Running Home to You (The Running Series) by Suzanne Sweeney Read Free Book Online

the car and leads me into the building and through a series of corridors and hallways.  As we walk down the empty halls, I see huge posters behind glass frames displaying the history of the team.  There are pictures of the team over the years, photographs of quarterbacks and owners, and a few Super Bowl Game posters.  Evan stops beside one of the pictures and points to the image.  “Juliette, do you know who that is?” he asks.  It’s a recent picture, so I’m guessing it’s one of his teammates.
    “Is it Matt Ortiz, the starting quarterback?” I ask sheepishly.
    “Excellent,” Evan remarks.  “And what does the quarterback do?” he quizzes me.
    “He throws the ball to one of the receivers,” I reply confidently.  I’m not a complete idiot.
    “Good.  Can you name any?” he asks.
    “Seriously?  Carlo Rivera is a wide receiver.  Evan, he’s been to our house a handful of times.  How dumb do you think I am?” I ask him, crossing my arms over my chest and giving a stern snort, feeling more than slightly insulted.
    “I was just checking, baby.  Very good.  Come on, want to see the field?”  He takes me by the hand and we continue our long walk until we reach a huge set of giant red double doors.  Evan opens them, and we step inside. 
    I have to catch my breath as we walk out onto the field, staring first at the stadium before me, then at Evan in awe and reverence.  “Holy crap,” I mutter, barely audible. “How do you do it?” I ask, completely dumbstruck.
    “Do it?  Juliette, baby, you know exactly how I ‘do it’, but if you need a reminder, I can take you somewhere a little more private,” he replies, wrapping me up in his strong arms, making me lose all sense of time and space.
    Once I gather my wits I ask, “So where does your team sit?” 
    “Sit?  There’s not much sitting going on during the games, sweetheart.  But we do have new heated benches to help warm us up between plays when it starts to get really cold.”  Evan points over to the sidelines and I can see a few new age looking white benches lined up along the side of the field.
    Evan walks over to the fifty-yard line and calls to me, “Come here, baby.  Check out the view.”  He’s standing in the center of the field with his arms held out, beckoning for me to join him.  I happily trot out to him, where he gathers me up and wraps his arms around me.  Together, we spin around in circles like silly teenagers, gazing up at the empty seats all around us in every direction.
    “Wow, how many seats are there?” I ask him.
    “Well, including the club seats, it’s a little more than seventy thousand,” he states very matter-of-factly.
    I can barely speak, “That’s unbelievable.”
    “Nah, we’re not even in the top ten.  The largest NFL stadium is the new Metlife Stadium, which seats over eighty thousand.  You should see that field,” he tells me.
    I plop myself down right in the middle of the field, overwhelmed at the scale of it all.  I’m completely at a loss for words as my eyes dart around the stadium.  I imagine what it must be like when these seats are filled with screaming fans, most cheering, but some jeering and heckling, too.  How does anyone focus and perform with this kind of pressure? 
    "Do you get nervous when you go out there?  In front of all those people?" I ask him.
    Evan sits down beside me and pulls me onto his lap.  "No, not really.  I played high school championship games in front of a few thousand.  Then I played college football, which was a pretty big deal.  The stadium in Maryland has a capacity of over fifty thousand.  I got a little nervous the first few games, but you get used to it after a while.  If you want to see a big stadium, you should see the Rose Bowl Stadium.  That place can hold over ninety thousand people.  After that, playing here's no big deal."  He reaches over and strokes my face, moving my hair behind my ear and nibbling on my neck.
    "So,