Chapter 188

Aiden

I’ll be damned if my baby boy wasn’t fucking crazy.

One second he was upright, cutting through defenders like a bullet, and the next—

BAM

My heart just stopped. I swear to God it stopped. Watching him hit the turf like that? I almost tore through the field myself. My whole body was screaming to drag him out of there, haul him someplace safe, wrap him up and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.

But then…

Then the idiot got back up.

Shaky. Pissed. Stubborn as sin.

And he kept going.

And the moment he pulled off that insane, impossible play—again—I knew it.

That was it. That was the moment he sealed his future.

Golden fucking brooch. NFL contract. National attention.

He did it.

He actually did it.

And I was proud.

God, I was so fucking proud I could barely breathe.

But underneath all that adrenaline and pride and terror?

I wanted to kiss the boy.

To take him in my arms in front of every camera and every screaming fan and devour him until he remembered exactly who he belonged to.

I wanted him so badly...

Needed him like oxygen.

Loved him with every damn cell in my body.

And now?

Now I just needed five minutes.

Five minutes before he had to run off with William’s leash around his neck again.

Five minutes to remind him that even if the whole country wanted a piece of him…

He was still mine.

But first, we had to get through the hellstorm.

The cameras. The reporters. The scouts.

We were about to swim through a sea of media and hungry prospects again—every damn coach, manager, and corporate shark wanting to touch him, talk to him, claim him.

I could already feel the chaos closing in.

And somewhere in that madness…

I’d find him.

Even if it was for thirty seconds.

Even if it was reckless.

Even if it cost me everything.

I needed my boy.

After wrapping up my interviews, I spent another ten minutes surrounded by NFL scouts who practically vibrated with hunger, challenging William, who was currently his manager and seemed to have it under control on his end. I didn’t give a shit. He was not gonna manage my boy for long and, after he was out of the picture, I was not gonna let any prospect sink their claws in without proving they had his best interests in mind…

One that did have my approval so far was the sharp-eyed rep from Oregon I had talked to Noah about. He pulled me aside with the kind of confidence that told me he had fully made up his mind.

“We want him,” he said. “And, as we said before, we’d rather negotiate with him directly. No middleman. No… complications.”

Meaning: no William.

Good.

One clean door out of the hell we were stuck in.

We were finalizing a follow-up meeting when I caught movement in my peripheral vision. Noah was walking past the cluster of media personnel, head down, helmet in hand. On the surface, just another player retreating to the tunnels. But then he flicked his gaze at me—brief, sharp, deliberate.

A signal. A directive. Now….

Finally!

Before I could excuse myself, I felt eyes burning into the side of my skull. William Hart, watching from across the stadium floor. A look that felt like a blade pressed to my spine. Our school director stepped up beside him, clearly annoyed that I was anywhere near the scouts.

And he was not the only one. “I expect a report, Coach Mercer,” the dean hissed at me, low enough that only I heard. “Our sponsors come first. You don’t get to negotiate behind anyone’s back.”

I flashed him a smile I didn’t feel. “Of course. I’m gathering information for all our players.”

He didn’t like that answer.

Too fucking bad.

By the time I got free of all of them, Noah was nearly gone from sight. All I caught was the faint turn of his shoulder disappearing into the mouth of the tunnel.

I didn’t run.

But my pulse sure as hell did.

The bowels of the stadium were half-lit, humming with distant voices, slamming lockers, the occasional roar of crowd noise bleeding through vents. I checked the showers—locked. The locker room—buzzing with trainers and players. No way he’d risk that. I kept moving. Past staff rooms. Past the storage cages. Empty hall after empty hall, each one thick with muffled echoes.

Nothing. No him. Did I misread it? Did he change his mind?

A soft whistle cut through the corridor.

Low. Quick.

Our signal.

A door on my left cracked open by an inch.

My grin was instant.

I slipped inside and barely got the door shut before he grabbed me.

We slammed together—mouths, hands, breath—like two magnets that had been fighting gravity all their lives. His lips sugary and warm, and I dragged my tongue along the corner of his mouth, down the line of his jaw, drinking him in.

“You were insane out there, as always…” I growled between kisses. “Utterly fucking unreal.”

His laugh broke on a shudder, breath hot against my cheek. “It was for you,” he whispered. “All of it. I love you so damn much.”

God, that nearly buckled me.

“Don’t,” I rasped, voice cracking against his collarbone. “Don’t say that right now or I’ll never let you leave this room.”

His fingers curled in my shirt and yanked me closer. “Who says I’m leaving? You said five minutes…”

That was it.

I lost the last thread of control I had.

I pressed him back into the wall, my hands sliding under his jersey, up the hot, sweat-damp skin of his torso. He gasped when my mouth crashed into his again. His pads scraped the wall. His hips lifted off the ground when I hauled him up. One of his hands fumbled at the waistband of his uniform pants, desperate, clumsy, reckless—

And I didn’t stop him.

Couldn’t.

Wouldn’t.

His jersey was halfway unfastened, his throat exposed, my mouth on the pulse there, his fingers tugging at my shirt, my hand already shoving fabric out of the way—

And then—

A loud crash.

The door slammed open so violently it hit the stopper.

I froze.

Noah froze.

We didn’t even have time to peel apart.

The college dean stood in the doorway, flanked by two board members and an assistant coach whose face went sheet-white. And behind them, out in the hallway, arms folded, expression carved from stone—

William Hart.

There was no ambiguity.

No misinterpretation.

No “maybe we walked in at the wrong moment.”

Noah’s pants were undone.

My shirt was open.

He was pinned to the wall with my knee between his thighs and my mouth on his neck.

We were caught.

Not holding hands.

Not talking too close.

Caught.

And the look on William’s face said one thing with chilling clarity:

It’s over.