The Penalty

by Piper Westbrook

  Long moments later, Omar backed away from her and had the nerve to howl with laughter. “Scared little innocent bunny. Made you flinch,” he said, then tossed his towel at one of his teammates and left the locker room.

  She waited, knowing he wouldn’t leave the premises until after a full weight-training session. Checking his individual training schedule for the day, she made a mental note of when to be in the weight room. Time evaporated as she updated injury reports, viewed last season’s films to compare the rehabilitated players’ performances to what she’d witnessed today and sat in on the coaches’ late-afternoon meeting in preparation for a full-squad training day tomorrow.

  Waverly had a few unscheduled minutes and took the opportunity to check her phone. A voice mail message from Joan marked Urgent.

  “My sorority sister Rebecca’s son, Sam Pratt, is in the city tonight. He’s a journalist in L.A. You met him at that wine tasting in Napa last autumn, remember? I told him you’d meet him for a late dinner.…”

  Her mother’s message continued with the location where Sam Pratt—the name still didn’t sound familiar no matter how many times Joan had dropped it in her message—would be, and she was especially “helpful” in having taken the liberty of choosing the outfit Waverly should wear.

  Guess you’re okay with pimping me out, but don’t want me to dress myself like a Wednesday-nights-half-off whore, right, Mom?

  Working the tension from her jaw, Waverly put away her phone without returning Joan’s call. Urgent, her ass. Pairing up her unmarried thirty-two-year-old daughter with a man was a downright emergency to her mother.

  “You look pissed. Is it because of Beckham or your phone, which has a talent for getting in the way of things?” Jeremiah had soundlessly entered the room and leaned against his locker, watching her.

  “The best way to forget the Rio is to stop mentioning it,” Waverly said. “Especially here. We can’t bring what happened in Vegas to Mount Charleston.”

  “Right.” He turned, opened the locker and swept off his shirt, rewarding her with a full view of his muscled, sweat-dampened back.

  She was entitled to look, she told herself, so long as she didn’t touch. And even that didn’t seem fair, though she’d take what she could get. It was risky, but how could she not want to know, scene by scene, what would’ve happened with Jeremiah had her mother’s phone call not interrupted them in his suite.

  Jeremiah turned to face her, and suddenly she was unable to move. Holding her stare, he gripped a fresh T-shirt in front of him and took his sweet time putting it on, maximizing the effect that tickled and tortured her aching libido.

  She’d never been more turned on to see a man strip.

  “Waverly,” he whispered, his lips curving into a slow smile.

  She blinked. “Uh…what?”

  “Next time we do this, I hope we can switch places.”

  Any decent comeback failing her, she hurried straight to the weight room to see Omar exchanging bro hugs with the assistant coach who’d monitored his workout. When the coach left, Waverly sidled up to the player. “So, Omar, how much better did you feel after intimidating me in the locker room?”

  “Can’t take it, then leave.” Tough words, but there was no steam behind them as there had been earlier. First day at camp could wear down any man, and she thought it served athletes well to remember camp as a humbling experience.

  He seemed especially drained, and she knew exactly why. There was a learning curve—physical, mental, emotional—when coming off steroids.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Damn, does it matter?”

  “Yes.” If he was desperate enough, he’d find a fresh hit of steroids. Withdrawal was one thing, but returning to a sport with a body that felt deflated compared to the way it had been under the effects of unnatural enhancements was something else entirely.

  What kind of trainer would let him destroy his career and health that way?

  Ask questions, get answers, push, watch over him. She would do it all.

  “Miss, I’m going to get my hair braided.” He reached up with flexing muscles and grabbed the big puff of tightly curled hair that was straining against a rubber band. He was known in the league for sporting long braids with a streak of color that was a shout-out to whatever team he was on. Now that he was the Villains’ new kicker, she assumed he’d be getting some red or silver in his hair.

  He didn’t call her Waverly, as she’d asked everyone to do, but “miss” was a start and was actually…respectful.

  Omar sighed. “Look, you don’t believe me? C’mon, then.”

  Waverly narrowed her eyes but followed him as he continued out of the weight room toward the lobby. “Come with you?”

  At her hesitation he scowled. “Yeah, thought so. A spoiled little white girl afraid to ride with a big black guy.”

  “You’re so fucking wrong, it’s not even funny, Omar.”

  “But you backed off, so…”

  A dare.

  “Do not leave without me!” Waverly called, already racing back toward the locker rooms. He’d challenged her and she was more than ready to show him she wasn’t to be trifled with. She grabbed her duffel and ran back half expecting to find the polished lobby empty, with only a vacant reception desk and the supersized photo collage of past Villains in action.

  But Omar remained where she’d left him, and with a conceding headshake he said, “Jesus. All right, let’s go. Don’t touch my radio.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Granite-black with a wide body and custom rims, Omar’s SUV was designed for looks, strength and dominance. The vehicle was a complement to the image the man projected. So was the deep-bass, spirit-digging rap that vibrated throughout the SUV’s interior. Like his ride, the almost painfully loud music spoke for him—angry, distant, a ruthless warning to be careful not to get too close.

  Waverly recognized his tough-guy facade for what it was and let him sink into the shallow comfort of it as he leaned back in the leather driver’s seat, one platinum-ringed hand at the wheel. His posture relaxed, he seemed to have forgotten that she occupied the seat beside him, seemed to see only the stretch of highway before him, missing the series of pointed looks she shot his way as the speedometer’s needle swept past ninety. If the vehicle hit a pothole, it would probably go airborne and God only knew how it might land.

  Junipers and ponderosa pines blurred to nothing but a tangle of color. Up ahead, clouds seemed to drape over the mountaintops and felt close enough to grab hold of. She twisted in her seat, resolving to stare at Omar’s profile until he acknowledged her. The defiant set of his jaw and the furrow of his brow made him appear older, but he was close in age to her sister Aly. He was still a child in many ways, yet in others he was an old soul, one who’d grown up much too soon as a teenage delinquent.

  “Gonna tap out?” Omar silenced the blaring rap with a press of a button on the steering wheel and flicked her a glance.

  The quiet was so sudden it felt like whiplash. “No. But here’s the way I see it. You’re driving like a maniac with the intention to either scare me, in which case you’ve failed pathetically, or to piss me off, in which case you’ve succeeded with flying colors.”

  “You’re in my space.” At least his foot eased off the accelerator.

  “Then next time be careful who you invite into your space. You keep thinking of things to throw my way, hoping I’ll back down or give up.” Waverly shifted around to watch the Mount Charleston mountain landscape gradually transform into urban Las Vegas. “So. Are you always this combative to perfect strangers?”

  “Why not? Eventually it’s every man for himself. Even when somebody says they got your back. They never do.”

  The SUV, the rap, the aggression—it was all his armor. “You’re in the NFL, Omar. Along the way somebody had your back.”

  “My uncle had a meal ticket. Cashed me in to Texas A&M.”

  “So your childhood was what? All rainy days, no ra
inbows?” It was the same way she’d reason with Aly, who could be stubborn and one-sided and wore a mask to hide her vulnerabilities. “No good days?”

  “Pizza days were all right,” he said thoughtfully. At her puzzled headshake he went on. “That Pizza Hut reading program. My school had the hookup—you know, read a quota of books, write reports and sooner or later you get a certificate for free pizza. My uncle made sure I kept at it, raised me to never turn down the chance of a free meal.”

  Waverly figured his uncle’s motivations had more to do with getting Omar educated. Clearly it had worked to some degree, because “pizza days” were the young man’s rainbows. “Texas A&M put you on track.”

  “There’s stuff you learn on the streets that you can’t learn in the classroom, miss.”

  “The cocaine?”

  “Wasn’t my stash. Nor was the jacket the cops found it in.”

  “The domestic violence?”

  “Ex swings at me, I block her, she falls and it’s domestic violence.”

  “The steroids?”

  Omar was silent for several heartbeats. Then, “All part of staying in the game. Sometimes you gotta do wrong to make things right.”

  “You won’t be happy that way.”

  “Too grown and too real to chase happiness. You gonna tell me you made all the right choices?”

  Waverly snorted, her headshake solemn. “Hardly. But, Omar, please take it from me that the wrong things, they stick with you. You never forget them.”

  The young man shrugged as if to be nonchalant, but Waverly saw the way his fingers tightened over the wheel. “Miss, at the end of the day, football’s all that’s left. If I ain’t got football, I ain’t got nothin’.”

  That resonated. For so many people professional football was just entertainment, just a game. For others—people like Waverly and apparently Omar Beckham—it was life. Was it life for Jeremiah Tarantino and his family? Or merely a slice of the image they wanted to portray to the world?

  With a press of a button, Omar resumed the chest-pounding rap and ended the conversation. Waverly let him be, satisfied that he was obeying the posted speed limits. When they rolled into an industrial-looking cranny of Vegas, she paid attention to the beautifully raw graffiti on buildings, the chalk on the sidewalks, the various ethnicities of people crisscrossing in the streets.

  He parallel-parked the SUV in front of a squat brick-fronted building, and Waverly gazed up at the sign. Heaven and Hair.

  “Georgiana hooks it up for me.” Omar patted his big puff of hair again. “This will take a while.”

  “I have time.” And unread work emails downloaded onto her tablet, for when the waiting made her crazy. And tons of apps for when the emails made her crazy.

  Omar set his vehicle alarm, then greeted the vendor stationed in front of the salon frying something that smelled like Italian beef and fresh jalapeño peppers—something that promised to guilt her into an extra hour of early-morning running should she succumb to an everything-on-it sandwich. Waverly let her willpower propel her into…

  Whoa.

  The sleek high-ceilinged lounge entertained the salon’s waiting customers with high-definition news coverage and piped-in R & B set at a low, almost soothing volume. Turning in a slow circle, Waverly took in the ultramodern details, from the stainless-steel beverage counter to the silver glazed floor.

  Abruptly she stopped. Someone was watching her closely. A dark man with a ropy build and a Mohawk braided from front to back hitched his chin in a wordless hello, then moved past her to the beverage counter.

  “Who’s that?” Waverly asked Omar when he entered the place. “The man over there who looks like he’s auditioning for an A-Team reboot?”

  “Q.”

  “Just Q?”

  “Yeah. He’s security. Come here often enough and you won’t even notice him. He’s kinda part of the decor,” he said, drawing out the last word, amusement evident in his eyes. “C’mon. G’s waiting.”

  Beyond a pair of massive glass display cases containing hair-care products and tools was the pulse of the place. The spacious room was a harmony of color, complementing and contrasting in both muted and bold shades of gold and black and silver. Two rows of stations with ergonomic styling chairs sat in front of well-lit floor-to-ceiling mirrors. A large decked-out nail spa held pride of place in the center of the room. Modest-sized stations with plushy chairs encircled the revolving tower of nail polish bottles.

  Over the cacophony of voices and music, Omar scanned the clients and heavily made-up stylists, then went over to a woman dressed in black except for the slash of electric-purple lipstick.

  “What’s goin’ on, G?”

  “Nothin’ but the rent. Got your chair ready, and the weave you want braided in for that red streak.” The woman who had to be Georgiana blinked at Waverly. “Lord, are you lost, honey?”

  “Um… No, I’m with Omar. He brought me along.”

  Georgiana turned to him. “Who is she?”

  “A trainer.”

  She frowned, skeptical. “For the Villains?”

  Waverly introduced herself, unable to resist adding that she herself had partaken in competitive sports growing up and had trained college athletes. “Omar let me tag along today. I’ve never been here. It’s an amazing place.”

  “I like to think my shop’s the diamond in this rough neighborhood,” the stylist said, seeming pleased with the thought. When Omar settled in at Georgiana’s station, she gestured for Waverly to take the adjacent styling chair. “Now Boo can do a little somethin’-somethin’ with your hair. Hey, Boo!”

  Waverly opened her mouth to protest but right away another stylist appeared at her elbow, already eyeing Waverly’s untamed high ponytail, a utilitarian minimal-effort style her sister Aly called the “half-assed updo.”

  Omar must’ve caught her hesitation, because as he adjusted his black cape, he said, “Never mind, y’all. She’s not staying.”

  Another dare? The man just wouldn’t stop testing her. What would it take to prove she wasn’t going to haul ass out of the salon, that she wasn’t going to abandon him when clearly abandonment was what he’d become accustomed to?

  “You didn’t come up in my shop and sit in that chair and think you were going to walk out of here with your hair lookin’ like that, did you?” This from Georgiana.

  The other stylist—Boo—vanished but reappeared not a full minute later with a thick binder. Her own hair was neat, with a deep side part and single short braid. “I do a few hair shows—just came back from Atlanta. Take a look at my handiwork, then decide whether you want to try a change. Nothing permanent, just something new.”

  All around her, stylists were applying chemical treatments and hair extensions and braids. Waverly appreciated that her hair didn’t require much maintenance, even if it was wild and susceptible to the frizzies. She ran six mornings a week and sweat came with the territory in her job, so stopping in once a month at Aly’s preferred celebrity spa for a trim usually suited her.

  But what was wrong with wanting something new?

  Waverly stopped perusing the album halfway through, in awe of the unique, futuristic hairstyles Boo had created. “Braid it, please,” she said, then arched a brow at Omar. There. I’ll take your dare and raise you one.

  “Then let’s shampoo you and get this party started,” Boo declared, clasping her hands together with giddiness in her eyes. Immediately she unwound Waverly’s updo, revealing a waterfall of dark blond tendrils. “Ever straightened all this?”

  “In college. It turned out to be a mistake.” Cloudy memories in the recesses of her mind intruded, and she swallowed to regroup. “Anyway, I use organic products like jojoba oil and try to leave it alone. It’s got personality.”

  “What kind of personality?”

  “It…” Waverly grabbed a handful. Some strands were golden; others were darker. Some were silky; others springy. “It’s a bitch.”

  Omar sat with a sullen look for the
next several hours, conversing in friendly tones only to Georgiana and Boo and a few men who’d come in for haircuts. Clients came and left, and darkness had already settled in the sky before Boo finally turned Waverly to face Omar and Georgiana.

  “Boo, you’re badass.” Omar, who’d been showing Georgiana YouTube videos on his smartphone, now studied Waverly with a grin—one free of malicious intent and snark.

  Waverly took her feet off the styling chair’s rung, planted them on the floor and whirled around toward the mirror. Badass couldn’t quite do justice to the transformation. Cornrows curved delicately across her scalp, with the ends of the braids falling together down her back in dozens and dozens of straight, skinny ropes. One braid, on the left side, close to her ear, was outfitted in a string of dark red beads. It gave the style a dash of playfulness. She looked beautiful. Tough.

  “Buggin’,” Waverly whispered, running her fingers through the ends of the braids.

  “It’s like those Bo Derek cornrows she wore back in ’79,” Georgiana said with approval. “Or was it ’80?”

  Boo angled a handheld mirror behind Waverly’s head so she could view the back. “What do you think?”

  Waverly had come here to prove a point to Omar but wound up with a surprise of her own. “I found my new salon.”

  ◆◆◆

  In Desert Luck’s parking lot, Waverly grabbed her duffel, hopped out of the SUV and was halfway to her Fiat before she noticed Omar hadn’t driven away. He’d put up a fuss with her every step of the way today, and she’d expected him to flee like a bat out of hell at the first opportunity. Turning, she moseyed back to the passenger-side door and motioned for him to lower the window. “What’s keeping you?”

  “Habit. My uncle said when you drop off a chick, wait till she’s safely inside before you take off.”

  Waverly didn’t take offense to being referred to as a “chick.” He hadn’t meant to be derogatory. “Appreciate it, but I’ve been fending for myself a lot longer than you, Omar. I have a nice uppercut. ‘Mortal Kombat’ style.” At his grunt of laughter, she pointed to the building where a handful of straggler players and security guards were exiting. She waved and got mostly curious looks and one or two waves in response. “Plus, I’ve got security. So enjoy being free from me. I’ll be back in your face soon enough.”