Page 48 of The Backup Plan
Isaac acted as though he hadn’t heard. “And with the kick, we’re down by eighteen at the half. Are you feeling okay, Cam?”
He scooped up his helmet and slammed it against Isaac’s shoulder pads. “You know what? I am. I’m feeling okay, and you’d better be too, because this is going to take all of us.”
Eighteen points. Three touchdowns, minimum, and his defense would have to shut down one of the best pocket passers they would play all year.
His defense, though he never played a snap with them.
His team.
“Let’s go,” he mumbled as he jogged to catch up with his coach in the tunnel. “Motivation. Momentum. Whatever the hell Jordan did, let’s go.”
“You know what I heard out there at the start of the second quarter?” Cam demanded. “I was in the grass, and some smug fuck DB says they’re bringing the heat tonight. You guys feeling a little hot? I am.”
Murmurs of approval circled him as he dragged some teammates closer.
“I wasn’t getting up off my ass alone. My boys were there with a hand.” He pointed at Zack and Kenyon. “Because when we fall together, we rise together. If they think they’re bringing the heat, we rise!” He thumped his chest. “When we feel the heat, what do we do?”
“We rise!”
He shoved Kenyon into Zack. “And we do it together! What do we do when they bring that heat?”
“We rise!”
Cam found his cadence and kept going with the beat of a play call and a snap count. “They got me heated. They pissed me off like they pissed off the rest of you, and we’re ready to do something about it. All phases, thirty more minutes. They’re gonna bring the heat just like they did the first half, but they only think we’re down, guys. We know they’re celebrating right now, and they’re coming back out there lazy. They think they got us right where they want us. This is where we want us! We’re right where we belong. This is our house, and nobody’s gonna cook us here.”
“Hell of a half, Cam. Hell of a game.”
“It was. Everybody came to play. That was the best comeback I’ve ever been part of. God, what a rush.” Cam stretched his arms, knocking his fist on the wall of the locker room. “Put me back in. I could do this all night.”
Isaac stared at his bag, zipping it slowly. “I’m sorry for what I said earlier.”
“About what?”
“Just before the half.”
“You didn’t say anything we weren’t all thinking, Fields.”
“That’s not like me, though.”
“We all have off days. The important thing is that we turned it around.”
“Yeah, except I didn’t.” Isaac dropped to the bench in front of Cam’s locker and caught himself before driving a fist into it.
Cam drew in a sharp breath. He wasn’t sure he knew Isaac well enough to ask what was really on his mind—something was, and it wasn’t football, which was completely out of character. A tiny devil on his shoulder whispered it might have to do with Avery and her stilted “we’ll see” when he asked about their relationship. That “we’ll see” sent hope surging in his heart, and if that was the problem, then the friend he saw before him was the other side of that hope.
“You did,” Cam insisted. He thought it was safer to stick with football, and if Isaac corrected him, he’d follow the course. “Twenty-one was running scared by the fourth, and you still brought him down a dozen times. You were absolutely crucial.”
“It’s not that.” He looked up. “I mean, it feels good. The hype, and the way everyone came together, that was incredible. But man, it’s—maybe it’s stupid. I hate when I bring off-field stuff to the game, but the lines are blurry sometimes.”
Sharing a locker room with your girlfriend’s brother might blur things a little, Cam realized.
“We have lives outside of football,” he said. “It happens to everyone.”
Isaac raked his hands through his damp hair. “I thought I knew what was going on, but obviously not. I thought we wanted the same things.”
Cam gulped.
“It’s the end of a dream,” Isaac continued. “And I just haven’t come to terms with the fact that it’ll never happen.”