Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals #3)
Kandi Steiner
Holden
The North Boston University 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. The silence roared like the hum of an airplane engine, vibrating through every chest in the building.
I wanted to take charge, to pump my team up, to have some grand speech that would soothe all their worry. I longed for sage advice like the kind my uncles gave me in times of stress, for the right words to make everyone breathe easier.
But the truth was, I was worried, too.
Despite how I’d somehow managed to redirect my team’s 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.
And even if we did all get to keep our spots, we were in unfamiliar territory now. Nothing would be the same this season.
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 worked 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, his salt and pepper gray hair styled in a neat wave and parted to the side. He was tall, at least as tall as our tight end and number one pain in my ass — Kyle Robbins — and built like a train. There were rumors that he ran a lot of drills alongside his players, as if to show them that if a fifty-something-year-old could do it, it was embarrassing if they couldn’t.
One look at him told me the rumors were likely true.
He was tan, evidence of working hard in the sun day in and day out, and his dark eyes held no kindness as they swept over the room. He bent toward the man to his right, talking in a hushed voice 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 Novo, our kicker, at first — because she and our Public Relations Coordinator, Giana Jones, were the only 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.
In every possible way, she was a complete knockout.
But it wasn’t her body that held me captive.
It wasn’t her hair, or the graceful line of her neck, or the arrogant indifference with which she strode into the room.
It was her eyes.
Warm, endlessly deep brown, framed by thick lashes that swept across her cheeks with every blink.
And haunted.
Just like mine.
“At ease, gentlemen,” Coach Lee said with a smirk that looked almost unnatural, like he hardly smiled at all. He held out his hands and signaled for us to sit once he was in the center of the room. “And lady,” he added with a pointed look at Riley.
The rest of the coaches lined the wall behind him, giving him our full attention.
“I know I’ve already met a few of you during my tours here, but I’m excited to finally get real time with each and every one of you. I won’t pretend like I’m blind to how uncomfortable and uneasy this all must be for you. I’m not just a new player, I’m a new coach — and I know how that can shake things up more than anything else.”
I swallowed.
“But I want you to know, I’m not here to change everything. Obviously, a lot of what you have going here has been working. It’s an honor to be walking onto this team.” He paused, hanging his hands on his hips. “It’ll be even more of an honor to give you the last push to the finish line, to be there when they crown us champs at the end of the season.”
That made several players exchange looks of determination and delight, that fire that I’d stoked at the end of last season just one good poke away from roaring again. We’d played in bowl games the last two seasons, pulling NBU back from an embarrassing ten years of lackluster performance. But while we’d won two years ago, we’d lost our most recent one — costing us our shot at the Championship Title.