he second Saturday in December, the Cedar Creek Cougars squared off against Odessa for the state championship at Warren P. Bradshaw Stadium. Twenty-five thousand fans from around the state packed the seats, chanting and cheering and stomping their feet.

At the half, the score was tied at fourteen all, and Zach stood in the home team’s locker room with his arms crossed over his chest. His boys had played near-perfect ball. They’d played in sync, hitting and sticking and moving the ball down the field. They were doing everything he asked of them, and he feared it might not be enough. Odessa had come to play, and they were bigger and faster than the Cougars.

Joe stood in front of the boys going over defensive plays, and for once, he wasn’t ballistic. He went over the strategies and what the boys should do depending on how Odessa lined up on the offense.

Zach knew the pressures of the game, had lived it most of his life. The last time he’d felt pressure like this was when he’d played in the Super Bowl. When Joe finished, Zach stepped to the front of the team. He looked at them all sitting there, beat-up, bloodied, and grass-stained. He’d never been prouder.

“You boys have given me everything you have to give. You’ve left your blood and sweat out on that field. You haven’t held anything back, and the other coaches and I thank you.

“I’m not going to lie to you guys, you’re too smart and deserve the truth. Those Odessa boys are bigger and faster than we are. We knew that going in, but we’re hanging in there. Going toe-to-toe. Hit for hit, just like we talked about. Y’all should be proud of what you’ve accomplished so far today.

“But now every one of you is going to have to pull something extra from somewhere. Something that’s gonna make you play better than you have your whole lives. You’re going to have to seize every opportunity. Take every advantage. When you step onto the field, you go balls out. You stick every play and don’t give them anything. I know you can win this thing. They might be bigger and faster, but you’re smarter. It’s going to come down to who wants it more.”

He looked into the faces of his young warriors, their hair sticking up at odd angles or plastered to their heads.

“This is it, gentlemen. This is what we’ve been playin’ for all season. Some of you are going to go on to play college ball. Some will go on to different lives, but I guaran-goddamn-tee every last one of you will remember this night. You will either look back on it with glory or regret. The choice is yours. You play with your hearts and guts, and you’ll get the glory.”

He gathered the team around him. “So let’s hear it together: hearts, guts, glory.”

“Hearts, guts, glory!” they yelled, butting chests and helmets. Then they raised a battle cry and ran toward the field and the destiny that waited for them.

Zach lined up with the other coaches, and they followed the players out of the tunnel to the blare of horns and boom of drums as the Cedar Creek band played the school fight song.

During the third quarter, both teams played textbook ball, but in the last five minutes, Odessa’s size and speed finally gained them an advantage, and they scored on a thirty-eight-yard drive.

Zach stood on the sidelines, his heart in his stomach, and studied both teams’ offensive and defensive formations. He looked at how they lined up, and five minutes into the fourth quarter, he finally saw what he’d been looking for: a crack in the Odessa defense. Something he hadn’t seen in the hours of game tapes he’d watched. If the Cougars could take advantage of it, exploit it, they just might turn the game around. He called a time-out and walked out to meet his quarterback. He told him to start playing the left side. Then he turned toward the sidelines and something made him look up. Maybe it was the blast from an air horn or someone waving silver pompoms, but he looked up and saw her. She sat on the second deck, a few rows over from the fifty. Perhaps it was her wild blond hair that drew his gaze, or maybe it was her smile. Whatever it was, it had always been that way. Wherever she was in a crowd, his attention had always been drawn to Adele.

He turned back toward the game, pulled the brim of his hat lower, and smiled. She’d come. He guessed he’d better win this thing.

G rowing up in Texas, Adele knew the basics of football. There are four quarters and each team tries to score a touchdown when it got the ball. Watching Zach, she had a feeling that the game was a lot more complicated than that. At first glance, he appeared just to be standing there, but the more she watched him, the more she noticed his hands move. He’d point to the left or the right, make some sort of signal with his fingers, or send one of the players out to the huddle. He talked into his headset and raised a clenched fist into the air when the Cougars made a good play. He was like a general directing his troops, and her heart warmed a little as she watched him. He turned and glanced up at her, and her stomach got light and fuzzy and took a tumble.

She pulled the collar of her wool peacoat up around her cheeks and looked over at Kendra, sitting two rows down with Tiffany and some other girls. Adele was really glad Kendra had made good friends since she’d moved to Cedar Creek. Otherwise, the upheaval in her life would have been so much harder on the thirteen-year-old.

The crowd around Adele cheered, and she looked toward the field. One of the Cougar players intercepted the ball on the Odessa fifteen. With four minutes left on the clock, the Cougars got the ball and steadily moved it down the field. If Adele had been a nail biter, she would have chewed off her fingers as they moved it yard by painstaking yard. With less than thirty seconds to go, tension buzzed the air and grabbed the back of her neck as the Cougars’ quarterback dropped back, looked to his right, then threw the ball to the left. The ball sailed through the air into the hands of a receiver, who ran the ball into the end zone from the ten-yard line. The crowd went wild, jumping to their feet and screaming as six points were put up on the scoreboard. Odessa still led by a point with five seconds left in the game.

“It’s goin’ into overtime,” said the man next to her. He’d painted his face green and black and wore a Cougars jersey.

Overtime? Adele didn’t think she could take the excitement of overtime. She wondered how Zach could handle it. He called a time-out, and she looked down at him in his dark green Cougars jacket, surrounded by his players, pointing as they nodded their helmets. Then he moved back to the sidelines and put his hands on his hips. As he watched his team line up, he pulled at the brim of his hat as if he couldn’t find the right spot on his head.

“They’re going for the two points,” the guy beside her said, his voice serious as a heart attack. “I hope like hell they don’t screw the pooch on this one.”

Adele’s attention returned to the line of scrimmage as the ball was snapped. The quarterback took the snap, fell back and brought the ball behind his head for a pass to the left. The defense anticipated the pass and crowded the end zone, leaving a gaping hole on the right for the Cedar Creek running back to sprint through. By the time Odessa saw the ball hadn’t been thrown but handed off, it was carried into the end zone.

“They ran the Statue of Liberty,” the guy beside her yelled, as half the crowd screamed, and the other half groaned. Two more points flashed up on the Cougars side as the time clock read double zero. Game over.

“We won?”

The guy nodded and wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

“H–h-how?” she managed, as he jumped up and down while she was trying to avoid all that paint on his face. How had the quarterback handed the ball off when everyone thought he’d passed it? Was that legal?

“That was goddamn brilliant.” Then he let out a holler that made Adele’s ears ring. He sat her back down on her heels, then leapt over a few rows and moved toward the field. Adele couldn’t see Zach at first, but then she spotted him out on the field, in the center of his team. The boys were all jumping on top of each other and flashing the hook ’em horns sign. Two of the players ran onto the field with a big ice chest and dumped its contents on top of Zach’s head. He turned as ice cubes bounced off his shoulders and the top of his hat. He laughed and shook his head.

Kendra made her way to Adele and together they sat for the award ceremony. Adele watched the Cougars hoist their big gold trophy and pass it around. They named the most valuable players, and Zach gave a little speech about the team. He was interviewed by news organizations from as far away as Austin and Dallas, and as the crowd moved from the stands, Zach and the players headed into the tunnel.

“You ready?” she asked Kendra as she pulled out one of Sherilyn’s lists from her coat pocket. She had to get two Christmas trees. One for the hospital and one for the condo, as well as ornaments and gifts. “We’ve got a lot to do before Christmas. We have to decorate the condo and your mom’s room,” she said, and looked up, catching one last glimpse of Zach and the lucky hat she’d rescued from a couple of cheerleaders that day last month inside the girls’ bathroom.

T iffany stood at the back of the crowd and waited for her daddy to make his way toward her. She could see his head above everyone around him as he shook hands with the people who waited for the coaches and players at the gates to the stadium. She could see his ball cap and his great big smile. Her heart got big as a balloon when she saw him. She loved him and was so proud that she was his daughter. Sometimes she got scared when she thought about something happening to him like it had Momma. When she thought about losing her daddy, her stomach hurt, and her chest got tight.

A man in a big cowboy hat shook her daddy’s hand, then wrapped his arms around him in a big hug. The man looked like he was crying.

Tiffany liked football, but gee, it wasn’t like dance-team competition. Dance team was tough.

She continued to wait for him as the crowd filed past, shaking his hand and patting him on the back. She looked at her pink wristwatch. It had been about forty minutes. Sheesh, that was a really long time to wait, and the crowd didn’t seem to be thinning. Tiffany didn’t mind sharing her daddy sometimes, but this was getting ridiculous. She was supposed to have gotten a ride from Becky Lee and her mom, Cindy Ann, but she’d rather wait and ride home with her dad.

Finally, after a few more minutes he looked over in her direction. He smiled and lifted a hand to wave. She waved back, and his smile got bigger. Something in his eyes made her slowly lower her hand and turn at the waist to look behind her. Her gaze landed on Adele and Kendra standing a few feet away. She turned back, and her dad motioned for her to join him. She picked up the green-and-black stadium chair by her left foot and weaved her way through the crowd. Just before she got to him, he reached out his hand, but he didn’t reach for her. A few feet from Tiffany’s face, her daddy grasped Adele’s hand and he pulled her toward him.

“Excuse me,” he said to someone who was chatting at him. He put one hand on Adele’s waist and one on the side of her face, and right there in front of the whole town, he kissed her.

Tiffany’s heart pinched, and fear stole her breath. “Daddy,” she gasped, but he didn’t hear her. He was too busy sucking face with Adele.