Scoring Off the Field (WAGS series)

by Simone, Naima

  Helplessly, she stared at him, unable to tear her gaze away. His eyes, so clear seconds earlier, resembled the cloud-heavy sky she’d studied before he arrived. The full, sensual curves of his mouth hardened, firming into a grim line, and the chiseled line of his jaw could’ve been hewn from rock.

  She didn’t need to be inside his head to decipher his thoughts; they’d been friends too long for her not to understand what the anger stamped on his face meant. Pain. Confusion.

  Betrayal.

  Part of her yearned to shrink from the accusation in those hooded eyes, but she had to face this—face him—head on. The job, the conversation, the imminent separation—none of them were going away.

  “This job opportunity is in Dayton,” he stated, the flat intonation not fooling her. Not when her skin practically vibrated from the crackle of the emotional currents snapping between them.

  “Yes. With the Offices of Families and Children for a Child Welfare Caseworker 1 position.” She balled her fingers into fists at her side. Reaching for him, touching him even though she needed it so desperately would be a brutal mistake. “They want me to come to Dayton before making a final decision.”

  “When?” he asked in the same even tone. Ice slid through her veins.

  “The Monday after next,” she murmured.

  “No, when did you decide to apply for a job in Ohio?”

  She glanced away from him for the first time. How could she answer it truthfully without telling him why she’d chosen to submit for a position so far from Seattle…from him? She couldn’t. Well, she couldn’t and not admit how she’d loved him all these years. And confessing that wasn’t an option. Still, premeditation wasn’t only a sign of guilt in a court of law, but it’d be one in his eyes, too.

  “About the time I told you about quitting,” she hedged. “I didn’t limit my job search to Seattle. And when Dayton came up, it just seemed like fate.”

  That much was true. It had seemed fortuitous, as if the often-fickle fate had taken pity and decided to throw her a bone.

  “That was weeks ago. You’ve been lying by omission to me for weeks,” he said, the first traces of anger leaking into his deep voice. “Letting me assume you were quitting to enter into social work here, in Seattle.”

  She couldn’t deny his charge. Couldn’t explain her actions because that would involve revealing her closest held secret. It would mean damaging their friendship beyond repair when he rejected her again. So she settled for, “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head, the anger slowly bleeding away to leave a profound sadness that hurt as much as the whip in his voice had. “Why, Tenny? Why Dayton? There are plenty of jobs here.”

  The “with me” remained unspoken, but it wavered in the air between them. And wasn’t that the irony? She could never be “with him.” Another woman might one day have that privilege, but never her.

  “The reasons I’ve given you from the beginning haven’t changed, Dom,” she said, risking taking a step toward him. “They’re still true. And moving to Dayton seemed like coming full circle. It was their system that we grew up in that inspired me to pursue a social work degree.”

  “Never mind that you’ll be thousands of miles away from home.” Straightening, he stalked across the room, burrowing all ten fingers into his hair, clutching the strands in a tight grip.

  After several long moments, he finally lowered his arms and lifted his head to meet her gaze. For the first time in their friendship, his eyes were shuttered, preventing her from glimpsing his emotions, his thoughts. She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. The gesture didn’t alleviate the sudden loneliness.

  “Yes, but…” But what? It wouldn’t change their relationship? Bullshit. Wasn’t that one of the points of the cross-country move?

  “Tell me, Tenny,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the room. “Why does your getting your own life mean leaving mine?”

  Sorrow and pain seized her, paralyzing her lungs. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. How couldn’t he see she was fighting, battling inside? Grief, hurt, frustration, fear—the fury of them all were tearing her apart. God, how could he not know that leaving would rip her heart out? But so would staying. And in this instance, she had to put herself above everything—everyone—else. Had to. For her emotional survival, she had no other option but to choose herself.

  “Give me a minute, okay?” he murmured, his gaze fixed on the window she’d stared out of only minutes earlier. “I need a little time.”

  Without a word, she rounded the desk and left the room, granting him the space he’d requested. Part of her thought, hoped, he would stop her. Ask her to sit down so they could finish discussing it, hash it out, and come to some sort of…conclusion. But he didn’t.

  Another first in their friendship.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Red, thirty-two.” The boom of his voice echoed in his helmet as he squared up behind the center and looked to his right, briefly making eye contact with Ronin. Then, he glanced to his left and repeated the cadence call so his second receiver as well as his linemen could hear the protection scheme. “Red, thirty-two. Set. Go! Go!”

  The center snapped the ball, and Dom dropped back, scanning the field for his receivers. Spotting Ronin open, he launched the football. But just before his friend grabbed it, a safety appeared in front of Ronin and knocked the ball down. Fuck.

  The sharp shrill of a whistle cut through the air, the piercing sound somehow indignant. All movement on the field halted as Coach Declan marched into the ordered chaos of the play. Sighing, Dom snatched off his helmet and dragged a hand through his hair, cursing under his breath. Damn it. This was practice, but if it’d been this Sunday’s game against the Packers, his mistake could’ve resulted in a punt to the other team, or worse, Green Bay getting the ball.

  “What the hell? All of you fucked up,” Coach yelled. Pointing a finger at one of the offensive tackles, he spread his arms, palms up. “Jacobs. What the fuck are you doing? How’re you going to let that end run free? You got to get your ass out the air and get over there. Dom, that was a bad read. You have to see that safety moving over. Get your goddamn head in the play. And for chrissakes…”

  He continued the tirade, and Dom replaced his helmet, anger at himself a tight ball lodged in his chest. Ignoring the concerned looks both Zeph and Ronin aimed his way, he stalked back to his starting position and waited for Coach to finish.

  Folding his arms, he stared straight ahead and tried to—how did Coach put it?—get his goddamn head in the play. His jaw clenched. Much easier said than done.

  Yesterday, Tennyson had told him about the job offer…in Dayton. A muscle in his jaw twinged in protest.

  It was a little over a week since he and Tennyson had first slept together and struck their new agreement. One would think, already being best friends, that sex would bring them closer. She was his closest confidante, handled the day-to-day operations of his life, had a permanent room in his home. Hell, he’d bought her cookware for his kitchen. The only thing they hadn’t shared had been their bodies. So removing that last boundary, so to speak, shouldn’t have been that big a deal. Yet, he couldn’t have felt more distant from her.

  No way could he cry foul about the sex. It was hot-as-hell, earth-shattering, what-the-hell-is-my-name-again sex, and she held nothing back from him when they were together. Totally uninhibited, raw, giving, and generous. Other women had preceded her, but he would be hard put to remember their names or faces. With her wild passion and innate sensuality, she rendered them forgettable. So yeah, he had no complaints about her as a lover.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  His complaint was that he couldn’t get enough. As soon as he had her, he craved her again, no matter that his body had waved the white flag of surrender. Apparently, his dick had a hit out on him.

  But the easy fluidity and openness of their friendship…it’d changed.

  Now he knew why.

  Here he’d been wondering if
she’d thrown up roadblocks to the intimacy they’d always shared because of something he’d done. Or maybe because she’d been worried about how it would affect them. The signs had been nothing overt; no, they were small things like a hesitation before answering what her plans were for the day. Or her refusal to spend nights with him in the kitchen he’d restored for her or the room he’d designated for her. Anyone knew that tiny dings and cracks soon became fissures and fractures that were much harder, sometimes impossible, to fix. Maybe he’d been fooling himself when he’d believed they could add sex to their relationship and still have one. Hell, at this point, he questioned if he could ever look at her and not see her naked, sweet body twisting and arching under his hands. Not see her dark brown eyes even darker with lust. Not see her coming apart, writhing on his cock.

  And all along, her distance had been a result of her lying to him.

  Not directly, but by omission. These past weeks, she’d been looking him in the face, sharing evenings with him, lying under him in his bed, and had been keeping a huge secret.

  Of course, she might have remained quiet because of his aversion to her leaving. Even now, panic flared, that edgy feeling of a loss of control, of losing her. The rationalization of her reasons didn’t stop the same, troubling agitation from settling inside him like an annoying pebble in a shoe. Didn’t prevent the sense of powerlessness from gripping him and shaking him like a stick in the jaws of a dog.

  In a week, she would be flying to Dayton, across the country. Away from him. Leaving him.

  Like everyone else…

  He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as if he could do the same to that small, dark voice that whispered against his skull.

  He just couldn’t shake the feeling that they would never be the same again.

  And he had to get his head back in the game.

  “All right. Run the play again,” Coach called, moving to the side of the field and interrupting Dom’s thoughts as they had tumbled down a rabbit hole.

  Shifting his attention back to practice, he lined up behind the center once more.

  “Red, thirty-two. Red, thirty-two,” he yelled, spotting the middle linebacker approaching the line of scrimmage. In his peripheral vision, he caught the cornerback drifting back. A blitz. Shit. Too late to change the play. “Go! Go!”

  The center snapped the ball into Dom’s hands. Ronin and Zeph ran their routes, and the offensive line blocked the attacking defensive live. He dropped back, football raised. One step. Two. Three. Four. On the fifth, his gut twisted in a sickening tumble, a too-late warning of something about to go horribly wrong. His plant foot rolled, and he crashed to the ground.

  His head slammed to the ground, and a blinding pain burst behind his eyes.

  Then his world went black.

  …

  Oh God.

  Jesus.

  Panic and terror clawed at Tennyson’s throat as she ran up to the University of Washington Medical Center’s entrance. Zeph’s deep baritone still echoed in her ear from the telephone call that had thrown her world on its ass.

  “Tenny, Dom was hurt in practice. He blacked out for a few seconds, so they’re taking him to the hospital for tests.” Even Zeph’s lovely Louisiana drawl hadn’t been able to lessen the blow or dial back the terror that had erupted inside her.

  Hurt. Blacked out. That’s all that had been recycling in her head over and over for the last half hour since she’d received the call and started racing over to the hospital.

  A concussion. That’s what it had to mean. In the seven years of his career, he’d never suffered this particular injury. This scary, potentially life-changing injury.

  “Please, God, let him be okay,” she prayed, barely pausing as the glass doors hissed open. “Please—”

  The smell hit her first. The strange, unique, but all-too-familiar scent of disinfectant, flowers, detergent, and sickness. Then the sounds infiltrated her senses next. The squeak of soft-soled shoes rushing across a waxed floor. The whispered whine of wheelchairs. The ringing of phones and professionally polite voices under the hum of an ever-circulating AC system. Then the visuals pummeled her. White lab coats. Generic paintings on the wall. Signs with arrows and directions to different departments and areas. People. So many people. Sad people.

  Everything—the scents, noises and images—bombarded her, crashed into her like swollen floods released from their gates at one time. The images blurred, melded, overlapped so that for long, suffocating seconds, she wasn’t sure if she stood in Seattle or that Dayton hospital so long ago as a child.

  Her harsh, shallow breaths wheezed in and out of her lungs, echoing between her ears. Sweat popped out on her forehead, the back of her neck, and prickled under her arms. The world constricted, expanded, then constricted again until it resembled a rubber band.

  I can’t. I can’t do this. The words were a chant inside her head.

  But then an image of Dom flickered and solidified behind her lids, momentarily dimming the cacophonous noise, loosening the noose around her throat. Dom, those piercing blue eyes closed. That golden skin, pale; the vitality that seemed to hum off his body, muted.

  She swallowed back a humiliatingly childlike whimper and focused on the floor and on putting one foot in front of the other.

  “I can do it,” she murmured to herself. “I can.”

  “Tenny?” Ronin’s voice penetrated the roar in her head seconds before his fingers wrapped around her upper arm.

  Sheer relief and gratefulness flowed through her. Uncaring what he might read into her reaction, she hugged him, a shudder rippling through her.

  “Hi,” she mumbled against his chest.

  “Hey.” He returned the embrace, holding her, letting her absorb his strength. Ronin, usually so chatty, didn’t utter a word until she inhaled a deep breath and pulled back. “You okay?”

  “I really hate hospitals, but yes.” She nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “Okay, let’s go.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and guided her toward the bank of elevators.

  Minutes that felt like a crawling eternity passed, and she had no shame about clinging to Ronin’s big, gentle hand. They approached a closed door, and he reached around her and opened it. Voices rushed out to greet her, and she followed them, moving inside.

  And there he was.

  Her knees weakened, and she propped a shoulder against the wall just inside the doorway. He lay in the hospital bed, still wearing his practice jersey and game pants. An Ace bandage wrapped around his ankle, and the tan material stood out against the stark white sheets. His dark brown hair tumbled around his face, and when he glanced in her direction and she met his blue eyes, she sucked in a breath. His expression might say disgruntled, but his eyes—they revealed his pain and fear.

  She pushed off the wall, moving toward him.

  “Tenny.” He frowned, stretching out a hand toward her, his palm up. “What the hell are you doing here?” Concern darkened the shadows already in his gaze.

  She shrugged. “Paternity Court was a rerun,” she teased, attempting to lighten the heaviness of the conversation. Especially when she was the cause of that concern. He, more than anyone, knew how panic-inducing and traumatic it’d been to walk into this hospital. She clasped his hand in hers, her grip tight.

  Dom didn’t smile as she’d intended but continued to study her face.

  “Oh good, Tenny. You’re here,” Renee said, flipping her hair over her shoulder and pinning an exasperated but affectionate glare on Dom. “I was five seconds away from running a catheter up in him.”

  “Kinky,” Jason drawled from the other side of the private room.

  “Shut it,” Renee snapped at her ex. “If I was talking to you, I would’ve used grunts and single syllables.”

  “Christ,” Ronin muttered.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Tennyson interrupted before World War Three could erupt.

  “Me and Ronin were at practice already. Renee followed the ambu
lance here, and I called Jason after talking to you,” Zeph explained.

  “I didn’t need an escort,” Dom said, his tone more than a little disgruntled.

  “I think that’s his way of saying thank you for all your help today,” Ronin offered, grinning.

  “I’m glad you translated for me,” Zeph replied. “Because it sounded a lot like he was being an ungrateful douche.”

  Dom sighed, rolling his head back against the hospital pillow. “Yes, that’s exactly what it meant. Hey, can you guys give Tenny and me a minute?”

  “Sure.” Ronin pushed off the wall and stretched. “Who wants to hit the cafeteria with me? I’m starving.”

  “I thought you were having dinner with your mother and sisters tonight,” Jason reminded him, arching an eyebrow as he headed toward the door.

  “It’s Natia’s birthday,” Ronin said, mentioning his youngest sister. He squeezed his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose as if in pain. “I’m going to be surrounded by her and a bunch of seventeen-year-olds. For hours. If not for the league’s drug test rules, I’d definitely hit one of Mom’s blunts tonight.”

  Jason snickered, and even though panic hadn’t fully removed its teeth, a spurt of humor rose up in her. She’d visited Ronin’s home on Vashon Island, where the receiver had grown up with his single mother and four sisters. The farmhouse was loud, boisterous, chaotic, and occasionally smelled of weed. His mother, a beautiful woman of Samoan descent, was a confirmed vegetarian, conspiracy theorist, hippie, and firm believer in smoking marijuana. Although, these days it was medicinal rather than recreational. Ronin loved his family, but visits to the island, which was an hour and fifteen minutes’ drive from Seattle, weren’t entirely…restful. Or quiet.

  She also knew Ronin’s mother had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. For all his belly-aching, he wouldn’t miss time with her or his family for the world. The funny, laid-back wide receiver always had a ready joke or quick comeback. She suspected he covered a lot of his pain with humor. Not that he’d admit it. He was a man, of course.