Chapter 39: Only You

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For one breath, the room roared.

Players shouted like someone had handed them a winning lottery ticket. Flea pulled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and threw it into the air.

Then Thomas finished the sentence.

"But we are in the same half of the bracket as Santa Ana. If things go as expected, we see the defending champions in round two."

Every smile vanished.

Flea froze. His falling shirt landed over his head, and he did not move.

"Shit," Ford muttered.

Monte looked down and rubbed one shoe against the floor.

"So where is your family going after the season? Samoa or Madagascar?"

"Did anyone see The Lion King yet?"

"We should go out tonight. I know a place in Santa Monica."

The team recovered its noise quickly, but the subject changed. No one wanted to talk football.

It was not laziness.

Everyone in the room understood the bracket.

CIF ended in round two.

"At least we match our best finish in a decade," Thomas said, and even his temper had gone quiet. "That is not nothing. If the season ends there, enjoy the dead period. Relax, but do not get fat. When I call offseason workouts, everyone reports."

Katherine looked around the weight room.

Her expression cooled.

"If that is how you feel, you should withdraw now. Why waste everyone’s time?"

The room turned toward her.

"Cowards," she said. "You like easy opponents and fold when the hard one appears. That is embarrassing."

She had captained the volleyball team. Scolding athletes did not frighten her. Today she was not one of them, which made her even less gentle.

"You can doubt yourselves if you want," Katherine continued. "But do not forget you have Nolan. Every one of you has seen what he can do. That still is not enough?"

She pointed at him.

If anyone in the world trusted Nolan without reservation, Katherine was near the front of the line.

The players looked at one another. No one had an answer.

Someone in the crowd suddenly remembered the setup.

"Wait. Nolan still has to bench against Boar."

"Oh, that?" Thomas’s mood improved at once. "I have twenty on Boar."

The coach joining the betting energy brought the room back to life. The despair turned into curiosity, then noise.

Nolan looked at Boar, who resembled a wall with a neck, and nodded.

He lay on the bench Katherine had used. Boar took the other station.

Players scrambled to change plates. The set had just arrived that morning, shiny enough to look fake.

Most of the room backed Boar. Nolan was the unquestioned quarterback if the contest was throwing. Pure strength belonged to the big men.

Ford started the clock.

Nolan used Katherine’s strategy.

Steady. Clean. No panic.

Two hundred twenty-five pounds felt heavier than he expected, but not outside reach. Holding Katherine during squats was not the same as pressing iron. Still, weeks of real training had given him more strength and endurance than he had started with.

When his elbows locked out, the muscles in his arms stood in clean lines.

Something about the bar felt odd.

Not wrong enough to stop.

Odd.

"Lift it, Boar. Come on."

Most of the crowd pressed around Boar’s bench, shouting him through each rep.

Nolan kept moving at his own pace.

Three minutes passed. His count began closing the gap.

Katherine clasped her hands, worried despite herself.

Thomas watched Nolan’s form and slowly stopped smiling.

Nolan was already beyond expectation. At the NFL Combine, the bench was the same exercise for everyone, but positions were not judged the same. Quarterbacks were not supposed to be built like linemen.

Adam’s best clean mark had been twenty at standard weight.

Nolan had already passed it.

"What is Boar doing?"

"Push."

The shouting made Boar rush. On the way down, his hand slipped. The heavy bar dropped crooked, and he only avoided disaster because two teammates reacted fast and helped catch it.

"Time," Ford called. "Both stop."

He checked the counts.

"Unbelievable. Boar made thirty."

The room cheered.

Ford shook his head.

"Nolan came up two short. Twenty-eight."

Several players swore under their breath.

Twenty-eight was ridiculous. Plenty of them could not do that. Nolan was a quarterback, not a guard. For his position, his body was already arrogant.

And he was still new to serious training.

"Professional-level strength for a quarterback," Thomas said.

He had liked Nolan for talent and fight. Now the boy was giving him something else: endurance, explosiveness, and physical upside without an obvious hole.

A real all-around weapon.

If he stayed disciplined, he would reach the professional field.

Thomas glanced toward Katherine. If Nolan’s girlfriend had been someone else, he might worry. Katherine would keep him fed, focused, and mostly alive.

Nolan racked the bar and exhaled hard.

"You are ridiculous," Katherine said, coming over to wipe his sweat.

The room hooted.

Among athletes, Katherine herself was almost the perfect woman. The other campus celebrities drew attention, but Katherine understood training, competition, and the work behind bodies like theirs.

"Ford, you worked hard too," Flea called. "Come let big sister hug you."

Ford lifted a foot as if to kick him.

Nolan frowned at the bar.

"Something is wrong with my plates."

"I loaded them myself," Monte said. "No way."

"Losing to Boar is normal," Flea added. "Look at him."

Only Thomas walked over.

He checked the plates, then picked one up and tested its weight in his hands.

His expression changed.

"This plate is mislabeled."

The room quieted.

"It says fifty. It is seventy-five."

Silence swallowed the weight room.

The total was heavier than Boar’s bar, but that was not even the strangest part. One side had carried more than the other. An uneven bar was harder to control, harder to press, harder to keep from turning against the lifter.

Nolan had done twenty-eight clean reps anyway.

"Only you," Thomas said at last, clapping a hand on Nolan’s shoulder. "Only you, Nolan Callahan."

Nolan stood and looked around.

Adam had once told him that a quarterback had to be stronger than everyone else on the team, not always in muscle, but in the way that made people follow.

"Anyone else want to test me?" Nolan asked.

No one answered.

"You can doubt yourselves," Nolan said, "but you must trust the people beside you."

The mood shifted again.

No one knew whether the Normans could truly beat the Southern California powerhouse that had dominated the last decade.

But for the first time, more than one player wondered if Nolan might actually drag them there.

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