The Bombshell Effect

by Karla Sorensen

  My chest was heaving, my fist throbbing, and as my blood red vision cleared, I heard the referee say that both Marks and I were ejected from the game. The crowd didn’t boo, though. Up on the giant screens, they showed a replay of his mouth moving, then me ripping his helmet off, followed by a live shot of him with a balled-up, blood-soaked towel against his nose.

  The fans roared.

  With a grim smile, I accepted the back slaps of my teammates as I walked down the tunnel and off the field so that my backup could kneel on the last series, finalizing the win.

  I’d pay for it. Financially, for sure, when the league fined me. When I had to explain to Faith why Daddy got into a fight with another player. But as I showered, ignored reporters, listened to Coach give his post-game speech, I couldn’t bring myself to have the slightest pang of misgiving over what I’d done.

  At that moment, after hours of hearing him talk about her, talk about us, turn it into something ugly, and her into some sort of empty vessel, I had to reckon with the truth that defending Allie’s honor was more important than whatever consequences were headed my way. Maybe she hadn’t seen it. Maybe she’d only catch a highlight and think that I was reacting to a shady late hit.

  But as my car turned the corner to home, hours after I broke Marks’s nose, I saw the moving van in front of Allie’s house.

  She’d seen. She’d definitely seen.

  And now she was running away.

  26

  Allie

  “Here’s what I can’t figure out,” Paige said around a mouthful of ice cream.

  I twisted my spoon in the bottom of my white bowl, eyes staring out at the sound, which was easy because my father’s house in Edmonds had been built with panoramic views of water and trees and white-capped mountain peaks. “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Why did he stay here?” She glanced around. “This house is massive. It was just him, right? He never remarried?”

  Snuggling into the deep couch cushions, I sighed. “Nope. Just him.”

  It wasn’t a truth that made me feel guilty anymore.

  This big house, the one I’d been brought home from the hospital to, was indeed massive. Over five thousand square feet of beautifully decorated, perfectly impersonal space that I could now use as my own hideout. I’d like to think that my father would be okay with it, no matter what drove me there in the middle of the night.

  It wasn’t until we woke late that morning, stumbling down the hallway until we found a coffee machine buried in a cupboard, that Paige had been treated to the multi-million-dollar views from my childhood home.

  What the property lacked in acreage, it made up for in endless stretches of sapphire blue water, diamond dots over the surface from the sun reflecting off it. The tall spears of trees were the only thing that interrupted the view between us and the mountains in the distance.

  It was impossibly beautiful.

  And I could hardly pay attention to it.

  Like a twitch I couldn’t stop, an itch under my skin that never went away, I slid my phone over and tapped on the YouTube app. As it had been since yesterday, the clip of the on-field fight was right on top. I kept the sound off because if Paige had any idea how many times I’d watched it in the past twenty-seven hours, she’d stab the screen out with her ice cream spoon.

  Every action played out in my head before a single image moved on the screen. I’d watched it so many times, to affirm my decision, remind myself what was at stake, and maybe, sort of, because it gave me a sick sense of satisfaction to see Marks bleed his way off the field courtesy of Luke.

  The players lined up.

  Marks swayed in place, almost like he was dancing, straight across from Luke. Others were in motion, but once the ball was snapped, those were the only two I watched. Marks held where he was until the ball was in the air, then he lowered his head like a bull and charged.

  One spin around the tackle, Luke tried to duck out of his path, and boom. They were down.

  That was when my stomach curled around uncomfortably because he was clearly mouthing off as he held Luke down on the field. Even when they were separated, Luke standing up, Marks never got out of his face.

  The whistles were blowing, a bright yellow flag fluttered to the ground, and everything stilled. Or just Luke. The way he held his body reminded me of how the air took on a strange, electric sort of pause before a tornado, with yellow clouds and an unnatural sort of prickle in the air.

  A warning. It was a warning.

  Even though I wanted to look away, I didn’t.

  He launched at Marks, ripping his helmet off as they tumbled to the ground. His fist smashed into Marks’s face once, twice, before they rolled and were separated. They got lost in the shuffle, in the messy shoving and pushing and yelling that erupted on the field from both sides.

  “I like the lake house better,” Paige said quietly, interrupting my hundredth viewing. As though I was a guilty child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, I locked my phone screen and turned it over.

  “Me too,” I agreed. Looking around, I didn’t see any mark of my father. Not in any of it. The master bedroom, large and slightly stale, with a view fit for a king, still sat empty. I’d chosen a guest room down the hall, as had Paige.

  “Why couldn’t we stay there again?”

  I cut her a dry look. “Seriously?”

  Paige batted her eyelashes. I hated how long they were. “Seriously. If you have to go this far to avoid him ...” She tapped a finger against her chin. “I mean, it’s not like you saw him at all last week. Me thinks you’re running scared.”

  My fingers fairly itched to pull up the replay again. See Luke’s grimly satisfied smile as he walked off the field. I wanted to kiss that smile off his face, taste it with my tongue, see if it transferred that same bloodthirsty satisfaction into my body as I imagined it would.

  “That guy, Marks,” I explained. “It’s like his sole purpose was to put on display exactly how much of a distraction I truly am. I gave him every piece of ammunition.” I shook my head. “Or Luke and I did. I know it’s not just my fault.”

  “Damn right, it’s not,” Paige mumbled around her spoon.

  “I just need to let them finish the season without getting in the way.”

  “You weren’t in the way before,” she insisted.

  I lifted an eyebrow.

  “Whatever. I still think the fight was a good thing.”

  “How do you figure?” I held up a hand. “Look how easily that guy got under Luke’s skin. He’s known for being level-headed. The one who keeps the guys in check on the field when things get out of hand. He can’t start breaking noses when someone spouts off about his Sunday night booty call with me,” I said just a touch too bitterly.

  Paige whistled under her breath. “Yeah, okay, we can take that route if you’d like.”

  When she cracked her knuckles, I rolled my eyes.

  Paige faced me from her corner of the massive L-shaped couch. “If Luke is known for being level-headed, then obviously you’re under his skin too. He wouldn’t start fights on the field for a”—she made a disgusted face—“Sunday night booty call.”

  If I’d watched that video a hundred times in the last day, then I’d relived our conversation in the conference room a thousand. If I could dissect each inch of his handsome face, decipher what each bend of his brow meant, why his broad, strong shoulders seemed so weighted down, maybe I could ...

  No.

  I didn’t need to dissect anything.

  Luke was a leader even if I was the boss. And he’d failed me. Or at least in his mind, he’d failed me. No matter what was written on his face, in his shoulders, the grim set of his mouth, or what fights he got into, it had to be rooted in that failure.

  “Okay, fine,” I conceded. “Maybe he looked at me as more than a booty call. But it doesn’t matter.”

  Paige clapped her hands together. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her cheery
response.

  She shrugged. “What? You’ve given zero indication that you want more than that from him, so why would it? You’ll stay here until the season ends, gain much-needed space from all that chaos, and then next season, you two can smile when you pass each other in the hall, and it’ll be professional and friendly and polite. You’ll co-exist.” She lifted an imperious, perfectly arched auburn eyebrow. “Right?”

  I must have looked as grumpy as I felt. “I hate you,” I muttered.

  Paige laughed.

  There was a large pillow wedged under my elbow, and I yanked it out so I could wrap my arms around it. In lieu of a dog or a man to cuddle with, it would have to do.

  “I mean,” Paige continued, “the reason it’s neither here nor there why he started that fight is because you don’t want to pursue a relationship with him, right?”

  “You’re seriously going to make me say it?”

  “Yes,” she cried. “Come on. I’ve never seen you like this over a guy. It’s about damn time.”

  “For what? Have another man in my life willing to set me aside because I’m too much of a complication?” A tear slid hot down my cheek, and Paige’s face fell instantly. “My dad shipped me away to boarding school because he had no idea what to do with me when it was just the two of us.”

  She scooted across the couch so she was closer to me. “Honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

  I sniffed and rubbed at the aching spot behind my breastbone. “It’s okay. I don’t think I even made the connection until just now.” I looked around. “I think it’s being in this house.”

  “That makes sense.” Her hand rubbed my knee.

  “I know my father loved me, but he just didn’t know how to make a life for me that didn’t completely interrupt his in the process.” I pinched the bridge of my nose to stem more rising tears, then spoke quietly. “I want someone who’s willing to fight for me.”

  “Just not ... like ... literally fight because, Allie girl, Luke definitely already did that.”

  I smiled. “No, I’m not talking literally, but I am glad he did that, too.”

  “I didn’t think that’s what you meant.”

  “I want,” I whispered, staring up at the ceiling, “I want someone who doesn’t sit back and look at how the landscape of their life will change by adding me into it and weigh whether I’m worth the change. I want them to pull me into it with both hands and make it something new without a second thought.”

  Paige laid her head on my shoulder. “You deserve that. A hundred times over.”

  I stopped fighting the tears because more than anything, I wanted to be saying this to Luke. I wanted him to hear the words scrawled over my bruised heart, the piece of me that missed him most of all.

  “I want someone who loves me so much that they can’t stand the idea of us hiding in the shadows. I want them to love me so much that all the ugly and harsh that can come with the light doesn’t bother them because we’d be facing it together.” I exhaled a small sob. “I don’t want to beg for that.”

  “Do you feel like you were with him?”

  One more tear slid down the side of my face unchecked until it disappeared into my hairline. “No. It felt ... good. It felt right.”

  I missed him. With Luke, it wasn’t so much that I felt like a different person. I’d just felt like a stronger, more powerful version of who I already was. Now, I was just willing to admit my own worth, know that I was worth more than one night a week.

  He was too, for that matter. He just wasn’t at a place where he wanted the risk. And I wouldn’t be anyone’s safety net, conveniently placed and safe to fall into.

  I wanted to be the wild, the free fall, the leap off a cliff into something exhilarating.

  Eventually, I’d be able to be in the same room as him and not see how he was that for me even if it was for a brief time.

  “So you’re like, in love with him, huh?” Paige asked quietly.

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. I didn’t want to cry anymore. Falling in love was supposed to be good, wasn’t it? Not something that made you cry, but I guess that was what happened when you tumbled on the same day that someone set a bomb off in your personal life.

  But was I in love with Luke Pierson?

  Yeah.

  It was pretty much the only reason all this would make me so miserable because sitting on a strange couch in the house I grew up in, I wasn’t thinking about the embarrassment anymore. I wasn’t thinking about who’d seen what, or if the fans lost respect for me. I was thinking about him.

  “Does it matter?” I asked Paige. Or the universe. Or whoever might be listening.

  She didn’t answer. No one did. It sure would have been nice if a booming voice told me what to do. But there was no one. Just me, trying to figure out what the hell came next.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Besides go sleep for two days?”

  “Yup.”

  My head leaned against hers, and as she had all week, she propped me up. Kept me sane. “I’ll do my job. Let him do his. Eventually, it won’t hurt so much.”

  I almost believed it.

  27

  Luke

  When you’ve built your entire career on your ability to pick up on the slightest change in the environment around you, something slightly annoying happened.

  You couldn’t shut it off.

  Even when I wasn’t on the field with the clock running, I noticed the people around me. How they were standing. Whether they were carrying their weight differently after a particularly brutal game. After Jack injured his knee his rookie season, I found myself watching the way he walked for two solid months. It drove me crazy, but long ago, I’d accepted it as a part of me. Part of what made me good at my job.

  It was also why I didn’t think myself insane for studying Allie the way I did for the next three weeks.

  In my head, I told myself it was because I barely saw her. The house next to mine was empty and quiet, no lights in windows or terrible music coming from her little bright blue speaker that always accompanied her outside. The first week after my fight with Marks, I saw her twice, brief glimpses down hallways and through open doorways.

  We won on the road that first week, cementing our division lead by two games. She didn’t join the team for the first time all season.

  The second week, I noticed that her hair was shorter. The cheekbones on her face were a bit more pronounced as though maybe she hadn’t been eating enough. If she saw me, if she noticed me, she gave me absolutely no indication of it.

  Not in the hitch of her breath, a pause in whatever conversation she was having, no flick of her eyes in my direction.

  The third week, we won at home by one point. The cameras panned to her suite, and I saw her high-fiving fans in the row in front of hers. It was only time I saw her on game day. She’d taken a hiatus from doing her pre-game walk on the field, and none of us could blame her. I’d have stopped too.

  They moved the cameras away before I could see her face fully, gauge if she looked well. If she looked happy.

  Not once in three weeks did I see her eyes unless her face was in profile.

  It did weird things to my head when I found myself wondering things like were they still the same color or had I imagined it?

  I saw the slight upturn in her straight, perfect nose. I saw the stubborn angle of her delicate jaw. The curve of her smile, to varying degrees, depending on who she was speaking to. Those were things I saw. But not her eyes. And I hated that I couldn’t use them to know what she was thinking. How she was feeling.

  “Are you sure you don’t know where she’s living, Daddy?” Faith asked me on week three. Standing at the hedge, which was taller than her, she looked so sad that I almost lied, almost told her that Allie would back soon, just to see her smile about it.

  “I think she’s living in the house she grew up in, turbo.”

  Faith sighed and spun back around to me. It was
Tuesday, our day off during game week. I’d already lifted for the day, so I would spend the rest of the afternoon with her before watching film once she was tucked into bed.

  “It was so fun to have her here that one morning,” she said between twirls. I’d heard this twenty-two times in the past three weeks. “She’s nice. And doesn’t treat me like a baby.”

  Not being treated like a baby was a big deal to a six-year-old. My initial panic at being told that Allie had walked out of my room during their morning pancakes had been short-lived because apparently, she handled it like a champ.

  Besides, I couldn’t really be mad. In my sex-clouded brain, I’d completely forgotten to double-check with my mom that they wouldn’t be stopping by the house before school that day.

  “And,” Faith continued like she was trying to convince me of something, “Grandma really liked her.”

  I’d also heard that a few times, from the direction of the woman who gave birth to me. My dad, as usual, had stayed stoically silent, content to let Mom voice their joint opinion. Maybe if I’d been married for forty-two years, I would do the same thing.

  Better head on her shoulders than most of the men I know, were the precise words my mom had used, including my idiot son who can’t figure out what’s right in front of him.

  That was what she didn’t understand. What none of them could understand even if I’d been capable of explaining it to them. My life was controlled chaos, at all times.

  I had a daughter who fell off playgrounds and in the next instant, had a broken arm, even though I was ten feet away from her, watching her every move.

  I had a football team that looked to me to lead them, to see things they didn’t see on the field, and predict outcomes like we had a chess set in front of us, carefully carved pieces that could be moved at will.