Page 13 of Full Coverage (Boys of Fall)

“You two,” Jackson said, pointing at Nolan. “Be good.”

Nolan sighed. Yeah. He had a feeling he was going to be good for the rest of the night. And alone. And horny.

* * *

“’Night, Nolan,” Randi said, slipping around him. “I’ll see you.”

He reached out and snagged her wrist before she could escape. She groaned and turned to face him.

She just kept making an ass out of herself with him. She really wanted it to stop. Now. And the only way that seemed possible was if she just stayed away.

“I still have a question for you.”

“But see, asking and answering questions will require talking. And we’re not very good at that.”

Okay,shewasn’t very good at that. She was the one who sounded like an idiot. Why had she said that about the newspaper office? Just because it had occurred to her as kind of fun and naughty, didn’t mean it wasn’t totally stupid.

He smiled. “Maybe we just need more practice.”

“More practice than the twenty-some years we’ve had?”

“It’s not like we’ve had a lot of in-depth conversations in those twenty years,” he reminded her.

She supposed that was true. She didn’t remember starting to act crazy around him until about their junior year of high school. She’d always known him. She’d always liked him, for that matter. But either they hadn’t had one-on-one conversations before their junior year or she hadn’t been self-conscious about them until then, for whatever reason.

Randi remembered the first time she’d shoved her foot in her mouth. They’d been at a party at Carter’s parents’ house, their junior year, football season. They’d ended up by the stereo together, alone. They’d said awkward hi’s and then she’d said something about the football game. That topic lasted about three seconds. Nolan covered the games for the paper but she knew he didn’t reallycare. Not like she did. She’d loved football her entire life and could go on and on about it. With anyone else in the room, that would have been fine, great even. A lot of the guys thought her love and knowledge of the game was sexy. But she knew Nolan didn’t want to talk about the game. So she’d clenched her teeth together and told herself to just shut up. To fill the stupid silence, he had said something about geometry. Geometry was a horrible class. She hated it and it was tough for her. She had been barely pulling her C at that point. But she didn’t want Nolan to know that she wasn’t very smart. So she’d tried to distract him. Or something. She still wasn’t surewhyshe’d asked if he wanted to see her tattoo. But it had worked to stop the conversation train that was barreling toward a massive wreck.

“I think I’d rather kiss you than talk to you,” she said honestly. “No offense.”

He gave a rough laugh. “I don’t think I’m offended. Though I’m not sure.”

She felt a little smile quirk. “Are you sure you don’t just want to come over to my house?”

He looked at her for a long moment, studying her face, searching her eyes—and suddenly Randi knew exactly why she was so awkward around him, scrambling to cover her lack of knowledge about anything outside of Quinn, Texas.

He saw her.

When he looked at her, it wasn’t the way the other guys did. Men looked at her—always had—and saw her boobs and butt and mouth and hair and whatever else it was that guys liked. She’d been told those specific things were “sexy as hell” and made her “completely fuckable” several times in her life.

But Nolan didn’t see those things. Or notonlythose things. He looked beyond all of that. And that freaked her out. Because she wasn’t sure how much else was really there. She was a hell of a mechanic. She was kind, generous, fun, a good friend and daughter and sister. She was proud of all of that and she was content with her life in Quinn. But for some reason, she felt as if being content with small-town life, the same faces and places every day, somehow made her less in some people’s eyes. Like Nolan’s.

It was no secret that he’d been eager to leave Quinn and that he loved life in San Antonio. Sure, he came back to visit and seemed happy to see everyone and hang out for a few days here and there. But his job for the newspaper required travel all over the country, and since he’d written that first book, he was going to New York every so often. He’d outgrown Quinn—while she’d barely grown at all.

That was how it felt, anyway.

“No, I don’t think I’m coming over tonight,” Nolan finally said, letting go of her wrist. “But Iamgoing to ask my question.”

Oh, boy. “Fine. What?”

“Will you help me with my book?”

“Your book?” she repeated. “The one you’re writing about Coach?”

“Yes.”

“You want to interview me or something?” She loved Coach. She had some great stories.

“Yes,” he said. “But more. I need a football expert to be sure I’m getting game details and terminology right.”

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