[18+] ENEMIES TO LOVERS SPORTS ROMANCE
She can't stand the school's golden boy, but when fate keeps throwing them together, their rivalry starts to look a lot like chemistry-and suddenly they're not playing the game they thought they were.
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Tristan
I was a useless sack of shit.
Practice had been a bitch, the kind that left you tasting grass from every face-plant. My whole body felt like it had been run over by a ten-ton truck. Considering the way the defense had been lighting me up during full-speed scrimmage, it might as well have been true. My teammates weren't holding back—as they shouldn't—but I was running on fumes.
It had been like this for the whole fucking week.
I ripped off my helmet, spat out my mouthguard, and bent over, hands on my knees as I took several gulping breaths. Sweat poured down my face, stinging my eyes, and I stayed hunched over, trying to figure out how I'd gotten here. This wasn't supposed to happen to me.
I was the smooth-talking, quick-thinking, go-getter quarterback who could read a defense in less than a second and thread a ball between two safeties with my eyes closed. Now, I felt like none of that was true. My brain had taken a vacation without me. I couldn't concentrate, and I was making rookie mistakes. I was misreading rotations, and my footwork was garbage—I kept tripping over my own damn dropbacks. And I couldn't throw a decent spiral to save my life. It was like my hands had developed an allergy to pigskin. Every pass either died early or sailed five yards too high.
It was fucking embarrassing.
"Fuck," I groaned, raking my hand through my soaked hair and spitting out the phlegm building in my throat.
I straightened, interlocked my hands behind my head to open my lungs, and tried to focus on breathing. The last thing I needed was for the team to see how close I was to losing it. Because whatever the fuck this was, it needed to stop. Like, right now.
We had our last non-conference game on Saturday, and I couldn't afford to look like a noob. Scouts were already hovering, and reporters were showing up at every game already, shoving cameras in my face because I was the quarterback who was supposed to carry this team to a conference title. And with the NFL Draft coming up in a few months, every second I was on the field felt like it mattered more than the last.
"Hey, man," Tate, my co-captain, drawled as he jogged over, helmet tucked under his arm.
I let out a defeated sigh and dropped my hands to my sides as I turned to face him. He slapped my chest twice, right over the captain's C. A show of support—or sympathy—that only made me more aware of how much I was letting him down.
"We all have off days, Beckett. Beating ourselves up about it will only make it worse," he said.
"It's been like this all fucking week, Tate. I can't afford to pull this shit on Saturday."
"You won't. You couldn't possibly play any worse than you did today." He chuckled, shaking his head. "That certainly was something."
I managed a dry laugh. "Thanks for the vote of confidence, but don't jinx it. I might as well be playing peewee. Can't imagine what it'll be like this weekend."
