Summerville Sports

They say the red zone is the hardest place to score. But for me, those last twenty yards were my sweet spot. They didn't call me Lukas "Last Minute Lucy" Callihan for nothing. I was at the top of my game...until life sacked me harder than any linebacker ever could. Losing my mom was devastating and left me as the sole person responsible for my little sister. Taking care of Ella and juggling my career was like playing the hardest game of my life. My only saving grace was Scarlett Knox, Ella's sexy, red-headed, no-nonsense teacher. She loved Ella. She hated me. She thought I sucked at this parenting thing, and she wasn't wrong. But whenever she was around I got the same earth-shattering, heart-stopping feeling I did when I was only twenty yards from the goal line. She made me feel like I was back in the red zone, a place I'd never fumbled. Until now. Contains mature themes.

There was something about that first score, and not just on the football field. I loved all of life's firsts, which was why I'd been saving mine for one girl, my older sister's best friend-Hazel Jones. She was tough and sarcastic with walls around her heart as tall as a football stadium, but I knew she was the one for me. Desperate times called for desperate measures and I'd have done anything to make her mine. Like create a fake online persona. Lie about my age. Pretend I wasn't some naïve virgin. And catfish the hell out of the love of my life. Contains mature themes.

The Final Play isn't always the end. Sometimes, it's the beginning of something far more beautiful. As a professional linebacker, I lived and breathed football. The only thing I loved as much as the game was my twin brother, Max, who kept me almost as busy cleaning up his messes. The most recent of which landed him behind bars. So, it shouldn't have surprised me when a beautiful woman showed up on my doorstep, claiming to be pregnant with Max's baby. Glory was unexpected, infuriating, and flat-out crazy most of the time. But no matter how hard I tried to deny it, that tiny spitfire slammed into my boring life with the strength of a Category 5 hurricane, blowing through my defenses until she'd carved her name in my heart-permanently. I feared we would never work. She was a single mom, my brother's ex, and one more chance for me to fail yet another person I loved. But if football was my church, then Glory was my heaven. Contains mature themes.