Wired (The Solomon Brothers Series Book 1)

by Leslie North

  “I build him up, he replaces me. Then where would I be?”

  “You’d still be Marcus Kingston. The guy who built a gym so kids on the streets would have a place to go but told no one about it. The guy who gives his body and his heart to this community every moment of every day just so they can have a little escape from their lives one day a week. The guy who shook my brother’s hand in Afghanistan one week before he died and told him he was the real hero, which is far more than I ever told him when I had the chance.”

  Marcus heard her tears before he saw them, tangled in her throat, mixed with her words of self-reproach and regret. He still didn’t trust his instincts with her, but not because he couldn’t guess when she needed him. They volleyed hot then cold, lit then detached, but his greatest fear came not from pushing her too far, but not pushing far enough, because he would always be that sixteen-year-old with a smoking gun in his hand.

  He stood and pulled her into his arms. She draped against him without hesitation and brought with her the rain and the soft hint of flowers—real flowers—that gave him hope. Hope that there was a life beyond the game that had saved him. Hope that he wouldn’t fall back to old friends and familiar habits. She made him want to be better, to be worthy of an adoring love like she had for her brother.

  “He knew. With the love you have for him, he knew.”

  She made a deal of drying the spot she’d created on his shirt. He didn’t care. He wanted a hundred more just like them, all meant for him. Her eyes were wet and round and vulnerable, her lips already parted to accept him. He wanted her, more than ever, but not like this. Not on her wave of grief.

  “Tell Colin to be there tomorrow, first thing. We’ll do this together.”

  Claire nodded.

  He kissed her. Not a chaste gesture in the middle of a downtown park or a curiosity sated, but a possession of her lips that left little to interpretation. He loved that she tasted familiar, if slightly salty from her tears. Her answering counter-pressure spun his head, suspended time.

  When the heat spiraled to his groin and the thought of being inside her made his palms itch, he pulled back.

  “I want you, Claire. But I know you won’t cross that line until you’ve analyzed it and put it in a spreadsheet and written a program about it.”

  She smiled against his lips. Hot gusts of breath mingled with his, honing his instincts. Her body was dangerously close to outpacing her gifted mind.

  “Do what you need to do.” He brushed a thumb across her sodden cheek and kissed her forehead. “I’ll wait.”

  Marcus left her apartment. It wasn’t until he reached ground floor that his stomach turned leaden. Training Colin meant speeding up Marcus’s inevitable departure. And falling in love with Claire was sure to be his downfall.

  Four days into Marcus and Colin’s combined sessions, Claire struck the perfect balance between old-school films and cutting-edge VR. Marcus had scoured old tapes for plays to address Colin’s problem areas—namely failing to relax in the pocket and allowing his offense time to do their job—plays that materialized late to great output, while Claire crafted VR overlays with the existing players. At each sequence, Marcus welcomed Claire’s suggestions and took Colin through a methodical verbalization of Marcus’s thought process, often replaying the footage fifty times or more.

  The most extraordinary transformation, however, was in the dynamic between Marcus and Colin. In the numbers, Claire found tangible evidence that their time together was symbiotic. Colin tapped into the instincts of a great quarterback and produced indisputable gains in problem areas. Marcus, in turn, learned an appreciation for analyzing the finer points of his performance—specifically in details that escaped him because he had always relied solely on instinct. Shoulder injury aside, he was poised for the best games of his career.

  Twice that week over shared meals, Claire had tried to tell Marcus the truth about why Sterling had hired her. He had flown her to Portland, sat her at the end of an impressive, hand-carved Cherry wood conference table and asked her if her tech made it possible to download the talents of one player into another. He promised her the world—her world—if she could make it happen. Train Colin Eggert to be the next Marcus Kingston.

  And she had.

  Under the guise of analyzing Marcus’s game for improvement, she had become the secret weapon that all but effectively made him obsolete and ended his career. She hadn’t counted on feeling responsible along the way. It had been a game. A silly game of football wrapped up in an obscene amount of money better used to fund safer military equipment and hundreds of other worthy causes across the globe.

  Until it wasn’t a game.

  It was Marcus’s life, a life he saw slipping away, and she had provided the grease.

  She took extra time packing her equipment that day at the practice field. Marcus sent Colin on and stayed to help, as he often did. While she secured cords, he snuck up from behind, wrapped his arms around her, and planted a kiss on her neck.

  Claire felt the tingle all the way to her toes.

  “You’re amazing,” he whispered.

  “The trick is the last two rotations. One time cinched around the middle and once to pull the plug through the loop. Never a knot.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She did. But she felt far from amazing. Claire felt like a traitor.

  “There’s nothing you can’t do with this tech. You’re going to revolutionize the way soldiers fight.”

  “It isn’t perfect yet.”

  “There’s too much energy in pursuing perfection. It’s an unobtainable goal.”

  “You don’t understand.” She wriggled from his grasp and began saving files she had already saved, to get distance, to put space around her suffocating guilt. It didn’t work.

  “Then explain it to me.”

  His tone was blustery, the fringe edge of annoyance, like he was ramping up to dispute a ref call. She had less than zero patience left for herself, much less anyone else. Especially someone who equated winning a game to winning at something as important as a military campaign.

  “I had my chance once. And I blew it. I can’t make that mistake again. The tech has to be perfect.”

  “In all the time you’ve worked with me, in all the features you’ve added, the tech hasn’t failed once.”

  “It only takes one bug, one imperfect line of code.”

  “You want to know what I think?”

  “About my tech? Do tell.”

  “I think you’re using my performance as an excuse to not try again. As long as I’m still out on that limb, you don’t have to be.”

  How could she tell him he was already so far along the limb, it had snapped beneath him?

  Her head pounded; her cheeks grew hot. She didn’t want this conversation anymore. She didn’t want this arrangement anymore, with her holding power over his fate. When had it all become so complicated?

  “You’re forgetting one thing,” said Claire, wrapping a USB cord around her hand, choking off her circulation. “Sterling said he would arrange the meeting when and if I proved my results.”

  “Sterling isn’t the only path to the military brass. I shook a lot of hands on my tour of Afghanistan. One call, that’s all.”

  “It’s not ready.”

  “When will it be ready? One more day of casualties is one day too many.”

  Claire’s heartbeat throbbed through her fist. She tried to slide the cord free, but succeeded only in cinching her hand worse and sprouting searing-hot tears, equally ineffective. Her response unearthed, loud and wild, from somewhere dark inside she didn’t recognize.

  “Don’t you think I know that?”

  She dropped to her knees and tried to untangle the mess on her hand through a wash of moisture that made it impossible to focus.

  Marcus knelt beside her. His fingertips were cool. A few twists and the cord that had restrained her loosened then unraveled to her lap.

  “I’ll finish here.” She wa
nted him gone. This wasn’t her. At least not until Clay had the audacity to leave her. He promised he would come back, that he would be careful and stay safe. A promise made should be a promise kept. “Go.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  Another promise no one had the power to keep.

  “Please, Marcus. I just need to be alone.”

  A long moment passed before he stood. “Do what you need to do.”

  He turned and walked away. At the goalpost, he paused.

  “You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, Claire. I’m not even worthy to be playing on the same field in life as you, if we’re being honest here. But I know a little something about fear. It holds you back from greatness, if you let it. It’s time to get in on your game, your glory. No more sidelines.”

  Claire waited until he was out of sight to break down. When she had cried out everything she hadn’t at Clay’s wake and in the days that had followed, when she had purged all the energy inside in a thorough exploration of her failures to date, she curled up on the cool, synthetic grass beneath her and stared at the bold, white line in her vision.

  The sideline.

  8

  “He’s right, you know.” Jo handed Claire a mug of her favorite salted caramel cocoa and picked up her knitting needles. “I’ve been telling you the same thing for ages.”

  The Saturday rain had been relentless. Noah’s Ark relentless. A perfect match to Claire’s mood.

  “It’s different coming from Marcus.”

  “Why? Because he doesn’t understand the geek talk you hide behind when you talk to me? Because he’s the only guy in the history of ever who told you he wanted you then let you decide when and where you planned to deflower him?”

  “Right.” Claire’s tone dripped with sarcasm. “Because that hasn’t been done at least a million times.”

  Jo absently worked her latest creation—a lacy, powder blue scarf. Restrained for her. Her hobby site lauded her most bizarre creations, from octopus hats to Walking Dead dolls.

  “I’ll bet it’s nothing like we imagine. Pro athletes are prime targets for manipulative women looking for a spotlight. After all the bad press, the league has probably threatened them within an inch of their contract. Beyond the intimacy, trust would be huge.”

  “He’s so closed off, so worried I’ll think of him as anything other than Marcus Kingston, quarterback for the Portland Rogues. He won’t talk about his past. Where’s the trust there?”

  “Have you asked him?”

  “Not explicitly. He just changes the subject.”

  “Like you do about Clay? No one wants to go where there’s pain.”

  Jo was the only person who could mention Clay without upsetting her. Claire figured Jo had just as much right to him. Clay had once been madly in love with her. Somehow, Jo was doing better in the grief department.

  “It doesn’t matter, anyway. Once he finds out why I’m really here, he won’t want anything to do with me.”

  “It’s true. You should have told him sooner. But you elevated his game, too. The rest is up to him.”

  Claire watched Jo knit an entire row, mesmerized by the practiced movement of her hands until her eyes blurred and she replayed her last few weeks with a totally different outcome.

  “Maybe I should talk to him,” she said at last.

  “If that doesn’t work, I could always knit him a Sir Galahad.”

  Sir Galahad was code for the codpiece Jo once knitted, complete with retractable hood.

  A deep ripple of laughter originated in Claire’s core and spread through her limbs. She didn’t know how she could have made it through any of this without Jo’s mad skills as a programmer and best friend.

  “We’ll assume extra-large,” Jo added, her eyes alight. “Until confirmation.”

  Claire shoulder-bumped her.

  Jo bumped back.

  Most days and nights, The Hive thumped with heavy bass and a winding cadence of angry lyrics that reflected the attitudes of the kids who came. But everything about this day felt off. On this day, a Sunday when he should have been clocking regimented sleep as game prep, Marcus had paced the halls of his place much of the night until he could no longer stand to look at the memorabilia of the athlete he had become. The athlete who was slipping away.

  At his gym, much like the gym Sol had back in Philly in spirit if not in looks, Marcus found peace. No rap. Just rain, hammering the metal roof in the pre-dawn, washing away his crippling self-doubt.

  His shipment of endorsement shoes for his kids had arrived the week before. Marcus had been so tied up with Claire and Colin, he hadn’t had a chance to distribute them. He spent the better part of the night cinching high tops into Rogues string backpacks and matching his boys’ shoe sizes from their paperwork to locker assignments. Come Monday, after required check-in with his volunteers to ensure the boys attended school that day, they would find a surprise waiting for them. He couldn’t guarantee the two items wouldn’t get them into trouble out on the streets, but he could guarantee they would remember someone cared about them the way Sol had cared about him.

  He had nearly finished when his cell buzzed out a text tone.

  May I come in?

  Claire.

  His body jacked alive immediately, like wind sprints in an electrical storm. By the time he reached the entry door, bolting two steel steps at a time, his excitement had morphed into fear. Hazelwood crime didn’t observe the Sabbath.

  Marcus unlocked the deadbolt, ushered her inside then locked the door again behind them. Words of reprimand stalled on his tongue. On a day when the entire country would see someone else take his place, Claire wore her best homage to the sport, complete with his jersey. Well, her version of it. She had cut his number eleven in half vertically and added skinny denim jacket sleeves. Tights beneath her black skirt sported goalposts. What most caught his eye, however, was the barely-visible dark corset beneath the jersey that lifted her breasts into a visual feast.

  “What are you doing here?” He softened his words by pulling her into a strong embrace.

  “I tried your place first. Then I remember Keane saying you’re here more often than not.”

  Her hair braid dampened his chin.

  “You’re soaked. Let’s get you a towel.” He took her hand and led the way down the stairs and into a laundry room tucked behind a back office. Past a wall of neatly folded towels, he opted to open the running dryer at the end of its cycle. He draped the toasty fabric over her head.

  He expected a smile, an appreciation for instant heat to fight back the morning chill or maybe even thanks. He didn’t expect to see her lips twist into the beginning mask of tears.

  “I’m sorry, Marcus.”

  “For cutting up my jersey? You’re forgiven.”

  He delighted in the smile he elicited.

  “Ain’t never looked that sexy on me.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  Smile for smile, he matched her.

  “Long way for a booty call, Miss Wynifred. What’s on your mind?”

  “I think I made a mistake coming here. Working for Sterling. I can’t help thinking you’d be on that field today if I weren’t here.”

  He stepped closer and put his hand to the back of her neck. “Claire, listen to me. No one has cared about me, not Marcus Kingston MVP, not number eleven, not Heisman candidate, but me, Marcus, since I was fourteen years old. You came along when I needed hope. And you gave me that.”

  “But if I hadn’t agreed—”

  “I wouldn’t be in peak mental condition. No matter what happens, I’ll always be grateful.”

  “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  A vague stab of apprehension buried in his gut. He didn’t want this to be it, for her to tell him she’d decided to end whatever it was between them, so he diverted, a fake hand-off designed to draw attention elsewhere. “Come on. I’ll show you around then we can sit.”

  Claire was a woman of cause. E
quipment wouldn’t impress her, but the philosophy behind the place would. He explained how he selected the kids—mostly referrals from child protective services, school counselors, a few Marcus found hawking stolen goods on street corners—then showed her the pantry of high-quality food and the system run by the boys for keeping it clean and stocked. At the old-school sign-in sheet, she offered to work up a basic program for a tablet check-in system so he could run a report and immediately know times and frequency of the kids’ gym usage.

  It’s possible Marcus fell in love with Claire right then.

  They entered the cage and sat cross-legged on the Hive logo, center mat. He thought she might tell him right then she had decided to keep her distance, focus on saving soldiers instead of saving him. Instead, she asked about the person who cared about him when he was fourteen.

  “This is my spreadsheet,” said Claire. Her way of saying she had to know the truth, the real Marcus, before she made her choice.

  “His name was Solomon Douglas, former Navy man. Boxer. His boy went to a prayer meeting at a church. Hail of bullets hit the windows. Right place, wrong time. In his grief, Sol opened up a gym on the next block. Invitation-only to keep the violence outside. In exchange for food in our bellies, we had to prove ourselves—make the grades, stay off the streets and at home helping our families or at a job. And we had to strive for excellence. Sports. College. Life.”

  “He must have seen something special in you.”

  “To this day, I don’t know what. First time I met him, I stole his wallet. Had a gun shoved in my pants but I was shit-scared to use it. Called him every derogatory name I could think of. He told me I could keep the cash if he could have his wife’s photo out of the plastic sleeve. Said she was what saved him, then he tried to save me. I wouldn’t have it. I took the wallet and ran. Tossed it in a dumpster on the next street.

  “I ran into him a few hours later at a convenience store. He wanted to know why I bought milk with his money instead of drugs. I told him to fuck off, but he must have followed me back to the fire escape I was living under. Every day I’d come back and there’d be a paper sack full of food.”