Chapter 82 KNOX

Chapter 82 KNOX
Coach Reyes blew the whistle.
Again. For what had to be the two-hundredth fucking time.

Coach Reyes—no relation, thankfully. Just a ridiculously common last name and a cosmic joke at my expense.

Coach, however, preferred his version of reality. Whenever it suited him, he'd remind everyone that we shared a last name, puff out his chest, and announce he was “keeping the name respectable” before running me into the ground.

Apparently nepotism worked differently when the nepotism meant extra sprints.
I'd stopped correcting him last year.
Not because I believed the bullshit.

Because every time I said, 'We're not related,' he somehow found another reason to make me run.

At this point, I was less concerned with proving biology and more concerned with keeping my lungs inside my body.

“Reyes! Where’s your head? On the moon?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Hunter called from behind me. “Word is he left it in the parking lot next to his dignity. They’re both filing missing persons reports.”

A few guys laughed. I flipped him off without breaking stride.
Coach turned his head slowly. “Hunter.”

Hunter straightened like he’d been electrocuted. “Sir?”

“Since you’re so invested in Reyes’ head, you can run an extra drill.”

Hunter’s face collapsed. “Respectfully, Coach, I’d like to retract my statement and everything I’ve ever said in this practice—and possibly in my life, going back to birth.”

“Too late.”

“Congratulations,” Slate said. “You played yourself. Your mouth’s been writing checks your legs can’t cash since last year. Figured today’d be the day it finally bounced.”

“Shut the fuck up, Slate.”

“Back to the line. All of you!” Coach shouted.

A collective groan rolled across the field.
Hunter bent over, hands braced on his knees, dragging in air like his lungs had personally filed for resignation.

“I’m starting to think he hates us.”

“Starting?” Slate wiped the sweat from his forehead, barely winded compared to the rest of us. “Where the hell have you been? He’s hated us since day one. Especially you.”

Hunter stared at him. “Why me?”

“Because you keep talking.”

“I’m providing morale.”

“You’re providing reasons for him to make us run.”

Hunter straightened slowly. “So what you’re saying is, I’m basically the backbone of this team.”

“No,” Slate said flatly. “I’m saying you’re the reason our legs hurt.”

“Move your fucking asses! My grandma runs faster than you, and she’s ninety-fucking-three!”

I took off. Practice had started brutal and gotten worse from there. Sprints. Cutting drills. Tackling. Route changes. More sprints, because apparently Coach considered oxygen a privilege we hadn’t yet earned and intended to make us fight for every molecule of it.

My legs were burning. My lungs were on fire. And Hunter had reached the specific stage of exhaustion where his personality became a full-blown public health hazard.

"Did everyone forget how to run?" Coach barked. "It's one foot, then the other foot! I've seen toddlers with better technique!"

"In our defense, Coach, most toddlers aren't doing it after four hundred sprints and zero breakfast

Hunter wheezed, somehow still capable of being a pain in the ass between breaths.  "Then maybe we should let the toddlers take our place, Coach. Genuinely. I'll hand in my jersey right now."

"What was that?" Coach turned, staring him down.

"Nothing, Coach." Hunter straightened up fast. 

"I'm just saying, we're emotionally attached to what little oxygen we've got left. It's been a beautiful relationship. Years in the making. We're not ready to let go."

“Hunter!”

“Running, Coach! Fucking running!”

We took off again. I should’ve been locked in. Usually I was.

Football was the one place where everything else disappeared. No bullshit. No distractions. Just the play, the count, the movement, the next fucking step.

Except today, my brain had apparently submitted its resignation letter.
Every time I reset for another rep, she was there.

Juniper climbing out of my car, chin lifted like she was preparing to face a firing squad instead of a college campus.
The way she'd kept tugging at the hem of that dress, muttering under her breath like the thing had personally declared war on her. The stillness that had come over her when my arm wrapped around her waist, like she'd forgotten how to move. That fucking kiss, and the way she'd made that small sound against my mouth like she hadn't meant to.

Apparently my brain had decided that was now its favourite memory and was running it on loop whether I wanted it to or not.

I shook my head and forced my attention back to the field. Focus. The route. The play. Anything but her.

I got back in position. The whistle went. I took off — three steps, four — and my head was somewhere else entirely again.

That dress. Jesus fucking Christ.
I needed to get through practice without thinking about Juniper Hayes.

“Reyes!”

I snapped back just in time to take the ball to the chest instead of catching it, which was somehow worse than dropping it.

Coach’s whistle shrieked. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Bullshit.”

Coach pointed at the end zone, done with all of us. “Ten more.”

The whole team groaned like one collectively wounded animal.
We reset. I took off—three steps, four, cut left—and missed the marker by half a step.

Coach didn’t yell. Somehow that was worse. He just looked at me, unimpressed, like I’d personally let him down as a man, a player, and possibly a son.

“You want to try that again?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Because you’re going to. Repeatedly. Until your legs remember how football works.”

Hunter jogged past me on the way "Get back in position" entirely too chipper for someone who’d been dying of oxygen debt sixty seconds earlier. “Bro. You’re distracted.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. That’s why you just got tackled by a football.”

Slate fell in beside him, deadpan as ever. “He’s been ‘fine’ for approximately two hours now. Chronic condition. I give it a week before he starts writing her name in a notebook with little hearts.”

“Yeah, that tracks,” Hunter said, nodding sagely. “That’s usually the incubation period before Reyes catches feelings. Very predictable disease. Textbook symptoms. There should be a vaccine, honestly, for the good of college football.”

“Fuck off, both of you.”

Coach’s whistle cut through us like a blade. “Less talking! More running!”

By the time he finally called a water break, the entire team collapsed like someone had cut all our strings at once.

Hunter dropped face-first onto the grass.
“I’m pretty sure Coach’s wife made him sleep on the couch last night, and now he’s taking it out on the entire roster like we’re personally responsible for his marital problems.”

Slate took a long drink, completely unfazed. “Yeah. I’m half-convinced he got shut down last night for sex—and decided we're all paying for it. There's no other explanation for this level of targeted violence. This isn't coaching. This is revenge."

I grabbed my bottle and dumped half of it over my head, letting the cold shock clear something out of my skull that running clearly hadn’t managed to.

“Reyes.”

I looked up. “Yeah, Coach?”

“You’ve missed three cuts today.”

“I know.”

“You’ve never missed three cuts in one practice. Not once. Not last year, not hungover, not with a sprained ankle.”

I shrugged, which was apparently the wrong answer, because his eyes narrowed.

“Something distracting you?”

“No.”

Hunter made a noise like he was choking on his own tongue. I turned and stared at him until he suddenly found his shoelaces fascinating—the most interesting shoelaces in human history, apparently.

Coach held my gaze a second longer, clearly not buying it, clearly deciding it wasn’t worth the fight right now. “Whatever it is, leave it off my field.”

He walked off. Hunter waited exactly three seconds after he was out of earshot.

“So.”

“No.”

“I didn’t say anything yet.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to ask,” Hunter said, far too fucking pleased with himself, “does Juniper know you’ve been thinking about her every thirty seconds? Because at this point, bro, that’s not a crush. That’s a software update you can’t uninstall.”

Slate took a drink, barely hiding his smirk. “Chronic Juniper-itis. Advanced stage.”

Hunter nodded gravely. “Symptoms include staring into space, forgetting basic football mechanics, randomly smiling at your phone, and getting violently offended when someone mentions her legs.”

“I don’t do any of that.”

Slate lowered the bottle. “You missed three cuts because you were thinking about her.”

“I was distracted.”

“By Juniper.”

“No.”

Hunter grinned. “Denial. Classic symptom.”

Slate nodded. “He’s fucked.”

“I’m sitting right here.”

“We know,” Hunter said. “That’s the funniest part.”

“You’re both insufferable.”

“She’s got you bad,” Hunter said, grinning like Christmas had come early.

“She doesn’t.”

“Sure.”

“Denial’s a good look on you, though,” Slate offered. “Very rugged. Very tragic hero. Very ‘staring out a rain-streaked window’ energy.”

I ignored them. Mostly because they were right, which annoyed me more than anything either of them had actually said out loud.

Somehow she kept slipping into the cracks. That was the part that actually bothered me.

Juniper was beautiful— I’d had women all over me for years. Women who’d rearrange their whole week for one night. One fuck. One chance to be the girl on my arm. None of them had ever gotten past the surface.

Juniper could barely go five minutes without insulting me. She argued with me on principle. Rolled her eyes like it was a competitive sport she was training for the Olympics in. Called me arrogant at least twice a conversation, usually accurately.

And somehow that stubborn little menace had taken up more real estate in my head than anyone had managed in years.

Coach blew the whistle. “Back on the line!”

Hunter groaned into the grass. “I was happier when I couldn’t feel my legs. That was a good phase. I miss it already.”

“You’ll feel them again eventually,” Slate said, hauling him up by the collar. “Unfortunately for you.”

We reset. By the time Coach finally called it, every muscle in my body was filing a formal grievance with whatever department handled that sort of thing.

And still—still—somewhere under the exhaustion and the sweat and the burning in my lungs, the memory of that kiss refused to leave me alone.