Focused: A hate to love sports romance(5)

"What in the hell is going on?" Isabel shouted.

Paige pushed the jar in her direction as Logan ignored everything except me.

"Molly—" he said again.

"No," I interrupted. "I'm not turning this down. I was sixteen the last time I saw him. That was forever ago. I'm sure he's forgotten all about it, just like I'm going to."

Paige cleared her throat obnoxiously because we all heard the bullshit in my words.

Like I'd ever be able to forget Noah Griffin.

Former next-door neighbor, the college boy I crushed on for two years before I snuck out, climbed into his bedroom window, and attempted to seduce him before his dad caught us. The same college boy I could've ruined if his dad had walked in much later, and anyone had found out he slept with a minor while on a full ride football scholarship.

Yeah, that Noah Griffin.

Looking around the room, I noted all three of their faces were frozen into variations of this is a horrible idea.

"You guys," I stated, "I've totally got this. They probably aren't even coming to film him. We have thirty-one other players to pick from. It'll be fine."

Oh, how very, very wrong I was.





Chapter Two





Noah





Almost nothing about my job intimidated me.

A three-hundred-pound offensive lineman could curse me out just before the snap of the ball, threaten my mother and spit through his helmet all the ways he was going to grind me into the turf, and I wouldn't feel the slightest twinge of apprehension.

I didn't become the best at my position by getting scared off easily. I did it by living, eating, breathing football.

Nothing came before it. Nothing ranked above it.

Practice always took precedence over anything I might find fun, which was why my former teammates in Miami used to call me The Machine. I was the first one in the weight room, the last one to leave the film room, the copious notetaker at meetings, and probably one of the only unapologetically celibate football players in the league.

Another thing that didn't come before my job was women, or what anyone around me might think of me.

But when my agent called me two days earlier, and said, "We're sending you to Washington," I felt something foreign lodge behind my chest, somewhere low in my rib cage.

Apprehension.

Nerves.

And worst of all, the slightest, smallest twinge of fear.

Because forty-eight hours later, I found myself standing in front of the closed door of my new defensive coordinator, who was expecting me for a meeting, and I couldn't bring myself to open it.

My hand wouldn't lift to knock, and my feet stayed stubbornly parked in place. I'd clocked in at two hundred and eighty pounds at my last weigh-in, and not one of those pounds, the muscle I'd worked on my entire career, was feeling particularly motivated to move me forward into that office.

My jaw tightened as I stared at the nameplate next to the door, innocuous silver with black letters. Logan Ward, Defensive Coordinator.

In the past ten years, I'd only seen him once since I started for Miami, when our teams had played against each other two years earlier. A nod after the game, which they'd won, and that was it.

Prior to that ... I refused to think about. My eyes pinched shut because that one day set me onto a trajectory where nothing, and no one, would ever distract me from my goals again.

The door yanked open, and his face greeted me with a scowl.

"Are you coming in, Griffin, or should we yell at each other through the door?"

Whatever trace of fear had been lingering was instantly replaced with annoyance, and I gave him a look of consternation. "Nice to see you, too."

"Let's get this over with because I don't need distractions, and there are already enough of them lining up for the season."

"Are you this welcoming to every guy you coach?" I asked as I followed him into the no-frills office.

"Nope," he answered easily. He sat heavily in his chair and watched me thoughtfully.

His was typical of every coordinator's office I'd ever been in. A desk with two chairs across from it, a whiteboard along the back, and empty walls. Their work took place on the field, their strategies mapped out on clipboards and in the film rooms. And a defensive mind like Logan's, that had been one of the best when he played, had only been honed further now that he coached from the sidelines.

His genius didn't need a fancy office. He just needed players who listened and knew what to do, knew what to look for, and who had that same sense that he did in reading an offense.

"Haven't talked to you in a long time, Griffin."

Just over nine years since we exchanged a single word, but that stayed unsaid, considering my dad sold our house shortly after Logan all but threatened my career in his driveway if I ever looked at his sister again. I crossed my arms over my chest. "I didn't ask to be sent here."

He exhaled a quiet laugh. "Dispensing with niceties, I see."

I swiped a hand over my mouth. This was the part I wasn't very good at. "I guess. I just ... I'm here to work, you know? Yes, you and I used to be neighbors, but it's not like anyone knows that here. I didn't want to leave my team, but here I am. It's not my choice, but I'll be damned if it derails me in any way."