Super Big Game

by Jamie Knight

  I can’t stay here and flirt with her, or I’ll get turned on. I try to think about what I can do in the meantime to burn off this extra energy until I can see her again. I want to give her one more hug, because I know she’s fierce but I still feel the urge to protect her.

  That’s it, I think. The thing I can do that will help resolve things for us so that when the time is right, we can be together.

  “I’ll see you later,” I tell her, heading towards the door.

  She looks a little surprised, as if she was waiting for me to try to kiss or hug her one more time.

  But she must realize that this was her idea and I’m just taking it to heart.

  Because all she says is a gentle, “See you later.”

  Chapter 17

  Stacy

  I’m at home painting my nails in the Leviathans’ colors, because tomorrow is the Superbowl, when I get a text from Elias.

  What’s your address?

  I sigh.

  But my frustration is because I want to see him, even though I know I shouldn’t. We haven’t seen each other since I’ve told him we need to stay a secret, but he’s been sending me lots of sexts.

  They’re hot.

  Super hot.

  He tells me all the things he wants to do to me when we’re next together. He even has a fantasy about fucking my tits and fucking my ass.

  That’s how dirty our sexting gets.

  And I can’t help but love it.

  I also love that he’s asking for my address and wants to see me, but I know it’s forbidden according to the plan we made – or, rather, the plan that I made and need to enforce, no matter how much I wish I could change the plan.

  We shouldn’t do that, I text back, now. Let’s wait till after the game. Only one more day!

  It’ll be hotter than ever when we can finally do it.

  Clarice would not be happy with me. She’s told me that I should just go with my heart and on Elias’ private plane, to wherever he wants to whisk me off to. She says he makes me seem happier and more carefree, and that I’ve needed someone in my life like that for a long time.

  I appreciate her support and I get where her advice is coming from, but she’s not the one with the career on the line. At first, I tell myself to remain strong and steadfast, to resist Elias’ advances no matter how hard he presses and no matter how upset Clarice will be at me.

  But in my head, I know it’s kind of bullshit. I have no resolve when it comes to Elias, other than the resolve to feel him hard and deep inside me.

  I need your address now, he texts back, immediately.

  Wow, he really wants me.

  I start to text back with firm resolve but it weakens by the time my fingers can hit the “n” key, let alone the “o.”

  I have to admit — it would be hot to see him right now. It’s not like anyone knows where I live, so how could we be seen or get into trouble? I imagine one more rendezvous, right before the Superbowl. Maybe it’ll give him some extra good luck out on the field.

  Okay, I tell him, and then I type out my address.

  I put my phone down before I change my mind, and then I step into the shower. It’s difficult to do, with painted nails – I try to leave them outside the water, and blow on them to hurry up and dry.

  I obviously wasn’t planning to take a shower so soon after painting my nails, but I don’t want to look like a wreck when Elias gets here.

  When will Elias get here? I start to wonder. It’s not like we set up a time.

  I guess he’ll just surprise me, I think.

  I pop out of the shower and put on my robe. As I’m drying my hair – luckily, my nails have dried by now – I hear a knock on the door.

  That was fast, I think.

  I don’t see the need to put on clothes at this point. He’ll only take them right off me anyway. He’ll probably like the surprise of seeing me nearly naked, only wrapped in a robe that is ready and easy for him to take off.

  So, I head to the door, my hair wet and my robe slightly open, since I know he likes to see my body.

  But when I open it slightly and pop my head out, so that I’m not exposing myself to the whole neighborhood, a strong arm pushes it open so that it slams into me, nearly barreling me over.

  My first thought is, Wow, Elias is very ready to see me.

  But my second thought is, This is not Elias.

  Whoever it is grabs me in a tight hold and puts his hand around my mouth, so that I can’t scream. I still try to, but the sound is muffled in his hand.

  “Come here,” he says, dragging me across the room to my couch.

  The way he’s pulling my hair is very familiar. I look up to see the face of the same man who attacked me in the Leviathans’ locker room.

  “Fuck!” I yell out, but no one except this guy’s palm can hear me.

  I try to bite his hand, but it’s no use. I’m kicking my legs, but I can’t swing them high up enough to be able to kick him. Nothing I do is working.

  What the fuck does this guy want with me, and why?

  I start to see stars before I realize that he’s trying to suffocate me with a pillow.

  “I was only supposed to rough you up, you little bitch,” he says, glaring at me. “To scare you from poking around the locker room and to keep you away for good. But you still had to be a nosy little bitch, up to no good, and hooking up with one of the Leviathans to boot. So now you’re making me have to do this.”

  My head is getting very woozy, to the point that I start to wonder if this is a dream.

  I see stars and I wonder if they’re the last thing I’ll ever see. Black and white swirls mixed in with this awful man’s ugly face.

  But just before I pass out, I hear a voice.

  “Stacy!”

  Elias.

  Is this for real?

  Did Elias just come to rescue me once again?

  Will I be able to be saved in time to live?

  Or am I losing so much oxygen that I’m hallucinating?

  Maybe Elias isn’t really here at all, but my mind and heart just wish that he was here so badly that they conjured up his voice.

  Chapter 18

  Elias

  I can’t believe I’m having to beat up this asshole all over again.

  I tried to beat him to Stacy’s place, because I had figured out who he is and what he’s up to, but the one piece of information I didn’t have was Stacy’s address. And of course she took so damn long to give it to me, because she thought I wanted sex when what I really wanted was to save her life.

  Sure, I always want to fuck her.

  But right now, I need to rescue her.

  Luckily, she gave me her address just in the nick of time. I texted her back to warn her not to open the door.

  She must not have gotten the text.

  Or maybe this creep barged his way in some other way.

  Whatever the case, I’m about to take him out. I’m swinging, punching, hitting at him, hoping I don’t get injured for the game in the process, but knowing that this is much more important.

  He finally loosens his grip around Stacy’s neck and tries to defend himself, badly. He takes a wild swing into the air before falling into a heap on the couch.

  Stacy is already on the other side of the couch, having fainted from lack of blood flow to her brain.

  “Stacy!” I call out, rushing over to her after making sure that this creep is down for the count. “Stacy! Wake up!”

  My mind is flooded with bad possibilities of what life would be like without her.

  What if she leaves my life almost just as soon as she’d come into it? Just as soon as I was starting to fall in love with her?

  “Elias?” she coughs, waking up just as I realize what I was thinking.

  I had just told myself I’m in love with her.

  “Stacy,” I say, rushing to put my arms around her. “You’re okay. He’s safe. You’re fine. I’m here. I have you.”

  The soothing tone of my r
eassuring words – the rhythm of which came out in a comforting cadence I wasn’t expecting to use – seems to calm her down. She’s still breathing fast though, her chest visibly rising and falling with each beat of her heart.

  “Oh, my God,” she says. “What happened? Who is he? How did you know to…”

  “Stacy, I found out who he was,” I tell her. “My friend Joseph does computer forensics for the Army and I asked him to hack into the security camera at the Leviathans’ locker room. It took him a while – I guess the NFL locks these down more securely than we’d think – but he figured it out. The tapes then showed him that it was Kirsten Donnelly who has been coming and going into the locker room while the Leviathans aren’t there. She was sleeping with Mo Bradley—”

  “Mo Bradley?” Stacy says, and, despite her desperate state, she laughs.

  “I know, right?” I tell her.

  Mo was the worst player on the team, a total dweeb. Coach Kramer had taken pity on him at some point and set him up as his assistant of sorts, so that he’d have something to do since he was always benched.

  I assume this arrangement involved Mo having keys to individual lockers and other areas of the locker room that were off limits to regular players. I also assume Kirsten slept with him to get his keys and access to the locker rooms and lockers.

  “She must really hate me and be out to get me, to have slept with Mo,” Stacy says.

  “Yeah, well, she’s clearly jealous and wanted to take you down. She hired this goon—” I point at the intruder, who is still passed out on the couch— “to come attack you. I think initially he was just trying to scare you off, hoping that maybe you’d quit the beat if you were afraid to go anywhere near the locker room, and then Kirsten would be rid of the competition.”

  “He pretty much told me that, as he was strangling me,” Stacy says, rubbing her throat. “He also said that now he has to kill me, because I’m a nosy bitch who wouldn’t stop snooping around.”

  “Yes,” I say, nodding, because all of this lines up with what Joseph was able to read in the texts. He had hacked into Kirsten’s phone. “I found out he was coming here today, but Kirsten must have somehow found out your address and gotten it to him some way other than text, because there was no address in the thread.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says, putting a hand to her head as if she should have thought of this before. “There’s a registry of reporters. Monica has one that she hangs above her desk. It has all our contact information on it, including home address. It actually would have been pretty easy for Kirsten to find online and email to this guy, or something.”

  “Yeah, my friend was working on hacking into their emails but I got all the information I needed.”

  I look down at the intruder and say, “Okay, time to call the cops on this asshole.”

  “Okay,” she agrees, but she looks hesitant. “What ever happened to Mo? I mean, we all tried to get the story but you guys kept that hush hush.”

  I look at her and wonder if I should tell her. It’s a juicy story that could help her career, but she wouldn’t be allowed to share it.

  “Off the record, of course,” she quickly says. “I’m just wondering about how to deal with this problem here…”

  “Yeah,” I tell her, deciding I can trust her to keep a secret. “He had a mental breakdown and tried to steal from the team. Luckily, he wasn’t competent enough to get any important information or money, but Coach K had noticed that he was trying to. And he got away with some team memorabilia. It was a bad idea to have kept him around, so obviously Coach K doesn’t want the news to spread.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering,” she says. “If we call the cops, everyone will want to know about the connections and why this happened. It won’t be good for the Leviathans tomorrow, and Coach K said not to let anything happen to jeopardize the team’s performance at the Superbowl…”

  “Shhhh,” I say, putting a finger over her lips. “Don’t worry about that. I let this idiot get away once, and we protected him because we didn’t want any trouble for the team. But now I’m not worried about any of that, and I don’t want it to happen again. Whatever will be, will be, when it comes to the Superbowl. For now, we’re getting this guy off the streets, so there is no possibility he’ll ever hurt you again.

  “Thank you,” she says, as her lips meet mine. “You take such good care of me.”

  “I can’t help it,” I tell her, deciding to take a leap of faith. I had wanted to take faith with me onto the field, and here was my chance. “Because I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she says, and as we kiss, my fingers start to dial 9-1-1.

  Chapter 19

  Elias

  “Fuck yeah, we did it!” I shout, as our team makes the field goal that wins us the Superbowl.

  “We sure did!” Coach Kramer shouts, running out onto the field. “It was a tough fight, and a close call, but we won! We’re the Superbowl champions!”

  Everyone is exhilarated and a bit shocked – I don’t know that anyone else knew we could pull it off, because we’d had a tough season, what with all the Mo Bradley stuff and now the Stacy and Kirsten stuff.

  Not to mention that we had worked hard in practice and games but each one seemed to be nearly a tossup. I think I was the only one who had faith that we could win, and maybe that really did show up out on the field.

  There are so many people rushing onto the field. I’m bumping chests with so many of them that I’m worried I might knock myself out. The chests I’m bumping might belong to our rival team or to fans, for all I know. I don’t care. I’m elated, on top of the world.

  All my teammates are out here on the field celebrating with me, of course. I’m giving my friend Justin a high five, and my other buddy Calvin a hug. There are tons of fist bumps all around too, of course.

  But the one person I want to be with is Stacy. I can’t believe that after everything she and I have been through, it has all turned out okay. We really had some good luck on our side – and faith, of course.

  After we talked, we had called the cops on the intruder and Kirsten. I showed them the evidence I had. They weren’t exactly happy with how I had obtained it, and since I wouldn’t mention Joseph’s name, they don’t know if it will be admissible at trial, but they clearly had a good reason to arrest the creep, so they did.

  If I know that the evidence could help, I’ll talk to Joseph about testifying, but I don’t think it’s necessary and I don’t want to ruin his career. He plays football on the side and is getting good at it. If he has a chance to go pro, something like this could really mess that up.

  From what I can tell, there’s no need to go that far. It turns out that when they were questioning him down at the precinct, the intruder turned on Kirsten, squealing like a pig and singing like a parrot. He couldn’t have been more ready to give up all the details on why he had been trying to scare and then kill Stacy – it was all arranged by Kirsten.

  I know all of this because Kirsten’s friends were sending nastygrams via text to Stacy, telling her she caused Kirsten’s downfall. Kirsten is in jail with the creep now, and Monica has made sure everyone knows why.

  “I always knew that girl was trouble,” she said, hugging Stacy when she found out about what had happened. “I’m going to make sure she stays far, far away from you.”

  Now, Stacy is free to enjoy the day and to celebrate our big win with me. She’s also free to let this help her own career. In fact, I see her run out onto the field with her trusty little notepad and pen.

  “Elias Turner!” she says. “I have a question for you.”

  “Yes, Miss Allen?” I ask her, smiling politely and formally.

  “To what do you attribute the Leviathans’ win today?” she asks.

  “To having faith,” I tell her, with a big smile.

  And it’s true. I have faith in my teammates as well as in her, in us. She’s told me all about how her parents conditioned her to not trust men or anyone in the ou
tside world. I’m so impressed at how far she’s come with such a sheltered background.

  I love that she loves me, and lets me protect her, but also that she gets weak in her knees for me, submissive, even, letting me do whatever I want with her. It’s a perfect balance and I couldn’t be any happier with my girlfriend.

  Girlfriend right now.

  But in a minute, she’ll be more.

  “Miss Allen,” I say, happily turning the tables on her. “Now I have a question for you.”

  “Yes?” she asks, looking surprised, which was exactly my intention.

  I get down on one knee and take out a large diamond ring.

  “There’s something else I brought on the field with me that helped my team win,” I tell her. “It was my love for you, which is represented in this ring I have for you. Stacy Allen, my question is, will you marry me?”

  “What?” she asks, looking shocked, before quickly shouting out, “Yes! I mean, yes! I sure will! But, wow, how quick!”

  “It’s not quick,” I tell her, before putting the ring on her finger and then picking her up and swinging her around.

  My team members come up and surround us, cheering us on and celebrating our engagement along with our Superbowl win.

  “We’ve been through so much together that I feel I know you so well,” I tell her. “And I know I never want to let you go. I never want to have to hide our love in secret again. You’re mine and I’m yours and I want the world to know it.”

  We kiss, the cameras flash, and I smile, knowing that we just made the biggest news story in recent football history, and that that evil woman Kirsten won’t be able to break it, because she’s locked up.

  Chapter 20

  Elias

  The best part of the celebration comes later, once Stacy and I are back at her place. I carry her into the house and then walk her up to the bedroom.

  “I’m so glad the Leviathans won,” she says, smiling happily.

  “I’m so glad you’re my fiancé,” I tell her. “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you. But for now, I can’t wait to defile me.”