I don’t know if Riley or Jack sleep at all. I can’t. I keep waking Ellie for sex because I’ve got so much nervous energy. Around dawn, she kicks me out.

“Go run. I cannot have your dick inside me one more time.”

“I could lick you,” I say hopefully.

She slams a pillow over her head. “Seriously, I think another orgasm would feel painful.”

Reluctantly, I leave her and go run. I’m not even tired after ten miles, so I go to the weight room. I’m not the only one there. Matty’s doing deadlifts. I go over to spot him.

“The wait is fucking excruciating.”

“I know it.”

Grimly, he gestures for me to put another plate on the bar. “I’m hoping to lift myself into a stupor. Don’t stop me until the news comes out.”

I go to the bench press and hope I can do the same. After a couple of hours, the strength coach makes us leave. Matty and I go back to the house and play Madden with the boys. If I go home to Ellie, I’m afraid I’ll attack her, and then I’ll be divorced before the playoffs start.

Around supper time, the phone rings again.

“You gonna answer it?” Matty demands.

Part of me doesn’t want to. As long as I don't know there's still hope. But then I give myself a head slap and pick up my phone.

“I sent you a text. Read it,” Coach says and hangs up.

I pull up the messages. It’s a message from the BCS committee. I scan it. Then read it again. Then read it for a third time. I get up, walk into the kitchen, and put my phone in the far corner. Everyone goes silent. Matty’s hand freezes halfway between the Dorito bag and his mouth.

“You have to stop eating that shit food, Matty boy, because the Western State Warriors are fucking fourth seed.”

His hand opens and chips spill onto the floor. I couldn’t care less.

“You're shitting me?”

“No.”

“Fuck, yes!” He punches the air. Someone else flips the coffee table over. In less than five minutes, chips, beer, soda, and furniture are all strewn about the apartment as the guys hug, back slap, and throw shit around in unrestrained rapture. My smile stretches wide as a football field.

We are in.

38 Ellie

Post Game: Warriors 13-1

At the knock on the door, I smooth back my hair back and straighten Knox’s home jersey. The Warriors were the away team at tonight’s playoff game. They had easily won their conference title and with the win tonight stood only one game away from the National Championship Title. I check the peephole and a good-looking face—minus the close-set eyes and slightly crooked jaw—grins at me.

“Really?” I drawl as I swing the door open. “You think wearing his tie will confuse me.”

Ty self-consciously adjusts said tie. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Fine.” I leave the door open and walk back to the television, where the commentators talk about Western State’s national championship opponent. Ty doesn’t come over and sit with me on the sofa.

He closes the door and then stands by it, staring at me.

“You’re making me uncomfortable, Ty.” I make a face at him. “Do I have eye liner on my nose or something?”

“You really can tell us apart, can’t you.”

It’s not so much a question as a strange lament. He sounds almost mournful that I can see through his little games and tricks.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“It’s obvious.” I don’t tell him he’s not as attractive as his brother because these boys have big, but tender egos.

“I came too early, didn’t I? None of the team came back, so you knew it was me.”

If that makes you feel better. Actually, no, I’m not letting him off the hook. “Jack came by twenty minutes ago.” I point to the clock. “I figured Knox got cornered in the lobby by some enthusiastic booster.”

Ty gets up and begins to pace. “Is it the way I talk? My time in the South has given me an accent, that it?”

“I think the time in the southern sun has baked your brain silly,” I say. “Why does it matter? Isn’t it a good thing?”

“Not for me.” He frowns.

From the stories Knox has shared about the times they’ve pranked people, from their parents and teachers to girlfriends and coaches, I feel almost relieved I can tell them apart.

It’d be incredibly stressful figuring out who is who. Ty should feel grateful I’m not asking one of them to get a facial tattoo so it’s easier for me to distinguish between the two of them.

“What’s the deal with your names?” I ask, since Ty can’t seem to wrap his head around the fact the two of them look completely different to me.

“What has Knox said?”

“Nothing. Although I’ve never asked. His is somewhat different. Yours is very unusual.”

A dull flush spreads across his cheekbones. “Since you’re part of the family, I’ll tell you, but only if you swear on Knox’s Achilles’s tendon you won’t tell another soul.”

“That’s your vow? On your brother’s Achilles’s tendon?” I roll my eyes. These two…it’s a wonder their beautiful mother isn’t completely gray by now.

“Do you swear it?” Ty presses.

I hold up my hand, palm out. “I, Eliot Anne Campbell, do solemnly swear never to reveal the origins of your names, even on threat of death, or the Achilles’s tendon of my beloved will be desecrated.”

Ty nods in approval. “Nice vow, but you’re Eliot Anne Masters now.” Whoops. That’s still so new I forgot. He threads his fingers together and then stretches his arms fully in front of him, pushing his palms outward, cracking about five knuckles in the process. “So my mom loves romances, specifically Scottish highlander historical ones. I may have even glimpsed a scene with my father wearing a kilt I didn’t know he owned and my mother—” He shudders. “Let’s not speak of it. I’m still traumatized.”

I press my lips together to keep from busting out a laugh at Ty’s wide-eyed horror. “You’re named after authors? Places?”

He mumbles something into his hand.

“What was that? Shmeroes?” Shmeroes? Is that even a word?

“Heroes,” he says. “Heroes. We’re named after brawny fake highlanders that my mom read about before she met my father. Or after. Shit if I know.”

I try not to laugh, but it’s impossible. I fold over and end up falling off the sofa onto the floor, holding my stomach and roaring with glee. I can imagine the locker room talk if that choice tidbit got out.

“I wish you would have put that in your SI profile,” I gasp out. Ty throws a pillow at my head.

I’m only partially composed when another sharp rap against the door rings out. I open it before looking through the peephole, figuring it’s Jack or Knox’s parents.

Instead, it’s Knox wearing his blue wool suit and white shirt with a red and white tie draped around his neck, looking mouthwateringly beautiful.

“Why are you wearing your brother’s tie?”

Knox gives me a slightly abashed look. “It was Ty’s idea.” He holds up his phone as if to show me texting proof Ty initiated this. “He said it’d make me feel good.”

Exasperated, I place my hands on my hips. “And does it?”

He smiles and looks past me into the room where Ty stands. “Yeah, sorry. It really does.”

I throw up my hands and stalk back into the room. I don’t get far before Knox gathers me against him to bury his face in my neck. “God, I’m glad to see you. I thought you weren’t coming.”

“Your parents convinced me. Called it their late Christmas present to both of us.” The ban remains in existence, so I can’t go to the game. But I can stay in a hotel in the same city as the playoff game and if it just so happens to be the same one where the Western State football players are staying? Well, oops.

“Merry Christmas to me,” he says in a low, throaty voice and turns me around.