Shut Out

by Liz Crowe

  “He’s fine, see?” He pointed as the object of their mutual interest kicked the ball he’d saved almost all the way into the opposing goal. “Nice pick, sister.”

  “Go to hell, Gordon,” she said, but couldn’t resist a huge grin.

  She met Brody afterward, waiting at his car, fiddling with her smart phone. The third woman she’d interviewed to be the new, improved, and non-pregnant Madame Katrina seemed very promising. She had a trial run that night with a new client. Lance sent her encouraging updates via text. Brody snuck up on her as she paced around, having her text chat with her business partner.

  “Put the phone away. I require your undivided attention.” His low voice sent a shiver down her spine. “Goddamn, I am horny,” he said, burying his nose in her neck. The words, ten weeks, rolled around in her brain.

  “Okay, I can accommodate the superstar goalie, I suppose.”

  He gripped her ass, pressing an unmistakable erection into her hip her, and she had a strange urge to giggle. “Feels like a play night to me,” she said, almost breathless with anticipation already.

  “Yeah, I’m thinking so….” Opening her door, he helped her in, and got behind the wheel. Then he sat a minute, staring out the windshield. Busy putting her phone in her purse and buckling her seatbelt, Sophie finally figured out he hadn’t moved for several seconds.

  “You okay?” She put a hand on his arm, a small lick of panic tickling her nerves.

  He shook his head, seemed to snap out of his trance, then blinked at her. “Sorry.” he said, wiping his face.“ Zoned out a second. I’m all about getting home now. Your place or mine?”

  She leaned into him and put her palm on his zipper. “Your call, stud, but I’m guessing the closer the better.” She kissed his neck. “I have something to tell you.”

  “Condo it is,” he claimed, still grinning. Her heart turned over, realizing this as her moment, when she finally owned her happiness.

  He drove in silence. When they pulled into his underground parking, she sensed something had gone horribly wrong as he parked and stared into the middle distance in silence. “Brody.” She shook him. “Honey. What is it?”

  His smile looked strange as he stumbled around to her side of the car. She got out and grabbed onto his arm.

  “Goddamn it, Robert, you are not right. Talk to me. Do you know where you are? What day is it? What’s your full name?” The concussion test questions fell from her lips, and he answered them correctly.

  They got in the elevator, hit his number, and she stared in horror as both his pupils dilated quickly. He put his fingers to the bridge of his nose. Her heart pounded as the lift rose, and she smacked the first floor button again, determined to get him back in the car and to the hospital.

  The doors opened, but he remained still, hanging onto the railing, his eyes wild and full of fear. “Sophie,” he whispered then slid to the floor.

  ****

  The room swam into view. Images crisscrossed his brain. Soccer balls. Teammates. Strange homes, indifferent, drunk parents, lonely nights spent scrounging for Campbell’s Soup dinners and doing homework alone. A set of handcuffs, and with it, pain so exquisite, he grunted and sat up.

  He struggled to stay seated, woozy and sick, weak in body and mind. Where in god’s name was he? Dear Christ, had he blown his knee out? He touched them both, reassured by the lack of bulkiness under the covers.

  “Thank god,” he muttered. He had to be able to play. All he could ever count on boiled down to one word—soccer. The field, the pitch, was the one place he was happy, needed, counted on, loved even, by various sets of coaches and teammates for his fierce dedication to the sport.

  His fingers met thick bandages when he touched them to his forehead. What the…? Why did his damn head feel like it weighed a thousand pounds? Groaning, he hit the nurse button. Where was everybody? He called out, or tried to, but his cracked and dry lips didn’t want to cooperate.

  “Hey, anybody…can I get some water over here,” he croaked, but it came out sounding drunk. His tongue filled his mouth like a dry cotton ball.

  A slow, rolling anger gained ground in his brain. It was a fury and frustration the likes of which he had never experienced…or had he? His skin was hot, and his eyes burned. Both of his hands were curled into tight fists. Shaking, he shifted his legs to the side of the bed. The dark room pissed him off. The lack of human response made it worse.

  Goddamn, his head hurt. The room fuzzed out when he attempted to get up, but he muscled through it, channeling the near-fever pitch fury to fuel him. “Where the fuck is everybody?” He walked slowly to the door, but the transition from pitch-dark room to brightly lit hospital hall sliced through his skull like an acid-coated steel blade. Staggering back, he grabbed onto something and managed to pull the IV pole off the bed on his way to the floor.

  Disembodied faces appeared, confusing him, and pissing him off more.

  “It’s like I suspected….” The man who spoke grunted when Brody’s foot connected with his groin.

  “Get off me,” he growled. “Get me out of here. Fuck!” He gasped when someone gripped his shoulders and pinned him to the hospital floor like a bug. He thrashed, lashing out, connecting with soft body parts and hard tile. But the sensation of operating someone else’s body, like a marionette, all the while standing to the side, watching, waiting for something…or someone…to appear made him suddenly want to puke.

  “Calm down,” a deep voice said. He glared at the dark face of a total stranger dressed in some kind of black and red soccer warm-up gear.

  “Fuck you,” he barked, jerking his arms, trying to reach the needle they had jammed into his arm. A nurse fumbled around, trying to keep his hands still.

  “Hold onto his wrist, Rafe,” the dark-faced guy said. Another man with similar features clamped down on the arm not punctured and currently bleeding from where he’d half-successfully ripped out the IV.

  “Who are you?” he rasped, his throat dry and sore. “Help me get out of here. I’m not…shit…I have a game. We…we’re in the playoffs…or…something. Ow. Ow!” he cried when the room blazed with the light of the sun, directly into his brain. “Oh, Christ.” Nausea surged up his gut. “I’m gonna….”

  “Watch out!” The nurse shoved her way through the crowd of men it took to hold him still, pulled him upright, and shoved a plastic tub under his mouth. He dry-heaved, his ribs aching and head pounding, shivering all over, unable to stop. He sat on the floor, drooling and staring at the room full of strangers who stared back at him while terror blanketed his nerves. Rage ripped through his chest once more, but he took a breath, trying to be calm.

  The door flew open revealing a woman dressed in jeans and a turtleneck. He noticed her attractive curves, long brown hair, and huge blue eyes—which were streaming with tears. What had he done to make her cry? He hated it when women cried. Went out of his way to avoid it at all costs. She knelt beside him. Her perfume and other random scents filled his head, swirling around as if trying to find a resting place, or a familiar space, then wafted out, leaving him bereft and more confused than ever.

  A name flashed into his brain pan. “Kelli?” he said, weakly. “Is that you?” He attempted to fake his way out of the fact that he lay here, surrounded by people, including a crying woman. And he had no fucking idea who any of them were.

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Three Years Later

  Sophie leaned back and stretched her legs out under the desk. It had been a brutally long day by any workaholic standards, beginning with having to bail out one player after a hotel party got busted by the cops. Now, nearly nine hours into contract negotiations and arm wrestling liability insurance companies after a sudden and alarming rate increase, she wanted to crawl into a chair and sleep for days. In the three years since that horrible moment sitting on the hospital floor with the man she loved who no longer even knew her name, she’d come a long way on many levels.

  She picked up the photo
in the handmade, crooked frame studded with giant sloppy hearts and glued on doodads. The small, earnest face peered back at her, giant dark eyes shining with delight, thick black hair messy and windblown. She touched the image of the one person on the entire planet who truly mattered to her, the little boy whose very existence reminded her that she had purpose, could be the single parent, and that she owed it to him to be the best possible human and mature adult—to set the example of both mother and father.

  She sighed, shrugged off the late afternoon sinking spell in anticipation of seeing her son who never failed to make her simultaneously happy and exhausted. A sharp rap at the door startled her. When she glanced up, the carbon copy of the boy, writ large, as a man filled the doorway, smiling crookedly. A shiver shot down her spine. Replacing the picture on her desk, she got to her feet.

  “So, Brody.” She picked up a piece of paper. “I’m entertaining some interesting requests from your…,” she stopped, throat closing in jealous, useless anger, “agent.”

  He sauntered in, his body firm and lean in the suit the players donned after every match. His loose-limbed comfort in his own skin made her want to scream, throw things, and launch into his arms.

  Oh hell no, tried that, remember, dear? And how well that ended for you?

  She took time to blink, reminded her lungs to breathe but didn’t let on he had affected her in any way, shape, or form.

  “Yeah.” He chuckled, running a hand through his still-wet hair. She gulped with the memory of that gesture—so quintessentially Brody-is-nervous, it sent a shaft of real pain through her gut. “Um, Amber is a little….”

  “She’s being a pushy cunt, and you can tell her I said that.” Sophie slammed the paper down on her desk and glared at him. “I’m sick of her trying to weasel you out of your contract here. We are not ready to let you go. No matter how high your own opinion is of yourself,” Leveling her gaze at him, she marveled at how unbelievably handsome he was, sitting there, arms draped over the back of the chair, one leg crossed, ankle to knee. “You are not worth that much. Not yet. So tell your stripper-name, agent-slash-girlfriend to back the fuck off.” She willed back the stupid tears. Once she had herself under control, she glared at his smirk. “You can go now.”

  She turned to her laptop, pretending to ignore him, but his still-familiar scent filled her nose, her head, that subtle, clean-smelling cologne barely covering the near ground-in odors of leather, grass, turf, and sweat. God, she missed him so much. “You deaf?” she asked, not looking at him, willing him to leave.

  “Damn, you’re hot when you’re pissed.” His slow, smooth drawl settled deep in her gut.

  She frowned. “Go away.”

  “If you insist, but I still remember our little moment in here….” He rose, slowly, unfolding his body a little at a time, as if teasing her. Luckily, it only served to piss her off even more.

  “Yeah, I spend a lot of energy trying to forget it.” She lied through her teeth. Because she remembered every blessed second of it, everything she did to get him to meet her, to try one last time to remember her, them, what they had. He chuckled again and she said, “I mean it, Robert. Go on, I have grownup things to do.”

  The odd, flat expression on his face, as if she’d struck him, gave her pause. It seemed as if he were…remembering. Her heart sank to her feet; she literally felt it sliding down her ribcage as the onslaught of memory struck her hard. She used to say that to him, as a joke, when he’d tease her back to bed on a Sunday morning or when he’d send blatantly sexy texts during the middle of her workday before his practice started. They stood, frozen, as if facing off in some kind of duel, as the memory of their last encounter in this room swirled through her psyche.

  “Brody,” she said, desperate to make him remember, to force whatever part of his brain that had closed off everything to him before the surgery, to see her and recall what they had. “Come in.” She watched his eyes, as she shut the office door. But her early resolve, to Madame-Katrina him into a subspace, a deep one, so his poor, shattered mind would open up and receive the memories that were no doubt beating against his skull, eager for admission, had slipped. She didn’t want to dominate him. She wanted him to fucking remember her.

  “Um, sorry, I’m a little….” He pulled at his sweaty practice shirt, ran his fingers through his hair. “But coach said you needed me…um…it’s urgent that I get up here. I hope I’m not in trouble, seeing as how you’re the legal lady and all.” He blatantly stared at her from head to toe in a way that might make her tingly, were it not so out of character for him. That man—her Robert, as she thought of him—would never be so crass. They’d had a lot of laughs over his innate, Southern, ingrained gentlemanly ways.

  “Yes, well….” She kept her distance, suddenly very unsure about this being a good idea, no matter how hard her body clamored to leap across the divide and snatch his clothes off. “I thought we should…talk a little, maybe….”

  The man who faced her now in her office—an all-new Brody without a shred of doubt—cocked a hip and an eyebrow. The room seemed to spin around her. What the hell? She had control in this goddamn room. Clearing her throat, she attempted to shake the oncoming white noise signaling a mental place she had not inhabited for years, not since Frank.

  “Why do you really want me here Sophie, is it?” he asked, moving closer, like a dancer, fluid, graceful, hypnotizing her.

  She shook her head and maintained her vigil at the door. “No, I mean, yes, but it’s not oh, god.” He was too close, too perfect and her desperation at a fever pitch. She let it happen, wrapping around him, kissing him, yanking his shirt up and off, his shorts down, eager and terrified in equal measure to get him back, the real Brody, hers….

  “Oh, yeah,” he growled, gripping her ass and plopping her up on her desk. His hand slid up her skirt and yanked her panties off. Fingers that were familiar and strange, soft and rough, eager and hesitant found her sex, stroked it, teased, and forced a cry from her throat that surprised even her.

  “Hmm, nice.” He grinned. “Let’s have some more of those, shall we?”

  She wanted to claw at him and drag her Brody out and into the light of day. But when he leaned in to kiss her, his gaze softened, became so breathtakingly familiar she very nearly blurted out he, Mr. Amnesia, would soon be a father.

  “Oh,” she said instead as with one slow, firm stroke of his hips he filled her and they moved as one, lips locked and sweat mingling. Ugly, fast, and the most satisfying physical act she’d done in….

  ”Yes!” she yelped when he pressed deep and bit down on her shoulder.

  He shuddered, groaned, and came with a rush of energy that did make her cry. Was he back? His dark-inked chest and shoulders, his very scent sharpened as they caught their breath. The face she clutched between her palms looked merely satisfied, and utterly cocky, which shattered her fragile hope like a precious holiday ornament hitting a hardwood floor.

  “Wow, legal lady.” He shivered, pulling out of her. “A guy might get used to that kind of a conference.” With a grin, he yanked up his shorts. She stood, biting her lip, on the cusp of the sort of confession that changes lives forever. But instead she simply gave him his shirt that had fallen onto her desk, keeping her mouth shut. “Call me anytime you need more…meetings, baby.” He smacked her ass, hard.

  She whirled on him, words burbling to the surface. “Well, enjoy the first and last time you get that sort of meeting from me,” she ground out. “You don’t deserve me, Brody Vaughn. Anything about me.” She put a protective hand on her stomach, which had lately become noticeably fuller, at least to her eyes. “Go to hell. Don’t come back.” She turned before the hurt on his face weakened her. Not her Robert J. Vaughn anymore and likely never would be, just Brody. Newly minted, king man-whore, in a land of men just like him.

  “Fucking soccer players,” she muttered, wiping away tears. She would not be crying over him anymore. Fate, or karma or some bitchy combination of the two had reality-sla
pped her. She got it now. “Go,” she whispered.

  “Sophie,” he said, his voice rough, cracked.

  She risked a glance at him, and saw the face of a broken boy, unloved, and unable to love, the one she’d rescued from himself while he did the same for her. Gasping, she took a step forward. But he stumbled back, pulled the door open, and ran out.

  Within a week, she’d called a team meeting with all the coaches and Jack in attendance. Everyone but Brody had been invited, and all had been told not to tell him under threat of being benched for an entire season. She hoped they believed she had that power because she wasn’t sure she did. They assembled, crammed into her office, in various states of sleepy and pissed off at six in the morning. She marched in, shut the door, and perched on the edge of her desk mustering every ounce of pure bitch energy she had left. It had worked for her once. It would have to work now. She willed it so.

  “All right Sophie, we’re here. What is it?” Metin’s soft voice and worried scrunched-up expression almost forced an hysterical laugh to burst from her mouth.

  She put a hand to her lips to hold it back, took a breath, and pointedly met every last set of eyes in the room.

  “I am pregnant,” she stated. Jack exchanged glances with Rafe. The team took it in without comment or movement. “As we all know, Brody and I….” She cleared her throat, unwilling to lose it like a typical girl in this room of man-boys. “Brody and I were together. before…before that final crisis, because we let him continue to play injured.” She pinned Nicco Garza with a pointed look that he had the graciousness to blink away from, his face red. “We were…together,” she said again. “I know you all know that, and so as you might expect, this is his child I’m carrying. But here is what you now know about it.”

  Standing, she pointed at each of them, ending with Jack. “As far as you are concerned, this is a goddamned immaculate conception, a real Virgin Mary kinda deal, get me? Because if I hear that he knows that it is his kid, I will come after each and every one of you with a castration knife first and a legal document declaring you unfit to play, coach, or….” She glanced at Jack, her breathing ragged. He shook his head, as if to say, don’t worry about me blabbing.