by Anne Leigh
My eyes were shooting lasers at Berger’s hand, and when the light landed on his face, I wanted to cross the distance between me and them in a flash.
I’d seen Berger’s expressions change from collected to angry when Coach reprimanded him in practice. I’d talked to him a few times, even when he was acting like a shitty prick most of the time. I’d even said a few nice words to him because I understood that we were playing for the same team, even if the last place he wanted to be in was L.A.
When Minnesota traded him to us for two second round picks, he showed his displeasure by his overt snickers and shit talk when I threw a lousy pass.
I watched him in practice and in college, he was a great quarterback.
I was actually looking forward to working with him, but from the first meeting, he’d declared that he wasn’t there to make friends, but he wanted my position and that he was going to get it sooner than I wanted.
I let those pass.
You didn’t get to be good in this league if you didn’t know how to let comments like that, even from your own teammate, roll off your shoulder.
You didn’t get to be great in this league if you fought with your team, just so you could be first string.
So yeah…
I’d seen him, studied a few of his expressions even just so I could learn more about the guy who was dead set on kicking me off of the roster.
But, as emotional as Berger was when he played in practice, he’d never shown this side of him.
His eyes were trained on my girl, as if he couldn’t, didn’t want to look away.
His mouth was set in a stiff line, but it was the look on his face that reminded me that even assholes like him were humans.
He was looking at her with longing and remorse in his eyes.
And as I closed in on the gap between me and them, I felt my fury at having his hand on my girl slightly thaw, because it was not so long ago that I, myself, had been wearing that look on my face.
“Babe,” I said, pulling her waist to me. She was tiny, but the strength of her body never failed to amaze me. I’d caught her off guard so she’d resisted at first, but in a second she’d recognized my presence, she relaxed.
Dex’s hands were no longer on Bridgette. I caught the look of surprise on his face, but that was all because my vision was now a hundred percent occupied by the woman in my arms.
It was good that they weren’t or I’d gladly take them off of her and smash it in his face.
I might be feeling sympathetic towards him, but that was still overruled by my claim towards this woman who was now smiling at me from ear to ear.
I smelled her coconut and citrus scent, and it was enough for my nerves to start calming down.
And when she’d tilted her head to she could gain access to my neck, no doubt hoping to grace me with a polite kiss, I lowered my head so I could meet her lips.
And in front of the man who seconds ago was looking at her like she was the last piece of pie on the baker’s shelf, I coaxed her mouth to open up for me.
She was hesitant at first, but once my tongue tasted hers, there was no way I was letting her out of this.
Not without claiming her as mine.
Not without stamping her head as Scott’s woman.
Because as much as I felt for Berger, whatever history they might have had, I wanted Bridgette to remember that it was me taking her home tonight.
I was her present.
And definitely her future.
Scott
Late nights meant that my ass was going to be cranky as hell in the morning.
I did my workouts early, shot the shit with my teammates, and met with Coach Glade, our offensive coordinator, to refine the game plan for our first game in the regular season. The Steelers were a powerhouse. It didn’t help that they’d found their identity in the past two years, an identity that had been missing for quite some time now.
The success of their 3-4 defense had been the cornerstone of their wins, but now that they’d added the penetrating and extremely aggressive style favored by their newly hired head coach, I just knew that they were going to be unstoppable.
Going into the season opener next week, I had no doubts that all eleven defensive players were going to read all my plays.
I got my ass handed to myself last season by their mammoth of a linebacker, Darius Tomlinson. Not one, not two, but three times.
He had such a good read on me.
The plays might have as well been painted across my forehead because every time we tried to blitz, Tomlinson was right there. Smack in the middle of the play. Or right behind my tail, making me throw inaccurately, and when his body lunged for me, he was worse than a freight train.
I’d been sacked.
I wouldn’t be good at this sport if my mouth hadn’t eaten grass many times.
But the one thing I was really good at was evading linebackers and getting rid of the ball before my ass fell on the ground.
Tomlinson though, he was a different breed.
A prophet like my best friend Rikko.
Good players were easy to find.
Great players were a little bit harder to unearth.
Then there were the unicorn players, the ones that showed up once in a blue moon, the ones that you could tell had a special concoction – the mix of athleticism, intuition, and inborn talent.
JJ Watt.
Michael Strahan.
Bruce Smith.
They were born to play defense.
And in less than a decade, Tomlinson and Rikko would be ranked up with them.
I wasn’t ready to get my ass handed back to me. Again. Ever.
So, I’d been studying a lot of film, more than I should have. But it was the name of the game, one mistake and the ball would be running away with the men in the wrong uniform.
Black and gold was a nice combo, but not when they had the ball meant for you.
Coach Glade talked about the defensive balance of the Steelers, and what we had to do to shake up that balance. They were the benchmark for defense, but I didn’t play for defense.
From the day I was handed a football, I knew that this was what I was born to do.
I had the talent, and my circumstances might have derailed me for a bit, but I never lost that feeling, the awareness that throwing passes at 90 yards was my calling in life.
So, when Coach Glade asked me if I was ready for next week’s game, I said what I always said to my coaches, “Always ready. Born ready.”
I heard a snort in the back of the room when I said it.
I had no doubt as to who it came from.
He hadn’t said much during the meeting.
He didn’t even look at me when I entered the room five minutes before the meeting started.
He’d been looking at his phone and talking to the right tackle, Cale.
I didn’t have the chance to ask Bridge what he meant to her.
When we arrived at my place last night, it was really late, and all I wanted to do was to get lost inside of her.
She was still in my bed, softly snoring, when I left for practice this morning. It was a struggle for me to keep the kiss I’d graced her cheek PG, but I didn’t want to wake her up. I left a note by her cell and asked her to meet me later in the day. I still hadn’t gotten a text back, so I knew she was still sleeping.
I’d tired her out with our lovemaking, but after days of being without her, she was the only place I wanted to be.
Talking about Dex would have taken up time that was supposed to be for us.
I wasn’t bothered about her relationship with him.
Whatever it was, it was in the past.
I’d seen the way the past tore at a person’s present. I’d been at the forefront of how getting lost in the past made a person unable to move a step into the future.
My father was one of those people.
And I refused to become him.
So, Dex can grunt, snort, bitch, or do whatever shit he wanted,
and as long as it wasn’t interfering with the overall team dynamics, I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it.
We weren’t in Pee Wee football anymore, we were in the NFL.
And it was time we all acted like grown men.
“How are you feeling these days?” Tanitha, Dr. Jackson’s trusted nurse, asked. Dr. Jackson was in the Bahamas for three weeks and since I was just coming in for a routine check-up, I didn’t need to see him. If I needed him, he was speed dial number 5.
“I’m feeling good,” I said, and it wasn’t a stretch. I hadn’t felt this good in a long time. I could attribute it to me finally being in the NFL, reaching my ultimate goal. But these days, it wasn’t because of that.
Mostly it was because of a hazel-eyed beauty that bewitched me every time she smiled at me.
“That’s good,” Tanita said as she finished removing the electrodes from around my head. She’d already drawn blood into the small vials, so now we were onto reading the latest activity my brain transmitted through to a bunch of wires.
“Any episodes lately?” She asked, her eyes focused on the readouts on the computer screen in front of her.
I said, “No. None for a while.”
Her brown eyes assessed me and she nodded her head, “That’s great, Scott. You’ve come a long way. Your last episode was –“
Four years ago.
In my room at the frat house.
Where my best friend, Rikko, had to ensure that my surroundings were safe, where he cushioned my head with a pillow when I collapsed on the floor, where he noted the length of time my seizure had lasted.
Two minutes, twenty five seconds.
That’s how long the electrical storm inside my head disrupted my control over my body, rendered me speechless, and in the end, Rikko wiped off the drool that had accumulated around my mouth.
Tanitha went on to describe my treatment plan – it had been the same plan Dr. Jackson had me following since I was diagnosed with generalized seizures when I was ten.
The regimen was pretty basic – not a lot of protein, stay away from alcohol, stress, and anything that might trigger it.
For me, my biggest trigger was stress.
“The longer you don’t have one, the better the chances are that you won’t have them again,” Tanitha explained and I nodded.
Throughout the years, the seizures had become less and less in occurrence.
By the time I was 12, I’d had as many seizures as touchdowns.
It was why my father took me off the football team for a year.
During that year, I had twice as many seizures.
Dr. Jackson conducted all sorts of tests. The walls of Texas U’s Hospital became my home, and the doctors and nurses in the Neuro department became my friends.
My best friend often visited and so did Kara, his sister.
They were the only people whom I wanted to know about my pain.
When Dr. Jackson determined that the cause of my seizures stemmed from me being born prematurely at twenty six weeks and it was manifesting later in my childhood, my father wanted me to quit football altogether. Not just for a specific amount of time. But forever.
My body revolted against that thought and so did my brain.
In the end, Dr. Jackson recommended that I return to football because the stress of not playing was adding fuel to the fire in my head.
My father vehemently disagreed, but even he couldn’t minimize the facts that were stacked against him – my brain was at a complete calm when I played and it was in disarray when I wasn’t.
Brain scans showed that football created peace in the epileptogenic zones in my brain.
The game that caused concussions quieted my mind.
Wasn’t that something?
Irony at its finest.
“I’ll see you again in two months.” Tanitha interrupted my thoughts into the past. She typed away on the computer and nudged her eyes towards me, “Let us know if you feel like you’re going to have one or when you have one.”
I shook my head in the affirmative.
That was the thing – before, I had them so often that I could almost tell if I was going to have one.
Nowadays, I didn’t know if it was going to happen.
The Royals’ Medical Team knew of my condition.
They had to.
Every team I joined had to be briefed about my condition and what to do in case it happened.
Before the draft, all the teams that wanted me, or thought of signing me, were briefed about my case. I didn’t want them to be caught unaware, especially since the seizures had become rare in occurrence which was the biggest blessing.
But as much information as my agent gave the teams, he also asked them to sign NDAs. That the protected health privilege about me could not be released to the media.
It was the biggest red flag against me.
That sometimes my brain didn’t cooperate.
The concussion protocols were different for me, for an insular case like mine.
My throwing arm was the antidote to my seizures.
My agent said that if not for the passing records that I broke in college, there was no chance that any NFL team would want to sign me.
He’d also told me that my career was fragile.
That even though I’d been drafted number one in the draft, I could easily fall on the list of QB’s who didn’t make it in the NFL, if I didn’t prove myself to the league.
I didn’t play football for the money.
Nor the glory.
I played it because even in the complexity of my condition, in the fragility of my brain…my mind always had the power to command my right arm and throw the football with precise accuracy that even when a defender was charging up against me, I could make it land to a receiver’s hands with the least amount of errors.
I played football…
Not just because I wanted it.
I played it because I needed it.
I needed it to survive.
“Babe, you still here?” I called out as I entered my condo.
She hadn’t texted me yet, and it was already thirty past two.
My appointment at UCLA didn’t take long, but the traffic was shitty as normal.
I smelled the scent of fresh baking in the air.
“Still here.” The voice was coming from the kitchen. “Rummaging through your unused pantry.”
I chuckled because she was right.
I rounded the corner and my chuckles stopped right there.
She was wearing one of my old college football shirts, STRAUSS emblazoned in the back of the jersey, and the edges reached a few inches above her knees.
Her hair was pulled up in a messy bun and a few tendrils strayed around her neck.
Her back was to me, and I took the few seconds I had to just watch her, still unaware of my close proximity.
The tanned legs that were wrapped around me last night looked so smooth. And they also felt as smooth.
She was trying to balance two bowls in her hands while kicking the door of the fridge closed with her bare foot.
Bridge loved to wear casual clothes – jeans, shirt, and sneakers were her go-to attire.
Last night was the first time I had seen her in a dress. And as soon as we got inside my condo, I took that dress off of her, and unveiled the amazing body that made me worship her on my knees.
I could outline the tips of her nipples inside my jersey and, suddenly I felt jealous of the piece of clothing that hugged her body.
“Instead of staring at my butt, can you like – help me?” Her voice was scolding without a bite.
I edged closer to her and stopped when her body was inches away from mine.
“I wasn’t staring at your butt,” I said, my left hand grabbing the bowls she was trying to contain in her hands and arms.
“Sure…” She said, her hazel eyes twinkling in mischief.
And when her mouth pursed, I lifted her chin with my right hand and stole a kis
s from her lips.
“I was staring at your boobs,” I said, correcting her and her eyes heated in response.
My girl responded easily to my teasing.
The rose in her cheeks blossomed all over her face and I laughed, “I love your ass, babe, but I worship your breasts.”
“Because they’re big?” The look in her eyes was a challenge. Bridge wasn’t vain. She was far from it. She didn’t focus on physical attributes. As a matter of fact, she downplayed her looks so much. She wore the least amount of make-up and when she did, the effect only detracted from her natural beauty.
Women wore make-up to enhance what they already had.
But to me, when Bridge wore make-up, she looked really nice, but it diminished her God-given beauty.
I placed the bowls to the side and responded with my hands creeping along the edges of the jersey she wore, “No, because they’re mine.”
Her right brow lifted and a slow grin spread across her face, “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” I responded, my hands finding purchase as I skated the smooth texture of her waist and as my right hand pushed up against the heaviness of her right breast, my left hand ventured towards the juncture between her thighs.
My mouth watered as memories of her taste flooded my memory.
I didn’t get to taste her last night.
Last night’s two rounds were outright solid fucking.
After being away from her, I couldn’t be gentle and she voiced out that she didn’t want gentle either.
Now was the perfect time to savor her.
“I’m trying to bake some brownies.” Her voice was lush with desire and the look in her beautiful eyes mirrored the lust that was growing inside my jeans.
“I want your brownie,” I said, letting out a chuckle as I said it.
“You already had my brownie.” The humor in her voice only enhanced the heat that had slowly been stewing since I caught sight of her in my clothes.
“I didn’t have your brownie last night.” I knew we were being the corniest cornballs in the world, but Bridge made me see the fun in things. She made me see the color in L.A.’s night sky, and she made me forget about who I was on the football field.
She didn’t care if I was number one or number one thousand.