Shut Out

by Liz Crowe

  Sighing, she opened up his Facebook page, startled to find a new photo, tagged by someone named Kelli Carlson. Brody stood there, with some bony bitch and her too-bright teeth and enormous fake tits. Sophie’s scalp prickled with mounting jealousy as she hit the photo with her cursor, making it surge ten times larger on the screen.

  Wearing a dark suit and a tense expression on his face, he had a long arm around the skinny slut clinging to him. They were positioned on a red carpet of some sort, and Sophie recalled the fundraiser most of the team had attended for some local Revive Detroit effort or another.

  Kelli’s last name struck a chord then. She must be the spawn of none other than Grant Carlson, zillionaire inventor of an electric car technology, who’d sold the patent a few years ago and settled in as Detroit’s benevolent benefactor. Her own former law firm, Harrison & Winter, had brokered the patent sale.

  It appeared that man’s daughter had her claws sunk deep into the soccer player at her side, a man who seemed at once both in the moment and wishing he were far, far away. Sophie leapt to her feet and started pacing, unwilling to admit that the fury pinging around in her head made any sense whatsoever. She hated herself then, acting like some kind of stupid, dreamy pre-teen, obsessing over a movie star or a fictional book boyfriend.

  She leaned on the ledge at the large bank of windows, taking in the Black Jack’s afternoon training, her eyes going immediately to the goal. Brody had his head thrown back, laughing, revealing the line of that intriguing, inky black chain. She shivered but didn’t move, willing him to do…something, she wasn’t exactly sure what.

  He blocked kicked balls, missing a couple, using his powerful left leg to send many balls flying to the far end of the pitch. Then the team squared off in their usual end-of-practice scrimmage during which many intra-squad grudges were revealed via the sort of physical play usually seen at the most basic levels of raw, street-level soccer. Nicco Garza made a beeline for some tall, dark-skinned guy she didn’t recognize at first. Nicco had been a classic problem child for a while but seemed to have settled, thanks to young Parker Rollings, the team captain with whom he had struck up a serious relationship.

  The gay athlete media frenzy had been fierce. She’d done her fair share of deflecting requests that Nicco and Parker be used as poster boys for the cause. Not that she didn’t support what they were doing. She did, and she applauded them for it. It just seemed as though the team ought to focus on this, their third season of play, instead of the high drama of being on Oprah, or CNN, or Letterman, or any of the hundreds of requests the marketing office fielded. Thank god Jack had allowed her, head of the legal department, to make the final call.

  But now, Nicco seemed bent on taking out the player who’d been causing a lowlying rumble of gossip and bad-mouthing about the two men and the fact they had gone so far as to appear in public as a couple. She had misgivings about all of that, too, but didn’t consider it her call.

  Pro athletes in general were not terribly supportive of homosexual teammates, although it had gotten a bit better in the past few years. The tall defender with the stupid, homophobic mouth backed up slowly toward his goal in the face of Nicco’s all-out onslaught. He had about half a foot of height on the older Spaniard. But Nicco had no fear and the second he barreled into the guy, left shoulder down and planted into the other man’s chest, his left foot making a pseudo play for the ball at his feet, she grasped just how badly this whole thing could go.

  The sheer force of the two strong bodies connecting drove them nearly four feet. The rest of the team froze as the incident played out. Parker, Nicco’s boyfriend, one of the few mature men on the team, had already started for them, breaking from his position as forward on the opposing side.

  The young coach had taken a step from the sidelines where he usually stood and let the team work out whatever bullshit they had with each other for about forty minutes, before calling an end to it. A former international playing superstar, he understood the drill and didn’t do much to stop it. But she had a very bad feeling about the scene unfolding below her. She pushed away from the window thinking she should just do her own job and not worry about the field full of raging testosterone and egos.

  Brody maintained his position directly in the line of fire when Nicco and his nemesis—Cody, she remembered now—barreled straight for him. He had his hands on his hips, just watching them, not moving. She clutched her neck, willing him to get the fuck out of the way. He glanced up for a split second, seeming to look directly at her from all that distance.

  “Get out of the way, you stubborn idiot,” she whispered into the empty office.

  When the inevitable collision with the tall object of her obsession came, she cried out in the empty office. The combined pounds and anger of the two men, now entangled, with fists flying in an entirely un-sportsmanlike way, hit him hard, shoving him backward. Brody smacked into the far left post of the goal and went down like a ton of bricks. Metin and Parker fell on the fighters, dragging them apart. It took all four men a few seconds to notice Brody had not gotten up.

  Sophie had already dashed out her door toward the elevator by then, knowing she had no business doing it but helpless to stop.

  Chapter Nine

  Brody stared up at the sky. Since when had the bright blue fall morning clouded over? He sat up. Or rather, tried to. But his head had been gripped in a vise apparently, and something large was crushing his chest. At first he allowed the dreamy, floating sensation to take him, wishing he were restrained the way he wanted to be, with ropes and shackles, tied down and at his Mistress’ mercy.

  Strange noises wove in and out of the whooshing that had taken up residence between his ears. The ocean noise equally soothed and annoyed. He got the distinct sensation of being on a pitching, yawing boat. And with it, came a horrific nausea twisting his gut. He shook his head. Or he tried to. When the mild panic that lit his consciousness bloomed in his chest, he heard her voice.

  “Get of my way, you fucking animals. Move!” Her. Sophie. She’d shown up, here, wherever the fuck here might be. She’d help him figure this out.

  As quickly as he opened his eyes, he closed them to stave off a sudden freight train of intense pain barreling through his skull. The world faded, flickered out, plunging him into darkness, terror, and the alone space he once sought but now avoided.

  He fought it, muscling his way up to consciousness, surrounded by a bizarre array of faces hovering over him. Goddamn, but his head hurt.

  “Stay still,” his coach demanded, moving to make room for some guys in uniforms. Why were the cops here? He blinked, and that simple act sent another indescribable shaft of pain from his skull all the way down his spine. “Hang on, Vaughn. Don’t move.”

  He tried to disobey, but he’d been rendered immobile, live rats of panic scratching at his rib cage.

  A sound escaped his lips. “I…can’t.”

  “Fuck,” Metin barked out, rising to let the paramedics lift him onto a board and up to a gurney. “Fucking fuck.”

  Brody blinked once more which seemed to be the only movement left to him.

  “Step aside.” Her voice broke through his panic again. “Goddamn it, let me see him.” He tried to turn his head. She appeared over him, her deep blue eyes full of concern, her thick hair tumbling out of its tie-back framing her face. She touched his cheek. “Why didn’t you get out of their way?” she asked, her face set in worried lines.

  He swallowed. Tried to shift his position, happily surprised to find his body cooperated. Just before a giant, horrific pain enveloped him.

  “Ow,” he whispered, as the monster devoured him from the neck down. He shivered and his teeth rattled in his jaw when the medics rolled him out into the sunlight. His chest ached and his head pounded. Blessed, pain-free darkness descended in seconds.

  ****

  He woke, disoriented and terrified to try to move his arms and legs. Remembering every single moment of the collision, he recalled it had not even been that
big a deal. He’d absorbed the force of the two men barreling into him and stepped back of his own accord, but someone’s elbow connected with his sternum, and a different one with his chin, making him stumble. Apparently, he must have clonked the back of his skull on the left goal post hard enough to end up in the hospital.

  He grimaced, forced his arm to move, lifting one then the other over his head, their familiar, inked surfaces reassuring. Bending one knee and the other, he rolled his ankles around and finally tried to sit, the movement causing a rush of nausea so fierce he fell back onto the pillow.

  A nurse rushed in, fussing around him while the room did funny tricks, spinning and warping. A concussion, after all his years of play, thanks to those fucking assholes who’d been gunning for each other during a scrimmage. Jesus. He groaned again, trying not to puke. The nurse put a small plastic bowl in front of his mouth and he obligingly filled it.

  “Gah.” He wiped his lips and accepted the Styrofoam cup of ice water. But he shook so much he could barely drink. He finally gave up and flopped back on the pillow, dropping into an immediate, dreamless sleep.

  A deep rumble that had to be the club manager, Rafe, and the heavily accented sound of his coach, Metin woke him the second time. Then a female lilt hit his ears. Relief coursed through him at the sound as he fought his way to the surface, shoving aside the bizarre curtains of unconsciousness.

  Four people stood at the end of his bed, the manager and coach as he suspected, and a tall guy in a suit—Jack Gordon, one of the team owners.

  However, the female voice did not belong to the woman he wanted to see at his bedside, but to a tall, angular, lady doctor with a firm set to her jaw. “This man is not to play a minute of soccer until he has been fully evaluated, we run an MRI since the CT scan isn’t showing anything, and he passes the head injury team’s evaluation.”

  Jack spoke, stepping in front of the other two with a natural authority. “How long will all that take?”

  She consulted her tablet computer, tapped on it a few seconds, leaving the men and Brody to stew and worry. “At least three weeks, but my preference, considering his symptoms, is two months.”

  They all groaned. Brody struggled to sit, steadfastly ignoring the way the room did an alarming fuzz-out on him. “I’m fine.” His low, froggy voice alarmed him. He cleared it and repeated the words.

  The doctor glared at the men in front of her. “This is my patient, gentlemen, and unless he signs out against medical advice, I’m afraid you’ll have to take concerns about your soccer team elsewhere.” She put a hand on Brody’s blanketed foot. Just as he acknowledged relief that he could feel it, the room became a truly bizarre shade of purple before disappearing altogether. The last thing he heard before the darkness filled him was his coach.

  “Oh, shit,” his coach said. “He’s out again.”

  “If you don’t kill those two fucking assholes who did this, I will,” Brody said, but it came out sounding like drunk pig Latin.

  Something cool and soft touched his face. He rolled onto his side and tried to pull it close, to cradle it to his body. A distinctly female smell invaded his nose. Sharp perfume, and soap and all the things he associated with…. He forced his eyes open to find Kelli, her huge, fake tits looming out of a low-cut sweater right over him. He groaned and rolled the other way unwilling to face that particular nightmare.

  Where was she? After rushing down to the field from her office, Sophie had disappeared. Why hasn’t she come? He didn’t want the horrific social-climbing, fake-feeling and fake-tasting Kelli here. He ignored her until at last he heard the clickety-clack of her retreating high heels.

  He got up, determined not to lie there like an invalid another minute. Clutching the portable IV pole, he found the bathroom, emptied his bladder for what seemed like an hour, nearly falling to the floor at the damn toilet. Glancing at the clock over his bed, he saw the numbers but didn’t register the meaning of them. What day is it? How long have I been flopping around in a head-injured stupor?

  A low, threatening noise came from his stomach and intense hunger washed over him. Making his tethered way back into the room, he hit the nurse button and asked for food. He waited in the reclining chair near the bed to eat it, unwilling to get back in that bed lest he stay there forever. Just as the surprisingly decent, if somewhat bland meal disappeared off the plates and into his empty gut, the door creaked open.

  “Hi,” Sophie said. “Brody? You in here?”

  He cleared his throat, his body tingling in a familiar way, and he had a second of sheer relief that he had not maintained the scary temporary paralysis he’d experienced right after the collision. Wiping his face and trying not to be worried that he smelled like the inside of a soccer bag, he pushed the tray aside.

  “Don’t get up,” she insisted, emerging into the light thrown by the television. “I just need to…ah…discuss something with you. To make sure you aren’t going to….”

  His ears rang but not from the injury. “I’m not suing anybody if that’s why you’re here.” Disappointment rang through him. She was only doing her job, that’s all.

  “Oh, well, okay. I won’t make you sign anything. Give me a little credit.” Her smile lit the dark corners of his brain. She’d used it as an excuse to come to see him. But all that mattered was her presence in his room.

  Exhaustion suddenly overtook him. His whole body shook not because of his condition but her proximity. His eyes played tricks on him, making her loom large. She touched his face, moving to his shoulders, rubbing out tension. His face burned, but he took a breath, determined to enjoy the moment with her flesh on his as perfect as he had anticipated it would be.

  Her face appeared near his, her lips so…close, so full and perfect. His pulse raced and then calmed. She touched his cheek once more.

  “It will be all right,” she whispered near his ear. Her fingertips brushed something from his face. These were the last things he remembered before dropping into the familiar, annoying, deep sleep of the recently concussed.

  Chapter Ten

  Two weeks later, Brody took up a role on the sidelines, helping Metin train the two back-up goalies for the duration, forbidden from any direct contact or play under dire threats from the head injury team at the hospital. Privy to the reports along the way, Sophie memorized every word of the doctors’ orders.

  The moment he had nearly broken down in the hospital room stayed with her, and she would replay it over and over, thumbing through it, seeking ways she might have handled it differently, but always came to the same conclusion: the man had no one in his corner. And when faced with it as he had been in the hospital, he exuded the sort of agonizing anxiety that made her want to gather him up and spirit him away into her home, her life, her bed.

  She had his background committed to memory—his mother dead of an overdose, the dramatic rescue of the boy from the rattletrap house, and subsequent placement in foster homes. He lived in a total of four but had never been placed in a permanent adoptive home for some reason.

  The stellar career as soccer stud in high school, state cups, regional and national championships, led to a too-early recruitment from a major league soccer team that he’d turned down in favor of a full-ride scholarship to Vanderbilt in Nashville. His senior year, the Commodores men’s soccer team won the NCAA national championship, beating a highly favored Indiana team.

  Young Brody stayed off gossip radars in school. The only strange thing that stood out about him was that he never received his degree. He’d left the school with a three-point-five GPA in business. But he never graduated, thanks to an incomplete in a marketing class from his sophomore year. Pondering his personnel file in her typical stalker-ish way, she wondered what happened between sophomore and senior year to make him no longer care that he reaped the rewards of what she assumed would be a very tough education at one of the premier, private US universities. Something told her it had everything to do with that tattooed chain around his neck.

  He’
d come to the Black Jacks after several years bouncing around in the lower echelon of major league soccer, getting minimal playing time, but every time he took the field proving to be one of the coolest heads in the goal—the reason why Rafe had wanted him so badly.

  Shutting his file with a firm slap, she shoved it back into the drawer, determined not to think about the man another minute. She’d had an early start to her day and a new client to meet that night. Focusing on her job for a few more hours, she packed up her laptop and headed home with few words to anyone. On the days when she had to transform, to earn the money she charged for her services, she required time, space, and solitude to get where she needed to be in her head.

  She always went straight to the downtown loft when she had her night job, skipping the fake normal of her rented house in Ann Arbor. Thoughts of her lawyer’s last email to her—that she had scraped and clawed her way nearly clear of the personal bankruptcy she’d had to declare after the accident—buoyed her. The past several years had been harrowing, but it appeared she would emerge after all with some of her sanity and future intact. She showered in the large bathroom, ever grateful for the calm presence of Lance who had opened the place up then left her alone, saying he’d be back and just outside the door as usual by ten o’clock, the time set to meet Robert.

  Lance always packed the fridge full of her favorite energy foods—fresh berries, granola, and whole milk—one of her personal vices. She ate, stared at the news awhile, then flipped open the small, two-person hot tub toward the back of the loft.

  When she first dreamed this project up, she’d been talking with Lance at a lame lifestyle party she’d gotten dragged to. Her body was still stiff and sore from the accident and surgeries, her bank account was empty, and her heart aching. And in him, she discovered her current business partner, the giant man who now regarded her as his savvy, leather-wearing, whip-toting younger sister.