Isabel stood with a grin, holding her hand out for me so she could tug me to my feet. "You got it."
After I'd dumped all my stuff into my gym bag, I slung it over my shoulder. Iz held out her fist to me, and I bumped it as I passed.
"Go get 'em, tiger," she said. "I'd bet on you any day of the week."
"Damn straight," I muttered. Noah Griffin didn't know me anymore either, but he was about to find out exactly what I was made of.
Chapter Five
Noah
My reputation as The Machine preceded me, that much was evident. The guys were polite in their greetings but nothing effusive. No violent, back-pounding hugs, nothing outside of reserved happiness that my football talents were now wearing black and red.
There was very little in any greeting about Noah Griffin as a person, and that suited me just fine. Until I got out on the practice field and saw Kareem Jones, outside linebacker and one of my former roommates from U Dub. Before he so much as opened his mouth, I braced myself for the attention I'd been actively avoiding.
He hooted loudly when I cleared the doors, drawing the attention of every damn person on the field. I laughed under my breath as he barreled toward me and lifted me in a massive hug with arms as big as tree trunks. He was two inches taller than me, so my feet cleared the ground for a second before he dropped me.
"Damn, boy, what they been feeding you in Miami?" he said around a wide, happy grin. "The Machine got fat."
I shoved at his shoulder. "You're delusional, Jones. I'd still kick your ass at the line every time, and you know it."
His booming laugh thawed a bit of the icy wall of distance I'd stood behind since arriving. But I still found myself glancing around to see if anyone was watching with suspicion or distrust.
It was ridiculous to think they would. Drama happened in the locker room of every team in the league, and the reason for my hasty departure out of Miami, made up or not, hadn’t been fed to mainstream media. What golden boy QB wanted to admit that one of his teammates—bigger, stronger, and more established on the team—had a chance with his Playboy Playmate wife? Not the QB I'd left behind, that's for sure.
But still, common knowledge or not, it rankled that anyone might look at me and think it was the truth. It made me wish I could go back and not offer her a ride, that I'd called her an Uber or called her husband or another one of the WAGs who'd been at the event. A drunk woman wasn't my responsibility, even if she'd felt like it at the moment as I came upon her swaying dangerously in the parking lot as she tried to find her keys.
Kareem waved another teammate over to introduce me, and I took a deep breath. No one was judging me. No one was watching with narrowed eyes.
Except maybe Logan, I thought as I caught sight of him at the edge of the field, watching me carefully underneath the brim of his well-worn black cap with the Wolves logo stamped on the front.
Turning my attention to the guys who approached, I recognized a few but not all. They all smiled, made small talk, and joked around with Kareem. The kind of familiarity that typically grew between teammates.
Just not with me.
Sometimes, I hardly recognized that about myself, but I'd been that way for so long, it felt like a fool's errand to try to change it. Change myself.
"Relax, man," Kareem said quietly as the other guys started talking amongst themselves.
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, that's what I do best."
"You still a virgin? You know that's your problem, right?"
My whole body froze as he said it far too loudly. I leveled him with a glare, which made him crack up. "Kareem, you asshole. I'm not a virgin—"
His jaw dropped open as he caught sight of my face. "Seriously? You still don't have sex?" His head shook back and forth, slowly, incredulously. "I thought you were just being, like, moody or some shit in college."
"We are not talking about this right now."
He hooted again. "Yeah, we are." One arm came around my shoulders, and we separated from the guys. I wasn't ashamed of the fact that I chose to abstain from women. A woman was a distraction. Sex was not only a distraction but it also came with far too many possible complications. I didn't want kids. Didn't want anything in my life that would fight for the top spot in my life outside of football. "Man, come on, you're killin' me. How do you ... Aren't you angry all the time?"
That made me smile, just a little, because the way he said it made it sound like I was attempting an impossible feat. Climbing Mt Everest naked. Bungee jumping over a canyon full of glass with a frayed rope. Jumping from an airplane without checking to see if my parachute was attached to my back.
"And you don't think that helps me?" I asked.
He stopped walking. "I know you're playin' right now. I know you are."
I held my arms out. "Why? You said you'd be angry, right? Where do you think I put all that energy?" I lifted my chin at the field in front of us. "I put it out there."
"You are one crazy motherfucker, Griffin." He shook his head again. "I knew it then, and I really know it now."
Logan—Coach, as I needed to get used to thinking of him as—whistled sharply from the sidelines, and Kareem shoved me hard enough that I stumbled. I shoved him back, which made him laugh, but he was the only one. Coach Ward glared at me.
"Is this how you paid attention to your coaches in Miami?" he asked, arms folded across his chest. Behind him, I noticed a couple of suits—one man, one woman—and a guy holding an expensive-looking camera.
Lifting my chin, I clasped my hands behind my back like a soldier facing his commanding officer. "No, sir."
"It's my bad, Coach," Kareem said on a laugh. "Noah thinks his"—I gave him a sharp look, and he grinned—"his natural state of repressed anger means he can beat my ass off the line."
The guys around us laughed, and Coach cracked a reluctant smile. "Yeah? What do you think about that, Jones?"
Kareem slapped a hand on my back. "I think this boy is crazy, and I'm ready to prove it."
The suits and the cameras aimed their attention fully in our direction now, and the cheers and laughter of my new teammates were just enough to distract me from wondering what they were doing.
I shook my head. "Kareem, don't embarrass yourself. Let's just get to work."
In truth, I didn't want to line up like this at my first practice and turn it into a circus. As much as I wanted to be the best, I didn't need the spotlight that came with it. I wanted to break records to prove that I could. I wanted to lift more, run faster, train harder because I was good at it. My body constantly craved that burn, the satisfying edge of pain that told me I was the hardest worker on the field.
But Logan waved at us to do it, so I'd flatten Kareem without a second thought.
Our teammates surrounded us, leaving adequate space in the middle for Kareem and me to face each other. Someone handed us practice helmets, and I strapped mine on while he did the same. The tall, thin woman in the suit pushed some players out of the way so the cameras could see us clearly, and I rolled my neck to ignore them and focused on what I needed to do.
The joke about my natural state of anger fueled the tightening of tension in my muscles as I crouched in front of my former college roommate. He was two inches taller than me and just as wide.
His body held all the same carefully crafted muscles and knowledge of body mechanics for when you were trying to take out an opponent. He kept his fingers loose where they propped him up in the grass, and I did the same, no hint as to where we might move or which direction we might take.
He grinned behind his helmet, and I narrowed my eyes, letting the full blaze of power unroll through my arms and back and legs when I imagined knocking him over. Our teammates heckled and hollered; most cheered on Kareem, but a few voices were saying my name. Coach stood between us, silver whistle in his mouth, which would be our signal.
Movement from behind Kareem pulled my gaze away for a split second.
Molly. On the practice field.