Claiming The Cowboy

by Leslie North

  Marcus’s gut hardened at the patronizing endearment, meant to soften the blow of what he suspected everyone in the room was thinking—that his best football days were behind him, that his injuries weren’t worth his contract or his space on the roster, and that his future with the Rogues hinged on how much he kissed Sterling’s ass.

  One sideways glance at Bana confirmed it. His coach’s glare said tread lightly or Sterling will find someone who will.

  Marcus dialed himself back. “I’m not a hundred percent yet, but I will be. My shoulder’s stronger every day, and I’ve never had a better group of guys out there protecting me. I can get us there. I know I can. But you gotta let me do what I do best. And I can’t do that when I’m wired.”

  His gaze drifted to the woman across from him. Her eyes, rimmed with nearly as much dark smudge as the eye black swiped on his cheeks to cut the stadium glare, challenged him. Not in a lineman-out-for-the-QB kind of way, but softer, more open to interpretation. He couldn’t imagine how smart someone had to be to pull off this level of tech, but football was a game of instinct. And she was in his house.

  “Numbers aren’t the way to greatness,” he added, more to her than anyone. His voice came out gentler than he intended. Losing his edge wouldn’t help him make his point.

  “Numbers may not be the way to greatness,” said Sterling, “but thanks to the unrelenting media cycle, every league team has the insurance companies breathing fire up their backsides to reduce liability. Rogues are no exception. We show them hard evidence we’re attempting to mitigate injuries—especially concussions— and we save that chunk of change for the draft.”

  Sterling’s words spread through Marcus’s body like a toxin, poisoning receptors and memories of the game he loved, the game that had saved him, twisting his path into nothing more than a string of decisions designed to chase money.

  “So this is a financial decision? Screw the players. Pretty soon we’ll all be playing grab-ass touch football and yanking flags.”

  “King,” Bana warned.

  “No, Coach. No. Last year, I put up the best numbers of any quarterback in the league. Every day, every snap, I lay my health, my life, my future on the line out there for everyone in this room. I’ve earned the right to speak my piece. For all those guys out there.” Marcus pointed toward the locker room.

  “Those guys out there are on board, Marcus,” said Bana. “Colin has been on the tech since you went on injured reserve.”

  “Eggert hasn’t earned starting QB. He doesn’t put the team first.”

  “And you do?” Sterling pulled a swig of his on-the-rocks, 80-proof whiskey past his lips without a flinch. He swirled his glass again, shuffling ice cubes in the same haphazard way he shuffled free-agency players. “You give slick speeches, Marcus, but are you really putting the team first? Seems to me a man unwilling to admit he’s losing his edge might be in it for himself first.”

  Marcus felt the wind knocked out of him, third-down blitz, three hundred forty–pound lineman. Silence took hold like the pin-drop hush of a stadium after a player goes down and doesn’t get up. He glanced down the line of those assembled.

  Only Claire had the courage to make eye contact.

  He breathed through the blow, his defenses mounting a counter-attack.

  “The minute you pull your heads out of your wallets or calculators or whatever the hell is dictating this decision, you’ll realize the only way to that Super Bowl ring this year is with me leading this team. No Eggert. No wires. No Caltech geniuses that know zip about the game. Me.”

  Sterling stood, leaving his drink to sweat into oak. He pocketed his manicured hands and approached Marcus. A wash of cedar and spice and money eclipsed Marcus’s stench.

  “This is non-negotiable, Marcus. Work with Miss Wynifred on the tech or Colin starts next week.”

  The full weight of the day’s game pressed in on him. Two sacks. Two blows to a still-healing rotator cuff. His shell felt like a punching bag. Nothing compared to his insides.

  Marcus glanced at Bana, who nodded toward the locker room. Bana had his back. Marcus knew that. He also knew that a little respect went a long way. Someone special taught him that once.

  “I’m passionate, sir.”

  Sterling smiled, a hollow expression that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know, son. That passion is what drives this team. Think of this as quantifying that passion. You’ll come to see things my way.”

  Right.

  Marcus didn’t nod. He didn’t swallow or glance away or do anything to otherwise indicate compliance. He grabbed his gear and exited the room as he had entered—in command of his play, in command of his emotions. It wasn’t until he reached the darkened hallway near the abandoned weight room that he heaved every single bit of his gear against the cinder-block wall.

  Marcus Kingston, so poised on the field, so calm during media interviews, left the conference room and promptly lost his shit. In the darkened hallway, Claire felt like an intruder in the private depths of someone’s psyche. She had followed him to bridge the gap, to explain that they were on the same side of this technology, that the software would do amazing things if he would allow it, that together they could make it perfect, but she stalled in this isolated space, unable to pull her eyes away from the mesmerizing display of testosterone and raw physical release.

  Claire froze, unsure of her next move.

  He paced the hallway, intermittently bracing and pushing against the walls like an old-school pong game. His chest rose and fell in exaggerated exhales, the only noise to fill the space until Claire’s ringtone bleated from her pocket.

  Crap.

  Marcus snapped his attention her direction. His expression fell into shadow, but she’d watched him enough on the two-story-tall media screen after a bad play to know that his mouth pinched in sharp angles and his eyes frosted over when plays backfired.

  She pressed the mute button on her cell, plunging them once again into quiet.

  “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  “Am I going to get a read out on that tomorrow? Blood pressure spike?”

  “Had you been wired, you might have broken the algorithm.”

  Her joke stalled faster than her ability to relate to someone who didn’t reside in the cerebral. Square one. Start at square one.

  “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Claire.”

  “Wynifred. Nothing wrong with my hearing.”

  Nothing wrong with much else, either. Stripped of pads, his muscles were curved, stacked, taut. She didn’t appreciate much about the game—didn’t understand the intelligence coma American audiences entered each Sunday, gathered around their televisions, investing their emotions in an allegiance that mattered little in the bigger picture of life. But no one could deny that an elite athlete in second-skin pants spoke to the baser pleasures of the hypothalamus.

  Marcus Kingston was no exception—mixed race, hair shaved close, eyes a watery blue, everything white on him brilliant against the warm tone of his skin. Not that she would be on the receiving end of that smile. Ever, she guessed.

  “You should get some fluids. Dehydration can have a profound impact on cognition and anxiety levels.”

  He shook his head and gave a caustic laugh.

  “What else you know about me?”

  She didn’t have her results in front of her, but she had earned a doctorate in record time thanks to an eidetic memory. Everything she needed was always in her brain.

  “I know you audibled eleven times, eight of which resulted in a loss of five yards or more. I know the optimum angle of your throwing arm averages forty-two degrees based on distance and accuracy results. Your default scan of the field is close right, far left, then far right, leaving a blind spot close left. And you grind your back molars when you’re assessing the opposing team’s line up on defense.”

  “Mouth guard?”

  “Jumbotron.”

  Marcus nodded, as if allowing the impressive array of statistics to sink
in. He scooped up his pads and cleats and helmet.

  “And my hometown? The neighborhood where I grew up?”

  The question threw her. Not once had she come across that information.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How about the age when I got my first beating? Or how much government assistance my dad believed he missed out on from my mother before he turned me out on the streets? Or the age I finally learned to read?”

  Claire’s chest burned in a slow ache. Suddenly her stats didn’t seem so impressive.

  “See, not everything I leave out on that field can be measured in heart rates or blood pressure or the goddamned oxygen level in my blood. You cannot quantify drive. You cannot know that I change plays at the line of scrimmage so that Rungnir, who has blindness in his left peripheral vision, doesn’t get creamed, or so that Garrick might be considered for the Pro Bowl this year because his father has never once said he was proud of him. Nothing you do will ever inform the choices I make out on that field.”

  “Maybe not. But you’re standing in my way just as much as I’m standing in yours. We work toward the same goal, we both get what we want.”

  “And what is it you want, Miss Wynifred? A fat bank account? A title at some Ivy League school? People to notice you for something other than your ugly green skirt?”

  Had she been wired, body temperature tracked at her forehead would have spiked, her palms would have registered perspiration, and sensors might have picked up increased activity in her occipital lobe, where she imagined herself giving the walking ego of the Portland Rogues a swift kick between the goal posts.

  Also, her skirt was red.

  “You were right about one thing. I know zip—less than zip— about this game. But you, King? You know even less about people.” Claire reversed course down the long hallway, mindful that he watched every nuance of her retreat. “Training facility, tomorrow. Eight a.m. sharp.”

  “Tomorrow’s my day off.”

  “Take Monday off, and you can count on a day off Sunday, too.”

  Five steps. Six. Seven. Damn, she didn’t remember the hallway being this long.

  “Nice to meet you, ClaireBear.”

  Without breaking stride, Claire fired back, “Call me that again and all the other insignificant data I lifted from the sensors in your pants become common knowledge.”

  Claire rounded the corner to the elevators, broke into a smile, and hi-fived the troll-like Rogue mascot painted on the wall.

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