“Jesus Christ.”
The clipboard hit the ground so hard it cracked. Plastic splinters sprayed across the chalk-stained field as Coach Harrow’s voice tore through the air like a shotgun. A flock of birds scattered from the bleachers.
“Run it again!” he barked. “What the hell was that?! Do you call that a slant? That’s not a slant—that’s a goddamn suggestion!”
The players were drenched in sweat and shame. Shoulders sagged. Mouthguards hung loose. No one dared answer.
Tryouts for the NFL Combine were in three months. That wasn’t just a deadline—it was judgment day.
And Coach Harrow’s team, the Ironwood Hounds, was still playing like they’d learned the game from YouTube tutorials and TikTok breakdowns. It didn’t matter that they’d only formed two years ago. The media was watching. The scouts were sniffing around. Their popularity had exploded thanks to two things: an outrageously hot offense line that looked ripped from a cologne ad, and you—a woman.
The first woman to ever make it onto a semi-pro men’s team.
Coach Harrow hated that. Not in a quiet, reluctant kind of way. No. He was loud about it. Old-school as hell, the kind of man who still called helmets “brain buckets” and treated concussions like spiritual awakenings. Football was sacred to him. Masculine. Violent. And women, in his eyes, didn’t belong between the pylons.
But you did. Because she made herself belong.
He hadn’t even wanted to train her.
She remembered their first meeting—three years ago. Rain coming down sideways in heavy sheets. She’d shown up at Ironwood’s rusted practice facility wearing cleats two sizes too big and gripping a helmet like it was a grenade.
“You lost?” he’d asked, eyes narrowing beneath his ballcap.
“No,” she said. “I’m here to learn.”
“Learn what?”
“Football.”
He had laughed—wheezed—until he saw the check her parents wrote.
He took her on. Resentfully.
Said he’d break her by spring.
But she never broke. She bled, she limped, she vomited Gatorade, but she never left.
Coach Harrow started giving her the impossible drills. Route trees with a blindfold. Oklahoma drills against three linemen. Suicide sprints in ninety-degree heat. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t cry. If anything, she got faster. Sharper. Meaner.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped treating her like a girl. Started treating her like a threat.
The practice field was an open grave of bruised egos and chewed-up cleats. They’d been out since 3 AM, running drills until the sun came up and their shadows looked like corpses. It was 2 PM now. Twenty-three hours of football, without mercy.
“Alright,” Harrow finally grunted. “Pack it in. Get the hell out of my face.”
The guys scattered like roaches. You headed for the locker room, dragging her bag behind her, arms like lead. Every inch of her ached. Her ribs throbbed from a bad hit during scrimmage. She peeled off her jersey with shaking fingers.
She was halfway through unlacing her cleats when she heard his boots.
“I said guys pack up and leave.” His voice echoed. “Are you a guy?”
She didn’t look up. “No, sir.”
“Then why the fuck are you packing?” He stepped closer, breath sharp with coffee and nicotine. “You’ve got more work to do. Women work twice as hard to earn half the damn respect, and this ain’t a charity league. You think I give you the same reps as them because I believe in equality?”
He scoffed. “Hell no. I give you extra because I can’t afford for you to look average. You look average, this whole team becomes a fucking joke.”
The words hit harder than the hits.
You didn’t argue. You stood, muscles trembling, and changed into your compression gear. Again. Socks damp with yesterday’s sweat. Blisters screaming.
Coach Harrow watched from the weight room door as you stepped onto the treadmill.
“Up the speed,” he said. A pause. He liked pauses. Pauses were psychological warfare.
“Sixty miles per hour. Now.”