Quarterback Sneak (Red Zone Rivals, #3)

by Kandi Steiner

To the ones who have been strangled by the dark hand of grief, who have found the strength to stand even with its heavy boot on your chest, to those who continue to live even when it feels impossible… this one’s for you.

Warm, endlessly deep brown, framed by thick lashes that swept across her cheeks with every blink. And haunted. Just like mine.

Because all my life, football had been my one and only focus. It was all I cared about. It was my reason for waking up in the morning, and the only thought that consumed me when I laid my head down at night. It was my lifeline, my muse, the center of my attention. But in one fatal moment, that focus shifted. Julep Lee was the coach’s daughter. She was completely off limits. And yet, I knew right then and there that I had to have her.

knew the dimples that framed his smile, the one that had popped on his left cheek the first time he laid eyes on me during spring training.

“Trust me — you and I are nothing alike.”

“Oh, I have a feeling you might be wrong about that, Julep Lee.”

“I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you since the moment you walked through that door tonight.”

“Stop trying to laugh me off,” he said, voice reverberating through my ribcage. “And look at me when I tell you how enamorating you are.” “That’s not a word.” “It is now,” he argued. “And it was made for you.”

“I like vanilla romance sometimes… a sweet friends-to-lovers, maybe a second-chance situation.” “And those don’t have sex in them?”

Giana snorted. “Like I’d waste my time on a book without spice.”

“I love your daughter, Coach Lee,” I said, though my eyes didn’t leave her. “I love her, and I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks about it. My heart used to belong to football, but now it belongs to her. And none of this,” I added, throwing my hands up. “None of it means a damn thing without her.”

“I will be here,” I said, tugging her hands to my chest again. “Every day. I’ll be right by your side reminding you that you matter, that you are needed, that there is a reason to have hope and a reason to live. I’ll be here reminding you that for me? You are that reason.”

I whipped around to find a dozen faces pressed against the window watching us. Giana was crying so hard you’d have thought it was her being proposed to.

“Marry me, Julep. Marry me, and I promise to take you to every yard sale we can find in every state we go to. Marry me, and I will grow a garden in your name. Marry me, and I promise to set up a chrome pole in the middle of every piece of property we own.” She laughed, though it was garbled with tears. “Marry me,” I repeated, swiping the fresh tears away. “And I will spend the rest of my life loving you. No matter how long that is. Every minute I am here on Earth is yours. And after that, too.”