I choked up a little at her thoughtfulness. “You’ve really planned this out.”
“I made you go to Fan Day without telling you what we were doing and that was dumb of me. Let’s try this, Daisy. I won’t care if it doesn’t work and we have to leave.” She tugged my hand. “Let’s try it.”
And about 45 minutes later, because she drove really fast, we were pulling up to Woodsmen Stadium. It was busier than it had been last spring, when we had snuck in to go to the gym, but still nowhere near the Fan Day crowd. Not yet, anyway, but it was going to be packed soon, with people, cars, tailgating…ok. It was ok. I was ok. “Ready?” Tatum asked.
I breathed. I let my heart beat, because it wasn’t really going to hurt me. “I’m ready.” We walked through the parking lot and back to the special “Authorized Personnel Only” door. The last time I had seen it was when Lyle the security guard had been escorting me out through it.
“Watch,” Tatum said, and put her phone to her ear. “We’re here,” she said, and a moment later, Lyle himself opened the door for us.
“Well, hello there, Tatum and Daisy.” He gestured us in. “Right this way.”
“Lyle and I have come to an understanding,” she told me as we entered.
“No more setting up all those disturbing altars, and she can come and visit if she calls first,” he explained.
“Altars to what?” I asked. “Tatum?”
She was forging ahead. “Ok, we need to stay out of the way of the players, right? You don’t want Knox to see you and want to sex you up when he should have his mind on the game.” I saw Lyle’s eyebrows go up. “Knox Lynch is Daisy’s boyfriend. You can spread the word, Lyle,” she confided to him.
“I already heard that around,” he answered. “He’s always been quiet, but I always liked him, too,” he told me.
I nodded. “Heard it around from who?” I asked, but Tatum was pulling me into an elevator.
“We’ll go to the top floor and look down from my dad’s box. You can see if you think it will work for you,” she said to me.
“Have fun, and no fake blood today,” Lyle called as the elevator doors closed.
Tatum told me about coming to the stadium when she was a little girl and leaving with different cheerleaders, the Woodsmen Dames. “I thought they were coming for sleepovers to be friends with me. It was only when I got older that I realized my dad was a huge slut, screwing everyone who walked by,” she said. “But the Dames were mostly nice women.” We walked down a carpeted hall to her father’s luxury box. “Check it out. It’s Seduction City,” she said. The box was decorated very brothel-esque, with red walls and mirrors, black satin and black leather.
“It’s…” I searched for something to say.
“Gross,” Tatum finished. “But come.” She pulled me to the tall glass windows overlooking the green field.
“Wow,” I breathed. This was where he played, where Knox shone. It was enormous and overwhelming. But it was also very beautiful.
“There are players down there now,” she pointed out, and I looked vainly for my player. “Are you going to tell him that you’re here to watch?”
“I will after it starts so he won’t know until the game is over. I don’t want him to be thinking about me.” He would worry, I thought.
“I’m sure he’s already thinking about you.” She nudged me. “I saw the beard burn on your boobs.”
“Tatum!” But I was glad she was embarrassing me, because it was a welcome distraction from the millions of racing worries I was having. “I don’t know about being here during the game. All this,” I said, and gestured to the thousands of seats that would be filled with screaming fans.
“Ok, then I know where to go.” The hallway wasn’t empty when we came out; people were starting to arrive. We walked now to an office with giant furniture, football-player sized chairs and couches. “This is the scouting director’s office and he’s my dad’s friend. I swear, we’re allowed to be here,” Tatum said. She opened a mini-fridge. “He did mention that I couldn’t drink.” She pulled out a bottle of wine.
“It’s ten AM,” I said, and replaced the bottle. “No.”
We hung out in the office and she managed to get some more details about the sex stuff from me, although I kept it from her as much as I could. She was relentless. She also gave me some unsolicited, yet fascinating advice about going down on him, which she demonstrated on her thumb. “I’m guessing it would be bigger. How much bigger?” she asked me speculatively, but I didn’t answer that one.
We had tuned to the Channel 67 pre-game coverage in the background on the huge TV on the wall and gradually we turned all our attention to that. When the game started, we switched to the national broadcast, but Tatum muted it and put on the radio on her phone so we could listen to Herb and Buzz, the local Woodsmen announcers. They were thrilled and excited, like always, and in fact said they were flipping their lids over the first home game of the season. The camera rolled down the sidelines as Buzz gave an injury report.
“There he is!” Tatum said excitedly, but she meant Nico, not Knox. Then she remembered that she wasn’t going to care about him anymore. “I mean, there are all the players,” she amended. The camera stayed on Knox for a moment and he didn’t glare at it, looking like he wanted to kill it. Instead, he held up two fingers and moved them up and down slightly.
“What is that, a peace sign? Knox Lynch wants peace in the game? That’s weird,” Tatum said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, but I knew what he was doing. It wasn’t a peace sign—those were bunny ears, and they were for me. My heart did something funny, and it wasn’t due to the anxiety.
I wanted to see him in person. “Tatum, let’s go try the box.”
She jumped up. “Seriously? Awesome! You’re going to love it, Daisy, I swear!”
Woodsmen Stadium was one of the smallest in the league, but our fans were known as the loudest, and the place was rocking. The noise reached into the private elevator and the hallway outside the boxes as a thundering vibration. I glanced at Tatum. “We’ll close the windows to the field,” she said quickly. “It’s what my dad does when he brings women up here to have sex with them,” she continued, as she opened the door to the box. “He doesn’t want to put on a show.”
“Um, where does he do that? It?” I asked, needing to know before I picked a place to sit. It turned out that Tatum wasn’t sure, so we put a towel over the cushions on the couch, just in case. The game started and we watched and listened to Buzz do the call and Herb do the color commentary. Knox was playing well, not getting hurt. I could do this. Gradually, slowly, I edged my way over until I was at the glass overlooking the field. Tatum helped me open the windows and the roar of the crowd came in, making me step back for a moment before I walked forward again to take a picture of my view. I sent it to Knox. “I’m here,” I wrote. “I’m with Tatum in her dad’s box.” I knew he wouldn’t see it until after the game, but I also wrote, “Be careful. Good luck,” because even watching him from this far away was painful. You could still hear the crashing of bodies on the field and every time, it made my stomach lurch.
The game took forever—nothing had ever seemed so long. “Daisy? Can you let go of my hand for one minute?” Tatum asked as the fourth quarter neared the end. “I just want to ice it for a bit.”
I tore my eyes away from the field to look at where I was gripping her fingers. “What? Oh, my God! I’m so sorry!” I immediately let go. “I didn’t mean to hold so hard. I didn’t realize I was doing that.”
“It’s ok. It let me know how scary this was for you,” she said, shaking her hand. “You were even more scared than I was when I streaked through that men’s prison yard, and that was really bad.”
“What? Wait, that was holding! Where’s the flag?” I yelled down at the field. It felt more effective to do that in person rather than yelling at the TV screen.
The game ended with the Woodsmen barely hanging on for a win, and Knox had played almost every mi
nute. He had done great and now that it was over and I saw him walking off the field, I could breathe fully again. Tatum and I stayed up in the box as the crowd started to clear out and the Woodsmen Dames and mascots put on one last dance. Then she pulled me to my feet, using her other, un-mangled hand. “Come on. I know where to wait for them. I mean, him. Where you can wait for Knox and I’ll just hang out there, too, while the other players come out, but I won’t be waiting for anyone in particular.”
Lyle the security guard let us into a lounge, kind of a fancy lobby. There were a lot of other women and their kids hanging out there. “Wives and GFs,” Tatum mouthed at me. She pointed at my chest, visible in my V-neck. “You’re blotching again.”
I covered it with my hand, and we sat in the corner and watched the kids run around. One tiny boy kept trying to escape by running out the door. I felt for that little guy. I wanted to run out, too, even after I got the message from Knox that told me how glad he was that I was there, and directed me to wait exactly in the room where Tatum and I were sitting. Players slowly started to trickle out from the locker room to meet the people waiting for them.
“Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. Don’t make a big deal of this, don’t freak out,” Tatum suddenly hissed.
“What? Me?” I followed her eyes. “Oh…”
“Well, I’ll be. If it isn’t Miss Dixie Belle and friend,” Nico Williams said. “It’s Poppy, right?”
“Um, I’m Daisy,” I answered. Tatum was just glaring.
“That’s right, Daisy. And what brings you ladies here today?” Nico asked. “Another workout?” He grinned at us, but it was equally distributed between me and Tatum. Nothing in particular for her.
“We’re here for Knox Lynch,” Tatum said angrily. “He’s Daisy’s boyfriend. No one is waiting to see you.”
“That’s a shame.” He turned the smile fully on her and in less than the blink of an eye, she was smiling right back at him. “But maybe it’s for the best, since our one night out did end with you robbing me and running off.”
“I explained to you that it was an emergency and that I had put your wallet in my shoe by mistake,” she snapped, and my heart sank. I was the reason that it hadn’t worked out with him last spring?
Nico just shrugged indifferently and Tatum’s smile fell. “So you’re here for Knox,” he said, looking at me. “I’ll be damned. You’re the bunny?”
“What?”
“We all heard him talking to a woman before we went into a team meeting and that was what he called her. We’ve been giving him shit ever since. Leon, Gunnar, come over here. This is Daisy, Knox’s girlfriend.”
Giant men started approaching from every direction. “No…” I told them faintly.
“Daisy.” Thank goodness, there was the giant man I had been waiting for. His hair was wet from the shower and he was already frowning, right at Nico Williams.
I looked him over carefully as he walked to me. I didn’t immediately see any damage from the game, but I was going to check him when we got home, every inch of him. Then I turned red and thought about the two of us naked. “Good game,” I told him. I put out my hand, like he could shake it.
He looked at me oddly then took the hand and pulled me, so that he could hug me. “How’d you do? Ok?”
I nodded. I felt very ok, right at this moment. “Did you get hurt?”
“I told you that I don’t even feel it,” he said.
“I told you not to be a filthy liar,” I answered, and I felt the laughter.
“Maybe I got a few dings.”
“Knox, who’s this?” a voice asked behind me.
“This is Daisy McKenzie. She’s a well-known antiquities hunter, like Indiana Jones, kind of,” Tatum said, and she sounded vaguely Russian. I broke away from Knox’s arms to correct the situation.
“I’m Daisy,” I interrupted her. “I’m an art conservator. Of art,” I stressed, so Tatum didn’t get into another discussion about me and dead bodies.
“She’s the bunny,” Nico said, and there were a lot of laughs and hoots.
Knox pulled me back against his body, his hand splayed across my stomach. “Now you guys met her, so you can shut the hell up.”
“We all thought he was a sexless robot who ripped us to shreds in practice,” a lineman I recognized from TV told me. “You made him a human, like Prometheus or something.”
“Who?” Nico asked.
“Man, read a book.”
Knox ignored all that. “Tatum, you still interested in meeting someone?”
She bounced on the balls of her feet. “Of course I’d like to meet someone,” she said loudly. “I’m sure there are plenty of men here who would like to meet me!” She sniffed in Nico’s direction, but he wasn’t paying attention anymore. She watched him closely as he crossed the room to talk to another woman.
“I just saw the guy come out.” Knox directed us over to the smallest man in the room, who still towered over Tatum. “This is Daniel, the placekicker,” he introduced us. “Daniel, this is the woman I’ve been telling you about. The one from the United States, who doesn’t have any accent from any other country.” He gave Tatum a look.
“Hi,” the kicker told her.
“Nice to meet you,” she said glumly, in her regular voice, and I said hello also, in mine. I tugged Knox away to let Tatum work her magic, if she was feeling it. This Daniel was pretty cute, and he was smiling at her, trying to start a conversation. She didn’t seem that interested but I had hope.
“Are you hungry?” I asked Knox. “Tired?”
“Both. How are you really doing?” He rubbed my arms, moving his hands up and down them. “I didn’t think you’d come here.”
“I’m fine,” I told him, which was mostly true. It had been difficult, and it was still hard to be in this room, but I was doing it.
“I ordered new mattresses. They should be on your porch right now.” He held my chin in his palm. “Should we go try them out?” Now he laughed. “You look like you’re thinking about it. Let’s go.”
I tucked myself under his arm and waved to Tatum, pointing to the door to show our intentions. She made a sign of slitting her own throat, so I lost some of my positivity surrounding the kicker’s chances with her.
“There are going to be people outside, the die-hard fans. They wait for us after the games to talk and get autographs,” Knox said.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“Ignore them. Walk to the truck.”
“Hm,” I commented.
He slowed down his pace. “You think I should stop?”
“It’s up to you. I mean, if I waited out there to meet you, I would be sorry if you walked by.”
He stopped and put his hands on my waist. “But I wouldn’t walk by you. I’d keep going into the basement and wander around the library to try to see you again.”
“Is that what you did?” I asked, amazed.
He held up two fingers in a peace sign. A bunny sign. “Maybe.”
I took his hand and put it to my cheek. “Maybe I kept going to the basement, every day, hoping I’d run into you, too.”
“Did you?” Knox sounded incredulous. “Really? No.”
“Why wouldn’t you believe that?”
He paused. “I guess it does shock me a little, what we’re doing right now. When I woke up the other day, with you all snuggled up into my side, I just lay there for a while and watched you. I was almost late to practice because I wanted to stay.” He bent and kissed me, and I heard a whistle and jerked away. Two other players had emerged into the hallway with us and were grinning. I put my face back into Knox’s shirt.
“I’ll do autographs if you hold my hand,” he suggested.
I hung back instead, watching him talk a little and sign some jerseys, hats, and t-shirts. Most of the people in the crowd acted pleasantly surprised that Knox was talking to them. He even took a few pictures and ended up holding a baby, and the look of shock and horror on his face made me laugh pretty hard.
&nbs
p; “Please tell me what’s funny,” Tatum said, darting out of the stadium behind the Woodsmen quarterback. “Anything to wake me up after getting stuck talking to Daniel the Dipshit.”
“He was bad? What was wrong with him?”
She made an exaggerated yawn. “Boring. So boring! I ended up having to say that I had to go get tested for leprosy to get away.”
“Tatum…”
“Did you happen to see Nico leave?” She peered around me into the parking lot.
“No, but from what he said before, it sounds like it was my fault that things didn’t work out between you. You only left the bar that night when we all went out because I couldn’t handle it. Otherwise—”
“That wasn’t why.” She sighed. “If he had been interested in me, really interested, he would have understood. We went back and forth a few times after that night and it was pretty clear what he wanted from me, and if I wasn’t there to give it to him, he was busy looking for an alternative.” Tatum nodded. “Yeah, Club Boom Boom. Whatever, Nico Williams! Friends come before a date, and I don’t give one single shit about him.” But she kept looking around the players’ cars.
I hugged her. “Tatum, you keep telling me I’m a lucky girl. I am, because you’re my friend.”
She looked up at the sky and held her index fingers under her eyes. “Daisy! What are you doing, making me cry in the stadium parking lot?” She sniffed, loudly. “I’m stopping by making myself think happy thoughts about Nico’s car tires exploding on the highway, if someone had happened to come out here and overinflated them while everyone was distracted by the game.”
“Tatum!”
“I didn’t,” she assured me, then mumbled something that sounded like, “Not yet.”
“Knox and I are going to get something to eat,” I decided. I had been too nervous all day to let food cross my lips. “We want you to come.”
The Big Hit Page 22