Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance)

by Pace, Alicia Hunter

  “No, that would be down at the middle school,” he said. Nice! Cold anger made for the best comebacks.

  “Hmm,” she said.

  He got a little flash of heat.

  “Who the hell do you think you are to track me down like a dog and sit here and say, ‘Hmm’? That’s not even talking. You could at least put on a show.”

  She widened those sapphire and silver eyes and brought them to meet his.

  “What kind of show would you like me to put on, Nathan? I could flagellate myself and put on a hair shirt. I could hang myself from that goal post. But the fact is, there is nothing I could do to myself that would be punishment enough to suit you, or myself for that matter. I am bad. There, I’ve said it. I am awful. Satisfied?”

  “What you did to this morning was not even in the same ballpark with awful, not even in the same city.”

  “No. What Arianna did to you was awful. What I did was a mistake and a well intended one.”

  “You made a decision for me that was not yours to make. And you dangled your unavailable love at me to make it happen.”

  She covered her face with her hands and made another one of those sounds that didn’t mean anything, but at least this one packed some emotion — anger, frustration, confusion. Well, welcome to the club.

  “I could write a dissertation in response to that misguided statement.” She looked up. She had a mad look to go with her mad sounds. “You are right. I made a decision that was not mine to make. I know that. I shouldn’t have. But if the story had had a different ending, neither of us would think that.”

  What? That didn’t make any sense at all.

  “Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that there was no point in the conversation with your mother — ”

  “Do not call her that!” he said through gritted teeth.

  “All right — that there was no point in the conversation with Arianna and that you didn’t buy into what she was telling you? That you didn’t think, maybe, just maybe, you could have some sort of relationship with her? And the idea of a relationship with her made you happy. Deny that, if you can.”

  How could she know that? Was she a witch? His face must have told the story.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said and she said it smug. Oh! He hated smug. “She had me. I believed her. I thought I was helping you. And I am not going to apologize, ever again, for the well intended things I have done in what I thought was your best interest.”

  “The road to hell — ” he began.

  “Oh, shut up, Nathan. Don’t talk to me about hell and how to get there. I know the way. It’s right through Nathan Scott’s path.”

  She had been in hell? “Well, forgive me!”

  “No, I don’t think I will. I left the diner today with the intention of finding you and making you believe that I love you. But as I drove around looking for you — ”

  “You went to my apartment first, didn’t you?”

  She got a blank look like those who are on tear always do when they get interrupted with something out of left field. Fact was, he didn’t want to hear about her love.

  “Uh, yes. I thought you’d be packing for New York. Why?”

  “I just needed to know,” he said with some satisfaction.

  She closed her eyes, no doubt, trying to regroup.

  “As I drove around, I realized I can’t convince you that I love you. There is nothing I can do. And you were right about something else. Rehashing what happened thirteen years ago would not have fixed anything between us. You don’t trust me.”

  “Damn Skippy.”

  “I guess I earned that, because I did lie to you about a lot of things. I led you to believe or not to believe still more. The sixteen-year-old kid I was did that. It doesn’t make any difference that you are wrong about thinking I knew who you were and was playing you — that I was star chasing.”

  A little buzz went off in his head. What was it Lou Anne had said? Not to make Townshend pay for what Arianna did to him? But if the punishment fit the crime …

  “I don’t need for you to believe me anymore,” Townshend went on. “I know the truth of it. The problem is, you don’t trust the person I am today. I can’t buy your trust no matter what I’m willing to pay. I can’t plead it like a court case. But I will tell you this, Nathan, and I’m saying it because I need to say it, not because I think you need to hear it or because I think it will change anything. I loved you. I fell in love with you like only a teenage girl who has never been hurt can. I gave you my whole heart and I’m never going to be able to get it back. I have always loved you and never more than I do right now. Do you know why? Because I love you more every day, no matter what. I will love you most the day I die, I guess.”

  If only that was true. But it wasn’t, never had been.

  “That’s my punishment for hurting you, for costing you your career, for the physical pain you feel every day. And I’ll take it. I can’t say how my pain compares to yours, but go to New York believing this if you never believe anything else: I have pain of my own.”

  She got up and picked up her sack.

  Suddenly, without warning, a truth came to him and settled on him like ashes after a fire. He could not have said what caused this realization, after this many years. No matter what she was or what she’d done, she deserved to hear that truth. He had to give voice to it, if he was any man at all.

  “My injury,” he said in a shaky whisper. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened.

  “It wasn’t your fault. I’ve just realized. After it was announced that I would never play again, those guys who took me down on the field came to the hospital to apologize. They cried. I cried. Football players can cry, but only with each other and only if everybody cries. They were sorry, but I told them the truth of the matter. They didn’t hurt me. I got hurt. There’s a difference. I played a contact sport. And I got hurt. People do.”

  “But you were distracted because of me,” she said. “You said that to me that night I came to the hospital.”

  “I probably was, but I was a world class athlete first. I had the ability to rise above such things. I’d been trained. It would have happened anyway. When I said that to you that night, I must have believed it and I must have kept believing it because it was easier. I don’t know what made me think it. I’d been taught better. I don’t know what made me say it.”

  Admitting it didn’t make him feel better.

  She laid a hand on his arm and said softly, “Maybe it was because you were a kid, Nathan, and a kid was making your decisions for you.”

  He didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t try.

  “Thank you for that, Nathan.” She handed him the sack. “I don’t need this anymore. You probably don’t want it either, but it isn’t mine to dispose of. It never was, just like you were never mine.”

  He watched her walk away before he opened the bag.

  Faded crimson, the number eighty-five, and a tear at the neck from a holding penalty that was never called.

  And what was that in the bottom? A fancy little book with a cloth cover.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tolly pulled her robe tighter around herself. No jersey underneath tonight. No angel songs playing.

  He’d be long gone by now. It was almost nine o’clock. The last flight from Birmingham to New York left thirty minutes ago. She’d checked.

  Kirby wouldn’t be home for at least a couple of hours when the games on the west coast were over, but she couldn’t allow herself to cry. If she started, she might not stop and she wouldn’t let Kirby see her cry. The landline rang again. It was only because she had a teenager dependent on her that kept her from turning the ringer off. It clicked over to the answering machine.

  They had all been calling both p
hones and texting for hours. Lanie, Missy, Lucy. Harris, forty-seven times. Even Luke and Lou Anne had called. There had been some other random calls from people from church, junior league, and such. Some were well-meaning, some were information gatherers. She didn’t have the energy to discern which was which.

  Mercifully, no one had shown up at the door, probably due to Lucy’s calm good sense. She’d probably been holding them off like a little tiger.

  Harris again. “Okay, Tolly,” he said from the machine. “I am not going to call again. You want to lick your wounds. I get that. But I have to know that you are at least physically okay. Text me right now or I am going to break down your door. You know I’ll do it.”

  She sighed. She did know it, but why the drama? Why did he assume he’d have to break down the door, that she wouldn’t open it?

  She picked up her cell phone. “I am okay,” she typed.

  “Okay,” was all he sent back.

  Finally, peace. Well, not peace exactly, not yet.

  Maybe she should go to bed and pretend to be asleep before Kirby got home. In a perfect world, he had remained blissfully ignorant of the day’s happenings. In an imperfect world — and today had certainly proven to be that — a gang of girls would have descended on the football party, telling God knows what. There were probably versions floating around by now of a double suicide and the love child she and Nathan had left behind.

  Not that the real version wasn’t exciting enough. At some point, she’d have to address this with Kirby and that was going to be hard on more than one level — not the least of which that Nathan was gone. Maybe a better parental figure would address it tonight, but hadn’t she earned waiting until morning?

  Yes. She got up and started turning off lights.

  The doorbell rang. It would be Harris; Lucy caved or he defeated her. Might as well get it over with.

  But when she opened the door she found herself looking into chocolate eyes with caramel hair falling in them. He was no longer covered in pumpkin and he held a brown paper bag. The face that would have made a million dollars the first time out looked haunted.

  “I thought you would have gone.” It was the only thing she could think of to say.

  “I thought I would have, too,” he answered.

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked because she wanted to, because she didn’t have to weigh her words anymore. It didn’t matter.

  “I wanted to come here instead. I want to come inside.”

  A simple answer for a simple question. She stood aside. He entered and she closed the door behind him. He didn’t ask to sit and she didn’t offer.

  “I want to tell you something about anger, Townshend,” he said.

  Oh, by all means, enlighten me. You ought to know, she would have said at another time. But this wasn’t another time. This was get it done and over time — whatever it was.

  “Hot anger won’t allow you to listen. Cold anger will. It might keep you from processing right away, but the words get through.”

  Not sure where he was going, she nodded. “Ice can be a friend. I know that.”

  “I was cold angry today. But I heard you. Then I tried to recall things you’ve been trying to tell me when I have been hot angry. I think I got most of it.”

  “And what is the temperature of your anger now?” she had to ask.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know that I am angry, though I probably should be, at least at myself. Here’s the thing. I am sorry. I was wrong to blame you for my injury and I began to wonder what else I’d been wrong about. I decided it was a lot — just about everything. And for the record, I had decided that before I read your diary.”

  “I preferred to think of it as a journal,” she said.

  “Yeah?” Nathan smiled a little. “I guess that’s a classier version of diary so that would have been what you had. Why didn’t you show it to me a long time ago?”

  She shrugged. “You wouldn’t have read it. That, or you would have accused me of manufacturing it after the fact.”

  “I wish I could deny that,” he said.

  “You could,” Tolly said. “But that wouldn’t be true and that’s not who you are.”

  Nathan said, “I hate myself a little right now and I cannot tell you the shame I feel. I thought you were a terrible person, but that I was going to love you anyway. I thought that was noble of me.”

  The pain in his eyes was like daggers in her heart. She did not want him to hurt, no matter what. Tolly’s heart turned over, but she refused to let it hope. This was probably just tying up loose ends before moving on. No amount of tidying up would help her move on, but if he needed it, she’d do it; she’d say what he needed her to say.

  “All along, I was the terrible person, not to mention stubborn beyond belief. I refused to see the goodness right in front of me — how you put Kirby first, the love and kindness you show everyone — the love and kindness you tried to show me and I fought.” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry is all I’ve got to give you, besides my love. You’ve always had that, but it’s not much good to either of us without the regret for my mistakes.” He smiled then — not a big happy smile, but a warm, sweet, sad smile. “You have that regret now and only you can decide if the love is still worth having.”

  Her heart lifted and captured the hope it had been searching for. “Your mistakes do not begin to equal mine.”

  “Shh.” For the first time, he touched her. He placed his finger to her lips. “Past. Gone.” He closed his eyes. “When I think about some of the things I said to you — ”

  And it was her turn to place her finger against his lips. “Shh. Past. Gone.”

  He covered her hand with his own and brought it to his cheek.

  “What about New York?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m not going. I have been doing some fence mending, making sure I still had a job before I came here. I’ve also been making damn good and sure that everyone in this town understands you didn’t cost me anything. You will take no lip about that from anyone. I’m going to stay here and teach English, coach my team, and, I hope, be the man who trusts and loves the Townshend of the here and now. If you can’t let me be that man, I understand, but I am still going to stay here and answer my calling.” He hesitated. “Do you think there is any chance I can be that man?”

  A different woman might have made it hard for him, tested him, told him she needed time to be sure. But she wasn’t a different woman and she’d waited long enough.

  They both had.

  “All I’ve ever known how to do is love you,” she said. “That’s a done deal. But I’ve got a calling too. I have to make a family for a half grown boy who’s still going to need me for a while. Do you think you can be part of that?”

  “Oh, Townshend.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “You are wrong. He’s not going to need you for a while. He’s always going to need you and you’ve already made a family for him. And if you will let me be part of that, I swear I won’t screw it up.”

  It never occurred to her not to trust the joy that washed over her or the smile he delivered up.

  “You have a brown bag,” she said.

  “I do.” He held it out.

  “Is there a jersey inside?”

  “There might be. But not a fancy little book. I’m going to keep that.”

  When she opened it, she expected to see crimson, but what she found was Merritt High Bobcat blue.

  “What in the world?” She lifted it out. Number eighty-two. No name on the back. It was a tiny bit smaller than the jersey she’d had so long. “Isn’t this Will Adcock’s jersey? Why would I want a second string running back’s jersey?”

  And he laughed a laugh of joy, relief, and promise. It was a beautiful sound.

  “You really are a football mom. Yeah, th
at’s Will’s number and he probably isn’t going to be second string next year. But that’s not his jersey. It’s mine.”

  She clutched it to her. “Yours? From high school?”

  “Mine.” And he finally took her in his arms. “This is our home and this is the jersey I want to peel off you on regular basis.”

  “We’ve got until the games on the west coast are over,” she said.

  “Yeah?” He took her hand and led her down the hall. “All right, then.”

  Epilogue

  Nathan and Tolly could have been at the football game in person, but they were snuggled on the sofa in Missy’s sunroom, awaiting kickoff.

  For most of Alabama, the turkey, the jellied cranberry sauce, and the pecan pie was no more than a prelude to the real event of Thanksgiving weekend — the Iron Bowl. Many — even those who did not reside in the Southeastern Conference — lauded the annual matchup between the University of Alabama and Auburn University as the biggest rivalry in college football. The stadium was always full to capacity with those lucky enough to have tickets. For the ticketless, the Iron Bowl parties were as thick as dots on a 1983 computer printout.

  An Iron Bowl party entailed gathering to watch the game on television, eat, drink, and argue about what the outcome was going to be. At the end, there would be gloating. At some Iron Bowl parties there would be fighting and policemen. This would not happen at the Bragg house — at least it hadn’t yet.

  Though Harris Bragg could have had excellent tickets, he preferred his Iron Bowl experience in the comfort of his home, with a TV in every room, first-rate food, beer, and friends — mostly Alabama fans, but with enough Auburn fans thrown in to make it interesting. Much to Missy’s disdain, he required Chex Mix, pigs in a blanket, and cheese dip made with Velveeta and Rotel. It was a superstitious thing that he wouldn’t talk about — though Tolly knew the year Aunt Mary Alice hadn’t made the Chex Mix, Alabama had lost.

  Missy wasn’t about to let a little thing like being one rough ride across a railroad track away from being flat on her back in a delivery room stop her from having a nacho bar with three kinds of homemade chili. Harris had tried to talk her out of having the party this year, or to at least have it catered. He had lied and said he no longer considered it bad luck to not have the retro snacks that she considered, if not beneath her contempt, not worthy of her time and cooking skills.