Skin in the Game (13 page)

She chuckled. “By then, you and most of the players on the team now will be in college.

Heck, you might even be playing in the NFL.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “Do you really think so?”

She did, actually. Jake had great hands, good instincts, and the fierceness of a born competitor. Maybe not Tyler Johnson’s intercontinental ballistic missile for an arm, but more than enough juice behind his throws to make it in the big time. “Yeah, I do.”

“Wow. Thanks.”

“So, will you help me with this?”

“Definitely, Coach Pete.” He gave her an affectionate punch in the shoulder. “You can count on me.”

Angie resisted the urge to hug him. At least there was one trustworthy man in her life other than her father. Even if he was only seventeen years old.

###

“So, how long am I going to be waking up to this?” Angie’s father asked as he handed her a steaming cup of coffee over the railing of the backyard deck.

Eleven teenage boys in sweats and cleats were arrayed across the well-tended lawn.

They’d spent nearly an hour working on the play Angie planned to pull out in the fourth quarter of their game next Friday night. The one that would prove she was really the head coach of this team, not Cade Reynolds.

She took the mug from her father with an apologetic smile. “Just until we get this play sorted out.” After taking a sip of her coffee, she hollered, “One more time, then you can all go home and get ready for school.”

The players dutifully lined up in their positions and ran through the pattern again.

“Hmmm,” her father said when they’d finished, “are you sure you want to use that in a game?”

Angie closed her eyes for a second. There was a reason she had decided not to suggest this play to Harvey after she’d first drawn it up, and her father had seen the problem right away.

By design, the ball would be unprotected for several seconds, and that meant a savvy defender could get to the quarterback before the pattern was well enough established for him to throw the ball. In other words, the play could just as easily result in a turnover as a huge gain, and Harvey always objected to plays he viewed as chancy. Angie, however, trusted her players enough to know they could pull this off with spectacular results.

“It’s just an insurance play, Dad. We won’t use it unless we really need it.” A small smile tugged at her lips, because they were going to need it on Friday night. The players had agreed, in an effort to make the win more dramatic, to hold back just enough to keep the game close until the final quarter.

Which was even chancier than the play itself. If she used it and it didn’t work, the Eagles could lose that game—and with it, their chance at the state championship. There were no sure things in football, after all, and even a perfect play could fail. But what other choice did she have? Cade’s criticisms on Saturday morning had made it eminently clear to her that her failure to take the bull by the horns and make the hard decisions would be held against her.

“I’m sure you know what you’re doing, chickadee. I never doubt you.” He leaned over the railing and gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “When it comes to football strategy, anyway.”

Angie knew that was a subtle dig at her antipathy toward Cade, which she’d made no attempt to hide after he’d left Sunday morning. Although her father was fully on her side when it came to the question of her fitness to be the Eagles’ head coach, he was nonetheless smitten with Cade—in a purely bromance-y fashion, of course—and thought she was being too hard on him.

He was, after all, just the messenger.

Of course, he hadn’t been there when Cade had delivered his most cutting message.

You’re not brave enough to do this on your own.

“How was that, Coach?” Jake shouted.

Coffee in hand, Angie walked down the slight incline from the deck to the flat expanse of lawn between her father’s house and the canal that ran behind it. The boys clustered together, steam rising off their heads in the early morning chill.

“You’re all doing great,” she assured them before giving a few pointers to keep in mind for tomorrow morning’s practice.

“Are we going to get a chance to run through this in full pads against the defense?” Kurt Tompkins, the center, asked, obviously concerned.

Angie shook her head. “I’d like to, but this play is a secret weapon. If anyone else sees it before we use it in a game, we lose the advantage. But I promise, if everyone sticks to their assignments, this is a guaranteed touchdown. You all know where you’re supposed to be, right?”

They gave stout nods of agreement. No one wanted to be the weak link. None of them would be, either.

She was lucky to have these great kids—young men, really—playing for her, and even luckier that they trusted her to know what was best for them. That was probably why, as she watched them run up the hill and out to their cars and bicycles, she felt a twinge of unease.

Pulling off a play like this in a game was going to turn them into stars. Every one of them would be writing their own tickets to the colleges of their choice. But there was also a chance that the play would be blown and they’d lose the game, along with their shot at the championship. And whichever way it went, Angie would have to live with her decision.

They were losing.

Cade’s eyes kept flicking to the scoreboard, as though if he just looked often enough, the numbers would reverse themselves. But each time he checked, the score remained the same:

Guest 24, Home 21 with less than three minutes to play. The grand gesture he’d already discussed with Harvey and planned to reveal tonight after the game—to cede his position as interim head coach to Angie and give her full credit for the win—wasn’t going to be much of a gesture at this rate.

He glanced at her. She stood to his left, studying her clipboard as calmly as if the Eagles were already up by twenty points and on the verge of waltzing into the opponent’s end zone for another score.

Her team was about to lose the most important game of the season. Homecoming.

Against their only serious division rivals. In the closing minutes of the game. And the other team still had the ball.

Why wasn’t she concerned?

In retrospect, that should have been his first clue that she was up to something. As it was, he just thought she had an unnatural, unnerving calm.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” he asked under his breath.

She gave him a blank look, as if he’d just suggested she fly to the moon for some green cheese and a bottle of wine. “I am doing something,” she pointed out. “I’m deciding what play to call when we get the ball back.”

“Don’t you mean if?” The way the defense had played tonight, that seemed a real question. Not that they’d been bad, precisely. But they had seemed a little sluggish and late on their tackles. Of course, he’d only seen them play one other game last week, against a clearly inferior team. Perhaps this week’s opponent was just that much better.

Angie gave him a serene smile and nodded toward the field just as an enormous cheer went up in the stands behind them, accompanied by a collective groan from the opposite side.

“No. I meant when.”

“Eagles! Eagles! Eagles!” the crowd chanted.

Cade could only shake his head in amazement. Somehow, at precisely the right moment, one of the Eagles safeties had landed an interception and returned it almost to midfield.

“You couldn’t have known that was going to happen,” Cade said.

“No,” she admitted with a shrug. “But I was pretty sure.”

Jake Hanssen, in the process of strapping his helmet onto his head as he jogged toward the field, stopped in front of Angie. “R27-6L?”

She nodded and gave him a push on the shoulder pad to turn him toward the field.

Cade frowned. He knew the play in question, of course. It was a straightforward I-formation delayed run up the middle that could reasonably be expected to gain no more than five yards unless a defensive player missed a tackle or seriously misread the play. With—he glanced at the game clock—two minutes and fifteen seconds left, it was also a call that made absolutely no sense.

After almost two weeks of working with her, Cade knew Angie would never call that play in this situation. Which could only mean…

“What are you up to?” he asked, his voice a suspicious hiss.

Her expression was absolutely benign. “I’m up to winning the game. What else?”

Oh, she was up to something else all right. She and the entire offense.

But since she clearly had a plan, it seemed better to wait and watch than to intervene. The players lined up in the expected I-formation, Hanssen tucked in tight behind the center and the running back, Mike Tamblyn, a few yards behind him. Hanssen called out the count and the center snapped the ball.

And then everything went simultaneously crazy and magnificent in the same moment.

Hanssen stepped neatly aside as the ball whizzed by him and directly into the waiting hands of the running back. Tamblyn raced by Hanssen and cut to the left, the ball tucked under his arm as he turned the corner, pursued by the defense. Except, Tamblyn didn’t have the ball.

Somehow, through some remarkable sleight of hand, he’d passed it back to Hanssen. Cade squinted, not quite able to believe his own eyes as the young quarterback cocked his arm back and hefted the ball he shouldn’t have a good thirty yards downfield.

This play was most definitely not R27-6L. It was not, in fact, even in the Eagles’ playbook. At all.

Damn it, she’d been keeping this from him and so had the players, who couldn’t possibly have pulled off anything so carefully choreographed without a lot of practice.

An almost reverent hush descended over the stadium on both sides of the field as everyone’s attention turned and focused on Anton Rodgers, the Eagles’ fastest runner and leading wide receiver. He rocketed down the center of the field, the nearest cornerback more than five feet behind him and losing ground. The ball began to slow and fall, and the only question was whether Rodgers would be at the right place at the right time to catch it.

Breaths were drawn, held. Rodgers slowed his stride ever so slightly. Turned. Jumped.

Caught the ball, came down with it, and all but strolled into the end zone. The referee raised his arms over his head, signaling the touchdown. The scoreboard flashed the new score: Visitor 24, Home 26.

A deafening cheer rose up as the Eagles’ offensive players who were close enough rushed Rodgers in the end zone. And then, just as suddenly, everything fell terribly, unnaturally silent.

“Oh God,” Angie whispered. The words were injected with such abject misery, Cade didn’t even have to see Jake Hanssen, sprawled on the ground near the line of scrimmage, to know what had happened.

Angie had dropped her clipboard and was running to Hanssen’s side before the penalty marker thrown by the line judge hit the turf. The defensive player who’d delivered the blow was yanking off his helmet, remorse and concern etched in the sagging lines of his shoulders.

Cade’s feet felt leaden and his sense of reality disjointed as he followed Angie out onto the field. Seeing Jake Hanssen lying there on his back, limp and motionless, was like an out-of-body experience. This must have been how Cade himself had looked after the tackle that had shattered his shoulder, except as far as he could tell, Hanssen’s limbs looked to be unbroken and intact.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” the defensive player babbled. “I didn’t mean to hurt him, I swear to God.”

“I know you didn’t,” Angie said, her tone almost eerie in its calm. She knelt beside Hanssen’s head, his inert hand clasped in hers. Her face was ashen. “It’s my fault. All mine.”

***

By the time the stretcher arrived, Jake was conscious and able to respond to simple questions, but this fact did nothing to console Angie. As she watched the paramedics trundle him into the ambulance, his worried parents piling in beside him, she knew she couldn’t stay here. His injury was her responsibility. She’d been so determined to prove herself to Cade and the entire town of Harper Falls that she’d accounted for the strategic risk of the play but not the practical one. All she’d been worried about was a turnover. Maybe if she’d run it with the defense on the field, she would have been able to foresee this outcome. Her decision not to do so seemed reckless now.

And more than a little selfish. She’d been so enamored of the cleverness of the misdirection scheme and so sure it would work, she hadn’t taken the care she normally would have.

As the ambulance doors slammed shut, she turned around and walked straight into the broad chest of Cade Reynolds. She nearly fell on her backside, but he grabbed her by the wrists, preventing her from toppling to the ground.

“I have to go,” she mumbled, tugging against his grasp.

“To the hospital?” His voice rumbled out of him in a way that made her realize he was as concerned as she was.

“Yes. I need to be there with Jake and his parents. You can call the last two minutes of the game. You know the playbook.”

But Cade shook his head. “No way.”

“What? Why not?”

He moved his hands from his wrists to her upper arms and steadied her. It was only then that she realized she was swaying precariously.

“Because you’re so upset, you’re in no condition to drive. If you’re going to the hospital, I’m driving. Donnelly can run the show while we’re gone.”

Donnelly in charge of the team with a little over two minutes to go and only a three-point lead, assuming they made the extra point? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Cade might not be entirely on her side, but she knew for certain he was on Harvey’s side, and that meant he’d never blow the game.

“If they screw it up, it’ll be his fault, not yours,” Cade pointed out. “And since that would only hurt him, not you, there’s no way he’ll do it on purpose.”

Angie blinked up at him, open-mouthed. He was right. Donnelly would be a fool to throw the game. But she was still perfectly capable of driving to the hospital. True, she was sick with worry that her mistake might have caused Jake some lasting harm, but that didn’t make her incompetent.