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By the fifth tackle, Jamie was starting to lag, testing his weight gingerly before he took off running again. Ted hesitated, hand going up to his whistle — he’d been coaching long enough to know sometimes you needed to let the fellas sort it out among themselves, but Jamie wasn’t exactly known for having a long fuse and with each swipe (verbal or physical) he could practically see that clock ticking down to an explosion.

“Someone’s going to get hurt,” Beard said quietly.

“Maybe,” Ted agreed, watching Jamie pick himself back up again. He nicked the ball away from Dani, went for the goal. “But I figure we owe it to him to give him the chance to prove us wrong.”

“I meant physically.”

The ball sailed into the net, missing the tip of Zoreaux’s outstretched glove by barely an inch. Zoreaux stooped to pick it up — and whipped it hard at Jamie, who flinched back, arms jerking up a moment too late to protect himself. The ball collided with his face with a sickening crack. He swayed, stumbled, slumped limply to the ground. When Ted skidded to a halt at his side his eyes were closed, blood tracking down the side of his face from his swollen nose, pooling into the grass.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” Zoreaux was mumbling somewhere in the distance, voice reaching him as if through a thick pane of glass as Ted raised a shaking hand to Jamie’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. Found it, thready-thin, after a long minute. Jamie’s eyes were still closed, his body limp. How long could someone be unconscious before there was a risk of brain damage? A minute? Thirty seconds? He squeezed Jamie’s wrist, desperate and too hard.

“Come on, bud,” he said, voice cracking in the middle. “C’mon, Jamie. Go on and open your eyes, let us see how you’re doing; you’re fine.”