rick nodded at me, just a tiny lift of his chin. Keep going.
"How come?" I asked.
"It's so quiet. So ... open. The mountains are different there than they are here. Less people. Less lights. Less pollution." He closed his eyes, and every line in his face disappeared as he imagined whatever it was that he was seeing in his head. Suddenly, I wanted to be there too, to see what it was like. "The sky is bigger there than anywhere else. It's the one place where I feel small."
Noah opened his eyes, and I felt a strange snapping on my heart. Like someone had pulled a rubber band, tightening that statement into place around the thing that pushed the blood through my body.
Without looking away, I knew there was a three-day window in the practice schedule just before preseason started.
"Does our budget include a weekend in South Dakota, Rick?" I asked, eyes still lasered in on Noah.
He smiled, and I saw his head move from me to Noah and back again.
"It does now," he answered.
Chapter Ten
Noah
"You cannot be serious."
When I tried, unsuccessfully, to duck my head through the opening, her answer was a helpless bout of laughter. It reminded me of a wind chime at my grandma's cabin, the light tinkling sound of the wind moving through the glass. I used to love that wind chime. Now it would remind me of Molly Ward's laughter. The thought made me frown. Which made her laugh even harder.
"This house was built for someone a foot shorter than me, Molly."
"Short people need places to live too," Marty reminded me, half his face hidden behind the ever-present camera.
I glared at him. "Aren't you supposed to be a silent observer?"
He grinned. Or half-grinned. "Everything that doesn't serve the narrative will end up on the cutting room floor anyway. Don't you worry about me, Griffin."
Serve the narrative. That kind of PR jargon made me want to rip through the drywall with my bare hands just so I didn't have to get it stuck in my head.
I leaned toward Molly. "If I start saying things like serve the narrative, punch me in the throat."
She nodded seriously. "Please say it now. I'd like to practice if that's okay."
"Hey. We agreed on a truce."
"Yes, yes," she said lightly. "We did, didn't we?"
It took me a moment to realize that the cameras were on us, like it had been ever since we arrived at the first house of the day. It was about thirty minutes east of Seattle, close to Seward Park. From the outside, it looked promising. Trimmed landscaping and a Frank Lloyd Wright architectural style that appealed to me. A little pricey, for just me, but it was close to the water and had a pool.
Then we walked in and realized it was built for someone probably a foot shorter than me. I'd hit my head on three doorframes already. Each hit took my mood from ambivalent, to annoyed, to fully irritated.
She crossed her arms and surveyed the kitchen. "I like it."
"You would," I said. "You can walk through all the doors without getting a concussion."
Her lips, red today, twisted up in a smile. "Isn't that view worth it?"
I didn't even glance at the wall of windows. "No."
Molly rolled her eyes. "Fine. Do you want to go to the next place?" She gave me a winning smile, and her left cheek showed a hidden dimple that I didn't remember. "It's got tall ceilings."
She was handling me. Managing me because I sucked at this. It made my skin feel too tight and my head pound at the base of my skull.
Yesterday, somehow, she got me to confess something that I'd never planned on confessing. And I did it in front of a camera crew.
I'd underestimated Molly, that was for sure. Because as she aimed that sunny smile at Marty, who ate it up with a spoon, I vowed I wouldn't do it again. Her ability to herd me in whatever direction she wanted was like a kitten backing a grumpy tiger into a cage.
I was the tiger.
And this short-ass kitchen was my cage.
"I need to get out of this house," I muttered, brushing past both of them. Marty turned to follow, and because I was cognizant of the camera trained on me, rather than where I was going, the smack of my skull on the frame of the door echoed through the room. "Fuck," I yelled, rubbing the top of my head.
Molly slapped a hand over her mouth. This time, she wasn't laughing when she dropped it. "Are you okay?"
Instead of answering, I strode out of the house, only taking a full breath when I was outside again. The skies were overcast, the threat of rain heavy in the air.
The sudden turn in my mood surprised me, but I didn't want to analyze why.
It probably started when they made the uncomfortable realization that my personal life from an outsider's perspective was about as fun as watching paint dry. That nagged, all night. Even if my dad still lived in town, inviting him to come look at houses would've been a terrible idea. Our relationship was as warm as the highest peak of Mt. Rainier off in the distance.
Behind me, I heard Molly a
pproach. When she walked, she barely made any noise. Something I'd noticed in our meeting. She always wore those shoes ... the ones that looked like glorified slippers. And because of that, her steps were just slightly above a whisper of sound, which made me hyper aware of her movement.
"What was that?" she asked.
Today, she was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved Wolves shirt that fit her too well.
I didn't want to notice that she was wearing a shirt that fit her too well.
It pissed me off.
"None of this feels natural," I growled. I speared my hands into my hair and stared out to the line of blue water in the sound. "And even though I've heard all these reasons it's fine, and why people will find it interesting, I don't understand how I'm supposed to just ... wander around these houses and it'll help the team. Or help me be a part of the team."
Molly took another step closer, sighing softly as she did. Her face, delicate and sweet and pretty, was bent in a thoughtful frown. "It's not supposed to help the team, Noah. It's not about winning or about making them better," she said haltingly.
"Then what's the point?"
Her eyes searched my face. "The point is showing the truth. This is the reality of being a player in the league. Sometimes you change teams, and sometimes it's hard when you do."
I clenched my jaw and caught sight of Marty in my peripheral vision. The little shit was even sneakier than Molly, creeping around without anyone noticing.
"Aren't you supposed to be out of the shot too?"
She didn't take my bait, and I felt a moment of shame that I swiped at her in the first place.
"No, I'm not supposed to be doing anything other than this," she said quietly. "I'm helping you find someplace to live because that's what you need. You need a place to feel like home, to have chairs that fit you and walls around that you that make you feel like this is where you're meant to be. And if you're upset because you don't have anyone else to call to help you with this, then fix it. If you don't like it, then do something about it."
At that moment, I realized that you didn't have to yell or be the biggest and loudest to infuse your strength into an important moment.
So few people in my life took me on head to head. She was the last person I'd expected to be willing to step up to the plate and do it, this petite woman who barely reached my chest with the top of her head, who I could lift with one hand.
"You're not my friend, Molly," I reminded her. My voice was low, so Marty couldn't hear us. "I don't need this from you, so stop trying to psychoanalyze me."
Her eyebrows bent in. "That's not what I'm doing."
I leaned down toward her. "Yeah, it is. You keep trying to make me more interesting, more fun, more friendly, and maybe that's the version of me you want the world to see, but that's not what I am. Quit trying to turn this into something it's not." I straightened, ignoring the hurt, speculative look in her eyes. "I'm done looking for today. I'll take care of this myself."
They wanted to film The Machine, and that was what they'd get. Starting now.
Chapter Eleven
Molly
"That house must have been worse than I thought," I muttered. "It's like that last hit to the head knocked his personality into a coma."
Standing in the kitchen of Noah's temporary apartment, Marty and I watched carefully as Noah did his best impression of a man ignoring everyone around him.
By that, he was sitting on the couch with headphones on and watching film on his iPad, occasionally pausing the film to jot notes into a massive notebook.
"So we just stand here?" I asked.
Marty sighed, checking the position of the tripod that held his smaller camera. "Yup."
"He's not doing anything."
"Nope."
His unperturbed tone had me glancing at him. "How often do you get bored doing this job, Marty?"
He chuckled. "Rarely. Even at times like this."
"Seriously?"
What he lacked in height, Marty made up for in his huge smile. "Seriously. You don't go into a job like this because it's exciting all the time. It's about finding the moments of interesting in the mundane, you know? I've done six-month shoots tracking wolves in Yellowstone, and it's not like you're constantly filming them on the hunt, right? They're sleeping half the time, pissing in the grass, tugging at a pile of old, dried-out bones to find a last scrap of a meal. If you get lucky, someone fights over a female, and you manage to catch it. But most of the time, it's quiet."
My eyes trailed back to Noah, sitting quietly on the couch that was painfully out of proportion for his large frame. In my mind, I couldn't imagine him as a wolf. He was too large, his frame too dense and weighted down with muscle. He was a bear, tall and broad and ominous, big enough to blot out the sun if he stood over you.
"And you're never tempted to force action?" I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Like they do in reality TV." I held my hands up when his face pinched with distaste. "I'm not suggesting it, trust me. Just ... trying to understand the process is all. How doing this serves the narrative."
Marty leaned over to check the camera again and changed the angle to account for the setting sun. "Things like today were perfect or would've been if he hadn't had a tantrum at the first house. It's something real and true, something he needs to accomplish to get settled now that he's here." His eyes, astute and keenly observant, moved back over to the man in the other room. "But this is real and true too. He's retreating to something that's safe, something he's good at, and this is just as important to capture."
I nodded, glancing at my watch. We had about an hour left in the filming schedule, and it was about as fun as watching paint dry.
"But if you want to ask him some questions," Marty said, leaning toward me and speaking quietly, "I wouldn't tell you not to. You get a reaction out of him that no one else seems to. And that's good on film. As long as his reactions are his, are true, it's never going to be a bad thing."
The laugh huffed out easily. "But that's not forcing action?"
"It's not. You know we can edit you out of the shot if that's what needs to be done, but look at him," he said. We both did, and my face felt flipped upside down at what a sad picture it was. "He's alone, by choice, in this place that clearly doesn't fit him or make him feel comfortable, and he's supposed to make it feel like home."
"Seattle was home to him," I corrected. My eyes zeroed in on my shoes as I felt a flush of heat crawl up my neck. "I just mean, it's not like this is new to him."
"How well did you know him?" Marty asked the question just a little too smoothly.
I gave him a look. "Not well. I knew of him. Knew he played football. It's almost impossible to be a sixteen-year-old girl and not be aware of someone like that living next door." I shook my head. "But I don't remember him being like this."
"Is that hard for you?"
"Hard how?"
He shrugged. "Guy's pretty closed off. I hope we can get enough good footage off field, you know? Make it worth it to keep his storyline in the final cut."
A flash of discomfort turned my stomach over, imagining Beatrice's face if that were to happen. How that would reflect on me if it did. "It'll make the final cut. I saw the way he tore up practice this morning. You guys won't cut his footage."
"It's happened before." Marty clucked his tongue. "Be a shame, since Washington put all their eggs in his basket. One he doesn't seem very motivated to hold onto, if you ask me."
"Oh, you are a dirty, dirty cheat," I muttered under my breath, which made him grin unrepentantly. "I'm motivated enough for the both of us, trust me."
He nudged me with his shoulder and started unhooking the camera from the tripod. "I think your boss is banking on that too, Ward."
So many people called me by my last name, a hazard of working in the industry that I did, but for some reason, it reinforced why I was in this position and what was riding on it.
My last name held weight in the halls of Washin
gton and even more on the field. When I walked into a meeting with someone new, there was an undercurrent of established respect. One that I'd be a fool to ignore, no matter how much it rankled that Beatrice didn't think I'd earned my place honestly.
I had earned it honestly. But it also came with undeniable perks. And one of those perks was a knowledge and respect of the game of football that stretched back my entire life. Maybe I hadn't lived with Logan until I was fourteen, but I grew up watching him play. Some of my earliest memories include standing in the stands and cheering him on when he was in college, then more than a decade of him playing professionally.
I could throw down with any man about this sport, no matter how much of a die-hard fan they were. No matter if they were a player either. Marty's words echoed through my head as I approached the couch. It was long and black, low to the ground, with sleek oblong pillows flanking each arm.
Noah pretended he wasn't aware of me coming closer, but I saw the tightening of his jaw, and the way he shifted the iPad away from my gaze. Inexplicably, it made me smile.
That he noticed because his eyes flicked briefly from the screen, over to my mouth, then back. His frown intensified.
It was amazing how, only a couple of days after seeing him again, that frown had lost some of its ability to intimidate me. I folded my legs under me on the couch and leaned close enough that he sighed irritably. It wasn't film of Washington.
It was a game he played at Miami against an opponent we'd be facing in week two and on the road as well. Their stadium was a hostile place to play. Loud and open and unforgiving for any team that didn't call it home. I nodded when he backed up the cursor to watch something for a second time.
"What?" he snapped.
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