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 Washington 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.
I tapped the space over my ears, and he obliged, pushing the headphones off. "That was week three last season, right? Not the season before?"
His eyebrows curved in. "Last season."
I nodded. "I could tell."
Boom.
Noah didn't want to be interested. That was why his jaw snapped tight, and he closed his mouth after it popped open to ask me a question. But interested he was. That was why his eyes darted back and forth between me and the screen.
"How?"
I shuffled just a couple of inches closer, snatching the headphones from his head so I could turn them off. The sound popped up instantly, and I pointed a finger at the screen.
"Well, last season, their O-line was better, so their QB was able to hold onto the ball about a second and a half longer than the season before."
Noah's mouth sagged open before he snapped it shut. Inwardly, I pumped my fist in the air so violently, it would've been obnoxious.
"Then there's you," I said, letting my voice trail off.
His whole frame went still again, and I was starting to recognize it for what it was: a warning.
You know how the air feels before a tornado swoops down? Everywhere you look, there was a perfect, ominous stillness. Even the color of the sky was different, rosy and warm and pinkish yellow.
"What about me?" he asked, voice all low and grumbly and delicious. I felt that grumble in the soles of my feet, and it made my toes curl up in my shoes.
Deep breath in, deep breath out. "You changed the way you pivoted around the tackle to get to the quarterback. Before, you used to duck more, lower your body mass, which made it harder to move as fast because your momentum wasn't helping you." I pointed at the screen. "And see, right there, that's how I know it was last season. That's when you started spinning around them, like Freeney and Mathis used to do back in the early two thousands for Indy. You broke the single season sack record last year because of that change. You should have won defensive player of the year. I always thought you got robbed."
Noah's finger punched the screen, pausing the video. He took a second to breathe deeply, and I risked a glance at his face. He was staring at me with such an arrested intensity that I fought not to squirm away from the force of it.
"You—" He stopped, then shook his head as though I'd punched him.
What was it about him that was so entertaining when he was off-balance? Smiling at him, laughing at him, it would be the last thing he'd want from me, especially given his earlier mood. And even more surprising was that it wasn't hard to fight the impulse. I didn't want Noah to think I was laughing at how hard it was for him to adjust to this thing we were doing. I wasn't the one being filmed all the time.
"How do you know that?" he finally managed. "About Freeney and Mathis. You couldn't have been older than ..." He stopped to do some mental calculations.
"I was in middle school." I grinned. "Come on, Noah, my brother was a second-round draft pick the year I started kindergarten. What do you think I've been watching every Sunday my entire life?"
Behind the couch, Marty moved on silent feet, but Noah paid him no mind. All his attention was on me, and something about that unwavering focus raised all the little hairs on the back of my neck.
Maybe it was because I'd shocked him or maybe it was because he had to come to terms with the fact that he'd underestimated me, but Noah Griffin was staring at me like he was contemplating ways to devour me whole.
"You gonna tell me how I can improve now, Coach Ward? With your endless wealth of football knowledge." The edge to his voice wasn't unpleasant, not in the slightest, and it was taking me some time of my own to realize that I'd underestimated how mercurial his moods were.