Home Field Advantage

by Liz Lincoln

  It was done. She’d resigned. Ellen was never far from her own email, so she’d get the letter soon. She’d made her resignation effective two weeks from that day so she could finish any end-of-the-year pieces Ellen and JB might want. But the message was gone. She couldn’t get it back. She whipped out a quick text to Annie, because she needed the courage boost she knew would come in response.

  Natalie: Sad end for the dragons. Season over. I sent the email.

  She wasn’t going to stick around and wait for Ellen’s response, so she shut down her laptop and packed up her stuff. It was time to head down to the locker room and get some reaction.

  The mood in the room was understandably somber. A few men had gone to shower, but most simply sat in their lockers, looking forlorn. Natalie’s heart ached for them. It must be so painful to get so close. It felt almost cruel to talk to them, especially now that she had sent in her resignation. Ellen expected these interviews, yes, but for the first time in a long time, Natalie stopped to really think about the toll they must take on the players.

  She spoke briefly with a few players, getting just enough to churn out something. She didn’t have the heart to talk to Matt, and the crowd around his locker was thick, so she bypassed it.

  Her gaze landed on Quinn. He’d stripped off his shirt and pads, still sitting in his tight blue pants, staring at the floor.

  She was about to walk away when he looked up. The sadness in his eyes nearly broke her heart. She gave him a faint, hesitant smile, trying to convey how sorry she was. Not just about the game, but about everything.

  He didn’t return the smile, but he nodded and his expression softened a little.

  She wanted to talk to him so badly. But it wasn’t the time or place. She had to go home and finish her story. He inevitably had other things on his mind. She would get in touch with him later. Tomorrow or Monday.

  So she turned and headed out of the locker room. The hall was empty, the players and the press still in there. She didn’t get far before the crush of emotions became too much and she had to stop to lean back against the wall. She rested her head against the cool cement, and stared up unseeing. She had so many sensations swirling in her chest, so many thoughts in her head and feelings in her gut, she didn’t even know where to begin sorting out the whole mess.

  She was so lost in her thoughts, it seemed like Quinn appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly he was in front of her. Standing a half step too close, in her space.

  His face was hard again, not giving away any emotion. He felt so far away from her, she wanted to reach out and pull him into her arms. To comfort him, comfort herself. Maybe rebuild some of that trust between them that had been shattered last week.

  Instead, she put on her best reporter face and asked, “How can I help you, Quinn?” Couldn’t he at least have put on a shirt before he came to find her? Yes, she was used to being professional around mostly naked men. But when that mostly naked man was Quinn Lowry, the man she found so extremely lickable, not just on his chest but everywhere, she couldn’t concentrate.

  “We need to talk.” His eyes searched her face, but he gave no indication of what he wanted to talk to her about.

  “OK. Do you want to go back in the locker room? I’d think it’s a little cold out here.” She couldn’t help it, her gaze dropped to his nipples. Sure enough, they had perked up in the chill. The same way they did when she—

  “I’ll do the article.”

  She blinked at him, then frowned. She definitely wasn’t expecting that.

  “On my terms. I approve the questions you’re going to ask me. I see the article before it runs, and after I approve it, nothing changes except typos.” His eyes were flat as he spoke, revealing nothing of his motivation.

  Part of her wanted to hit him, yell at him, ask how he could possibly be so devoid of emotion when she was a big goopy mess of it over him. Part of her wanted to stop and throw her arms around him and beg him to go back to how they were Wednesday morning when he made such beautiful love to her.

  Instead she spoke cautiously. “I appreciate that. Your willingness to work with me. But I can’t.”

  The hard edges to his face relaxed a little. “Look, this obviously isn’t the place. And you and I have a lot we should sort out. But I want to do this article. With you. No one else.” He lifted his hand like he was going to touch her.

  Natalie panicked. “I resigned.”

  His palm flattened on the wall beside her as his eyes went wide. “You what?”

  “Not because of you,” she added quickly. “I mean, Ellen wanting gossipy bullshit about you was the catalyst. But it was a long time coming. You and I talked about it a little.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  She shrugged. “Not much to say. I’ll find another job.”

  Breathing in deeply, Quinn closed his eyes. His expression tightened into what looked like regret. When he opened them, his thumb skimmed along her jaw. He shuffled forward so their bodies were almost touching.

  Gaze locked on hers, he said, “I’m the one who ruined my career. Not you. Me. Only me.”

  By some miracle, Natalie managed not to break down sobbing. How dare he throw that out when she was already a mess of adrenaline and nerves and grief and probably eleven other emotions she couldn’t even identify?

  She thought she had completely let go of her guilt when she talked with Annie the other night, but it turned out there was still a piece of it hanging on. Waiting to hear Quinn say those words.

  She couldn’t speak, so she just nodded.

  “I should get back in there.” He didn’t move.

  She nodded again.

  “The next couple days will probably be crazy. But can we talk?”

  The hope mixed with worry in his eyes made her heart soar. For the first time, she really believed maybe they could make this work. If he was hopeful, if he was worried about her response, there was a chance.

  “How about you come over Tuesday night. Around seven?” She wanted to beg him to talk now, to not make her wait three days. But if he needed those few more days, she’d take it.

  He smiled. “I’ll bring takeout.”

  Nothing could have stopped her from returning his smile. He wanted to have dinner. He wasn’t coming over just to tell her he never wanted to see her again. “Perfect.”

  His smile just a little goofy, he backed away from her. “See you Tuesday.” He turned and headed back to the locker room. And she watched him, because his ass looked amazing in those tight little pants.

  “Hey, Quinn.”

  Almost to the locker room door, he turned. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry about the game. I really wanted you guys to get to the Super Bowl.”

  His smile turned sad. “I know. Me too. But there’s always next year.”

  Chapter 24

  Natalie: I forgot to get something for him to drink all I have is milk or water and he can’t have wine and fuck what do I do he’s going to be here in a few minutes I don’t have time to run out

  Natalie tossed her phone on the bed and hurried around her bedroom, collecting the mess of dirty clothes she’d left around the room the past few days. Not that she had any expectation for her and Quinn to end up in the bedroom. Maybe it would be better if they started over and took things slower.

  But a girl could still hope.

  Her phone dinged with a text and her heart nearly burst out of her chest. What if it was Quinn, canceling?

  Annie: OK, 1) breathe. 2) try to calm down enough to have some punctuation in your thoughts. 3) he can drink water. And 4) I’m in a Common Council meeting so you’re gonna have to put your crisis on hold for at least 45 min.

  Natalie could imagine Annie ticking the points off on her fingers. She started to type a response when the doorbell rang.

  Annie: 5) Fucking bre
athe. And 6) YOU GOT THIS.

  Shit. He was at her door. She felt a little dizzy and a lot nervous. What if he just wanted to be friends? That would be worse than not seeing him again. She couldn’t be just friends with the love of her life.

  But she was getting ahead of herself. One crisis at a time. And her current crisis was that he was at her door and she’d somehow managed to lose one of her socks and her toes were freezing.

  She quickly remedied the problem and hurried to the front of the house. She flipped on the entry light, yanked open the door, and pasted on a smile.

  He looked so good in his charcoal wool coat and his beard trimmed just a smidgen too long to pass for scruff. She’d liked the hipster lumberjack look, but she liked this look even better.

  The temperature hovered somewhere much too far below zero, and the wind was gusting hard enough to bang the screen door against the wall. Quinn grabbed it to pull it shut and hurried inside.

  Once the front door was shut behind him, they stood awkwardly in the entryway, neither one able to meet the other’s eyes. Silence stretched between them, interrupted only by the sound of the glass panes rattling in the windows.

  “Tacos.”

  What now?

  Quinn held up a takeout bag from the Mexican restaurant they frequented.

  “Oh, tacos,” she said.

  Well, this conversation was going swimmingly. Natalie took the bag from him and moved a few steps away. “I’ll go get plates. You can”—she gestured vaguely in his direction—“take off your coat and stuff.”

  As she got out plates and condiments and unwrapped the food, Natalie tried not to interpret what his bringing food meant. Yes, he said he would, but he could have ditched the idea if he wanted.

  Would he have brought dinner if he just wanted to tell her he never wanted to speak to her again? On the other hand, if he was here to declare his undying love, wouldn’t he have started with that and dragged her off to bed?

  OK, so she wasn’t doing a great job with the not-overanalyzing thing. Screw it. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and sent a quick text to Annie.

  Natalie: he brought tacos…What does that mean?

  Annie: it means he likes tacos.

  Natalie: remind me I’m in the market for a new BFF.

  Annie: :D

  “Need help with that?”

  Quinn’s voice startled her so much, her heart jumped to her throat, pounding, and she almost dropped her phone. “No, all set.” She handed him his plate, having already loaded up his food with the sour cream, salsa, and guacamole she knew he wanted. One topping on each of the three ground beef tacos.

  The realization of how well she knew him stabbed at her chest. They couldn’t be over.

  How was she going to get through dinner making mundane small talk when all she really wanted to say was, “I love you so much and always have and please don’t ever leave me I want to be with you forever.” But if she led with that and he’d come to say he wanted to be friends, dinner would be awkward as fuck.

  And it was tacos. She couldn’t ruin taco dinner.

  They sat at her dining room table and fumbled their way through conversation filled with long pauses. He talked a little about how shitty it was to clean out his locker, how morose the mood had been for their final team meetings. He said it was worse than when he played for other teams and they hadn’t made the playoffs. Because the Dragons’ expectations were so much higher, the letdown was harder.

  Natalie told him about some of the job leads she had. She had put out feelers with a few of the national publications. And she had spoken with Tanisha Edmonds, who was looking to leave her job in public relations with the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team. The two women were tossing around the idea of starting some sort of sports media company of their own, run by women, staffed by women, and aimed at women sports fans.

  “In the end, Ellen wasn’t the mentor or boss I’d hoped for. But I still learned a lot from her. Not only how to do what I want to do, but now I also have a very clear idea of where I don’t want my career to go. So I guess that’s a good thing.” She was still dealing with how she felt about all of that. It would take time to fully accept that the woman she had looked up to was no longer that person.

  “And maybe you end up being the mentor to someone else. You can use your experience with Ellen to do it better than she did.” Quinn’s eyes twinkled as he said it, filling Natalie with a contented warmth she absolutely shouldn’t be feeling, considering how drafty her dining room windows were.

  She hadn’t considered the fact that someday she could be someone’s mentor. Some girl who right now was filling her middle school journals with friendship dramas, crushes on boys, family frustrations, and recaps of the games she watched on TV. Just as Natalie had done. “I never even thought of that. I don’t think I’m there yet, but I could definitely be a mentor in a few years.”

  They chatted a little more, then took their dishes to the kitchen. Natalie rinsed their plates and Quinn loaded them into the dishwasher. It was all so normal. The same routine they’d fallen into for the past couple months. So what did that mean?

  With each passing second, Natalie’s heart beat a little faster. They’d run out of stall tactics. It was time to address the whole herd of elephants in the room.

  She faced him, leaning back against the kitchen counter, gripping the edge for strength. He shut the dishwasher and straightened, looking toward her, but at a point somewhere just past her shoulder. Not meeting her eyes.

  OK, she just had to say something. She drew in a breath and opened her mouth.

  Nothing came out. Where did she even begin? An apology? A long rambling explanation of what had happened with her story for Ellen, why she hadn’t just flat-out refused, and that no matter what else she did, she promised she would never write about him outside of game day recaps or injury reports.

  Or did she just cut to the chase and tell him—

  “So the thing is, I am completely, wildly in love with you.”

  Quinn’s words stopped all thoughts in Natalie’s head. Including the ones that might be able to process what he said.

  “What?” She sounded stoned.

  Quinn took a step toward her, and another. He was almost close enough she could reach out and touch him. Almost.

  “I’m in love with you, Natalie. I know this wasn’t supposed to be like that, and I understand if it isn’t for you and you want to end things. But the truth is, I’ve been in love with you since the day we met. Even when I hated you, I don’t think I ever stopped—”

  “I love you too. So much.” She closed the space between them, putting her hands on his chest and gripping the front of his soft red henley shirt.

  His arms immediately came around her and her world fell right for the first time in a week. As much as part of her wanted to kiss him, wanted to drag him to her bed and beg him to make love to her forever, in that second she turned her head and rested it against his chest. She felt his cheek lean against her head, his whiskers tickling her skin. His arms tightened, squeezed, and she had never felt so safe in her life.

  “You’re it for me, Natalie. When I’m with you, I’m home.”

  Tears filled her eyes. Happy tears. Perfect tears. Even if she hadn’t fallen in love with him until two years after he did, even from the beginning he’d been home for her too. They’d connected instantly and maybe on some level even then, her heart had known. She pulled back so she could look at him, and lifted one hand to cup his cheek. She loved the rasp of his beard against her palm. “You’re my home too.”

  He kissed her, soft and gentle, his lips exploring hers, seeming to almost ask a question. “I love you,” he whispered against her mouth.

  She needed to know one thing. As much as she hated to say it, if they didn’t get it out there it would hang over them. It would come back u
p in an ugly moment. So she made herself say, “What about the article?”

  “I thought you weren’t writing it because you quit SLNT.” He frowned down at her.

  “I mean the old one. The first one.” The one that had truly launched her career and was the bane of her existence.

  Quinn’s shoulders stiffened, then he seemed to be trying to make himself relax again. “I’m never going to like that article.”

  The words came as a physical pain in Natalie’s chest. How could they ever get past it?

  Quinn cupped her face between his big hands, his fingers sliding into her hair. “Not because you wrote it. I don’t blame you anymore. I never should have, but I was angry and you were an easy target. But as I’ve heard you defend the article by saying, there’s nothing in there that isn’t true. That I didn’t do. That’s the part I hate. I hate that every word in that article is true, I hate that I did all those things.” He closed his eyes, a pained expression on his face.

  “I’m working with my therapist on forgiving that part of myself. I wasn’t completely in control. But it was still me, and I hate that I hurt so many people.” He trailed his finger over her lower lip. “I hate that I hurt you.”

  The tears filling Natalie’s eyes spilled over. One on each side, trailing down her cheeks. He forgave her. And as he worked on forgiving himself, she would be there to help him.

  “If we’re going to make this work, we have to promise to talk to each other. Instead of making assumptions and preemptively getting mad,” she said. When she’d left him in the middle of the night instead of talking to him, it hadn’t been the first time for either of them. “I shouldn’t have left the way I did.”

  “I shouldn’t have either.” He touched his forehead to hers, looking deep into her eyes. “So we both work on that.”

  “We talk. We’re honest. Transparent.” She tilted her chin up so she could brush her lips over his.

  “Exactly.” He kissed her more firmly. “I will do whatever it takes, Natalie. I can’t lose you again. I love you too much.”