back to the row of balls on tees. Ryder squinted when she approached the first ball, watching where her foot hit, surprised she’d corrected from his critique from three days before. “No,” he said again. “She’s better now.” He looked at Wilson, shrugging. “Stronger.”
Wilson grinned, a look that reminded Ryder that the man was all about the game. But there was something else in his expression. Something that made the quarterback’s stomach twist with worry.
“You fuck her?” Wilson asked, gaze on the field as he plucked an empty cup from the step at his right.
“What?” Ryder hoped he put enough offense in his tone. No one needed to know about them. It would fuck up what the entire team hoped would be their best season in five years.
“Women are on you all the time. Not just the blonde you keep around for some stupid reason. Bet that’s not something new. Noble, she doesn’t strike me as the ugly duckling sort. She’s hot. Hot people go at each other like magnets. You both from Duke, you around her and her daddy all the time…” Wilson pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds, dropping a few into his mouth as Ryder watched him. “There was something behind the bullshit arguing you were doing with her. That was deeper than any college rivalry.”
“There’s nothing there,” Ryder said, wishing he could take back telling Wilson anything that had gone down in that meeting with Gia. Especially filling him on why he’d fought with Reese.
“You’re full of shit,” the running back said, shrugging when Ryder turned down his offer for seeds. Then he laughed outright at the glare his quarterback shot his way. “I got eyes.” He moved against the seat, feet on the railing, crossed at the ankle, and scrubbed his head. He wore his hair in a low fade with sharp lines on the sides and short afro curls at the top, neat and tight. Ryder had never known another man that took as much time with his fucking hair and trimmed beard as Wilson. “I also got four older sisters. Every last one of them had exes they could never be cool with once it was all over. Might only be one of them, but those were the assholes they hated most. Hated them most because they loved them most. Anytime they caught up with those fellas on the street—hell, even at church—it went bad. Yelling and cursing and flying insults.”
Wilson spit the shells out into the empty cup and kept watching the field, ignoring the attention Ryder gave him. “I learned early on, a woman screams at a man the way Noble screamed at you, the way you screamed back…shit, there’s hate there that wasn’t always hate.” He turned, glancing at Ryder with a look the quarterback couldn’t read. “What you do, who you do it with, that ain’t my business, but don’t lie to me, man. Don’t tell me there won’t be shit starting in our house,” he waved his hand, motioning around the stadium, “when you know there will be.”
Wilson stared at Ryder a few seconds, waiting for an agreement that didn’t come. Below them, on the sidelines, Pérez greeted Kai Pukui, their best defensive lineman, who’d just landed from a long visit with his daughter in Hawaii. Wilson spotted the man and jetted away from Ryder, forgetting their conversation and the question he didn’t get answered.
But the quarterback didn’t follow. He sat still, quiet, as Ricks set Reese and Wilkens on one-legged squats. He could see Reese’s quads shaking from his seat on the bleachers and leaned further in his seat, elbows on his knees as she moved.
He hadn’t lied to Wilson. She was stronger now than when he’d first met her. Back then, at Duke, Reese had been in the background, the shadow always lingering around Coach Noble. Then, as her first semester lingered, she became his little sister’s shadow. Actually, they shadowed each other.
A whip of memory shot to the front of Ryder’s head, and he closed his eyes, trying hard to rub away the flash of his sister’s face and the sound of her and Reese’s laughter that first summer, at his folks’ place back in Raleigh, splashing in their pool.
Reese had been a fixture around the stadium and on the field. She worked out and drilled like she was prepping for a game. The more time she spent, the more their own kickers and punters relied on her to offer suggestions. She’d been trained