The 25 Men of Christmas
Page 38
“Oliver,” she starts, her voice wavering. And I’ll be goddamned if I don’t want to kick my ass six ways to Sunday for being part of the reason that waver’s there in the first place. “I’m… I… After New York…”
She trails off, losing her words as she stares at me helplessly. Like she doesn’t know where to start either. I let her have the strained moment of silence, staring at her with what I hope are comforting eyes. I’d be foolish not to recognize they might actually just be desperate.
We’re pulled from the awkward standoff at the sound of a throat clearing behind us. Gemma spins around and my head jerks up to find the rest of the team shoving their way down the hall, every single one of them looking as contrite and apologetic and just goddamn gutted as I feel. Almost a little too late, I realize someone turned the music off at the front of the house, and now there are just twenty-six of us standing around in an awkward silence.
“You know, there was a part of me that really thought this was going to work out.”
She’s the first to break the silence, but her words only cause chaos to erupt around us as the guys fight to push closer to us, some of them shouting, some of them grunting, and all of them protesting the entire time.
“Gemma, I’m the one who found the contract and overreacted,” I can hear Lee say even though I can’t see him over the heads of our taller teammates.
“We shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.” That’s Wolfie, I’m pretty sure.
“Fucking sorry—”
“Don’t know why we thought—”
“You’re as much a part of the team—”
“We don’t deserve—”
“Stop!” Cyrus bellows over our teammates, shoving his way through until he’s the only thing standing between Gemma and the rest of the team. Her shoulders slump, and it physically hurts me to not step up behind her and wrap her in my arms.
“Gemma, we’ve fucked this up.” He points to himself and turns to wave his arm toward the team. “There’s not much we can say beyond that.”
Yes, the fuck there is.
My lips fall open to protest, but he shoots me a hard glance over her shoulder. My jaw clenches, and he turns his hard stare on her once again. “Actually, you know what, yeah there is. There’s a whole hell of a lot more that we can say.
“Like the fact that we stood on the sidelines in your life for two years while you suffered through what had to have been the least fulfilling relationship in the world. We wanted you, every single fucking one of us, but we respected—still respect—you. You’re part of the team, and the team always came first.
“But things change, Gemma. And you dumping that asshat you were with before us? That changed everything. Suddenly being with you was possible, and you gave us truly the best fucking Christmas gift ever by letting us have that—even if it was just one day at a time. Every single one of those days was perfect, you know that right?
“They were perfect because they were days that we were spending with you. And maybe you think that doesn’t matter because we’ve always spent so much time together anyway, but it was different. It still is different. Because you gave us a part of yourself that we clearly didn’t deserve but wanted anyway.”
“We’re still a team,” she grumbles when he finally stops fucking talking, and I can’t help the laugh that slips out at the grouse in her tone.
Cyrus’ eyes flash in my direction, and I hold my arms up in the air in front of me, cautiously taking a step forward to lay a hand on her arm. To my surprise, she doesn’t immediately jerk away.
“Cyrus isn’t saying we’re not still a team—fucking of course we are. That’s never going to change.” She starts to protest, but I hold my hand up to stop her. “We’re a team in a different way now, too.”
“We’re just a team, standing in front of a girl, asking her to love us,” someone pipes in from the back, and I swear to fucking god… I’m pretty sure it’s Hunter, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to commit a felony tonight.
“She likes the Tom Hanks ones, dumb ass,” someone pitches in.
Oh no no no no no no. I do not need this to go off the rails right now. Not when her posture was finally starting to soften. Not when there was a light at the end of this bleak fucking tunnel we’ve found ourselves in.
“Edric, you still got those stupid fucking cue cards around here somewhere?”
“Guys!” Cyrus bellows again, and the hallway goes dead fucking silent again. I hang my head in my hands and contemplate whether I could somehow murder the team and then go off the grid to live the life of a reclusive mountain man or some other shit.
The silence lasts all of a half-second, though, before Gemma’s snickering fills the hall. My head snaps up in time to see hers fall against the wall as she collapses against it, hands wrapping around her middle as her snickers give way to full blown laughter. Cyrus and I exchange worried looks, and he takes another half step toward her.
“Goddammit, Cara,” she says when she finally starts to calm down. She swipes her fingers under her eyes, wiping away the smudges of her eye makeup. “Is that why the Say Anything song kept playing?”
This is it.
“Listen, it didn’t seem feasible to try to get you all the way to the Empire State Building to reenact Sleepless in Seattle, we had to make do with what we had.”
“And that was the music from Say Anything and some Love, Actually cue cards?” she asks, another stray giggle falling from her lips as she shakes her head.
My heart hammers in my chest, and I start to reply but she cuts me off as she looks over the crowd of guys standing behind our captain. “Oh, and I guess Hunter’s Notting Hill thing, too…”
“You sure know how to ruin a grand romantic gesture, don’t you?” I joke, and she turns her attention back toward me with a small smile.
“Listen, I hate to break it to you guys, but you’re no Tom Hanks…”
“We’re better,” Cyrus interjects as he steps forward, hooking his hands around her waist and pulling her close. “Because there are twenty-five of us, and we love you, Gemma Mitchell. And there’s just no fucking way Tom Hanks could ever compete with that.”
She sniffles once and then says the sweetest fucking words I’ve ever heard. “I love you all, too.”
Forty-Eight
Epilogue
Six months later…
Standing on the sidelines with the coaching staff during the championship game is one of the most nerve-wracking things I’ve ever experienced.
Way more nerve-wracking than agreeing to twenty-five first dates with a dirty Advent twist.
Also, a thousand times more nerve-wracking than starting full-blown relationships with twenty-five men at once after we worked out the bullshit from that hockey-incident-that-shall-not-be-named.
Being here is exhilarating, too, though.
I glance over my shoulder and into the stands. Cara and Dad are on the front row, just like they have been for every playoff game so far this season. This is the big one, though, and they were just as nervous this morning for me and my harem of boyfriends—Cara’s words, not mine—as I was.
A hiss rises through the crowd, and I whip back around to stare at the field, heart in my throat over the fear that one of my guys is hurt. A smug smile crosses my face at the sight of Edric pulling himself away from that same stocky little fuck that knocked the crap out of him during the last post-season.
I draw a deep breath and turn my focus back toward the game. But my heart beats in my throat with every possession, with every turnover, with every pass and kick as the minutes tick down slowly. Scrums feel like they last an eternity, and I swear my heart actually comes to a full halt every single time Lee kicks the ball.
I’m sure I look like a fucking mess, too. My hair’s piled on top of my head in my signature messy bun, but that hasn’t once stopped me from digging my fingers in it and screaming my lungs out at the guys to get their shit together.
We will not lose to the Spartan
s again this year. Not when the guys have worked so fucking hard for this. Not when I’ve spent six months making sure they’re in top playing condition. I’m seconds away from going into cardiac arrest when the guys score again, leaving me screaming and jumping up and down on the sidelines.
In my two-and-a-half years of being with the Storms, I’ve never really seen Marty Kringle lose his cool on the sidelines—but those last points widen the margin enough that the Spartans don’t stand a chance of catching up in the last two minutes of the game.
Coach and I scream side-by-side as the seconds tick down. The guys who aren’t on the field start to huddle around with us and the rest of the coaches. The second the clock runs down completely, and we’re off, running toward the middle of the field to meet the rest of the Storms.
I lose track of whose arms I’m wrapped in and whose lips I’m kissing in all the excitement. But the one thing I never lose track of is how right it feels to be on the field with my guys, celebrating a win that they’ve been working like dogs toward for two years.
And yeah, maybe when Cyrus winks at me over the shoulder of the reporter he’s talking to, I go a little starry-eyed. My hands fall to my hips, and I turn in a slow circle, taking in the sight of my guys—my Storms—congratulating each other, shaking hands with Spartans’ players, and giving tired, sweaty press interviews.
“What changed this year?” I hear the reporter ask Cyrus, and our eyes meet over the reporter’s shoulder one last time.
Everything could change tomorrow, he’d said.
“We found our good luck charm.”
Cassie James
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Christine Kelsey
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Drop of Death
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The 25 Men of Christmas