Blindsided

by Ava Ashley

  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have anything against sex. Other than football and breathing, it’s kind of what I do. But that woman’s not letting the man come up for air! He’s been dragging ass into practice for weeks now trying for number two and I’m worried about his timing.

  The Bushmasters have three down linemen and two up, including one free safety who is digging the ball of his foot in, about fourteen yards deep in mid-field. Eddie Kowalski, a six-foot four, two hundred seventy-two pound defensive lineman, is hanging close to Ron Forrester, my tight end, about five yards in. I might have felt sorry for Ron - Kowalski was a big motherfucker – but, the douchebag had popped me one in the mouth at the last after-party for succeeding where he’d failed with a big-breasted, blonde fangirl who’d been at the party. Didn’t matter. My mouth wasn’t what she’d been kissing later than evening.

  I’m just about to call for the snap when I see the outside defensive back suddenly square up and shift inside and down into man coverage. Dammit! The dick sugared the coverage. They’re gonna blitz!

  “Burn!” I call hoarsely. “Burn!”

  The terse audible spurns my guys into hyper-awareness as we have to drop the play I called in the huddle.

  My play time is suddenly sheared in half.

  I call the snap and the line of scrimmage linemen attack, crushing a five-man steam train of hot, sweaty bodies against my offensive line. The Bushmaster’s remaining non-blitzing personnel move to cover my half-back and my running back. My guys try to pick up the blitz in a protection scheme, but when the defense realizes they’re staying in to block, the defense triggers downhill and adds two more warm bodies adding to the barreling train crashing into us.

  As I backpedal, I make the hot read to Pratt. The cornerback up in his grille doesn’t risk drawing the flag by touching him, but before I can pump my arm forward for the throw, the idiot trips. The sonovabitch trips on his own goddamned feet and goes down.

  My brain racks through the Rolodex of option plays we’ve drilled. I look to my second receiver. The second cornerback just forces him out of bounds making him ineligible. And that free safety who was fourteen yards deep at the start of the play – remember that clock we were talking about? Time was up.

  The safety shoots straight up the middle, untouched. And he’s coming straight at my ass. I had one choice.

  Run.

  I dig my right toe deep into the turf and my hams pull my leg back so I could catapult my six-foot five, two-hundred and thirty pound frame from the calf, off the ground, and into forward motion. Pure adrenaline surges through me as the thick, dense muscles of my quads propel me forward. Before the safety can coldcock me, I curl to my left, cradling the football like it’s made of gold, and aim like hell to get north and south. Then, in a split-second, the hole is there. I don’t even blink, or I risk it disappearing and it’s “game over”.

  I stretch my run wide. I press the hole, and I explode through it like a bat out of hell. I was suddenly grateful for the extra forty-five pound plates Hugh Laughlin, our trainer, had insisted on loading onto the sled, one-by-one, at every training practice.

  “If you’re fucking slow on the forty, you’re gonna be fucking slow on the goddamned field!” he’d bark as he put us through the paces in the forty-yard dash. I was never slow, but used to put down a reasonably average time on the forty. Until recently, that is. I don’t know if it was the extra plates or some mojo from the football gods, but damned if I couldn’t pull out a 4.25 second run in recent months. Suck on that Chris Johnson.

  Suddenly, I’m all alone.

  Exactly where I’m used to being.

  I lean into the run, hugging the sideline and suck in as much oxygen as my lungs will hold. But, I can’t hear my breath. I don’t even notice my heartbeat. Not that I have in awhile anyway. Everything is muffled. It’s like there’s a black hole in my head, sucking in everything around it.

  There’s only one thing that escapes the sucking void. The Cougars’ logo inside that thirty-foot deep space buried at the end of the field. I pump. My right foot lifts up...and comes down in a solid plant on the other side of that precious white line.

  The universe explodes.

  The stadium erupts in a deafening roar of cheers and applause. I don’t even have time to turn around when my teammates are on top of me, smacking me in the helmet. Slapping me on the ass. Hoisting me on their shoulders.

  We won. We...no...scratch that. I pulled it out. It’s a banner moment. I should feel high.

  Except, I can’t see the victory through the red haze of anger.

  *****

  The team thunders like buffalo through the tunnel, a massive herd followed by a parasitic press corps. I duck every single microphone and digital recorder shoved under my nose as I make my way to the locker room. I grit a terse “no comment” through clenched teeth more than once. I just want to hit the showers. Maybe some cold water will cool the red rage churning in my gut. I can’t believe I’m that pissed off about Pratt’s bumbling footwork.

  The blinding pops of photo flashes follow me. I can’t see a goddamned thing except those fucking blue spots. I rub my eyes angrily. When my vision finally clears, the first thing my eyes focus on is a swatch of white. A short brunette, her breasts perky against the ribbed white cotton of her tank top, is leaning against the tunnel wall, away from the crowd. She’s curvy as hell, but tiny, even under the bulk of her leather bomber jacket. She didn’t look like anyone I knew, but she sure as hell looked like somebody I might want to know.

  Maybe that’s what I need, I think. A quick screw to shake off this whatever it is I’m feeling. And one fangirl is as good as the next, I figure. I pause my heated stomp toward the locker room and turn her way. She catches my eye and takes a hesitant step forward, but as a pushy ESPN reporter shoves a recorder under my nose, almost earning himself a mouthful of teeth, Bomber girl stops her in her tracks. It’s then that I notice the badge on the lanyard around her neck.

  Crap. She’s press.

  Before I can even consider breaking my own rule about media relations, Forrester suddenly heaves me up again, nearly crashing my skull into the hanging fluorescent light, and I’m swept up in the sea of sweat and testosterone and into the locker room.

  The locker room is already like the den of the Lost Boys. Dumb-ass Sanchez is whooping and hollering like a moron, riding the laundry cart across the floor, already buck-ass naked and waving his cowboy hat in the air like he’s bucking a bronco. Probably warming up, I think, considering the defensive back out of U of T would likely be bucking some filly, or three, by night’s end.

  “Party at Omnia tonight, motherfuckers! Drinks are on Hugh!” he announces as Hugh tries to usher him out of the reporters’ line of sight. Our trainer throws his head back over his shoulder as he steers Sanchez away.

  “Lennox! Be sure to see me for a Toradol shot before you leave. You took a hard hit in the third and I don’t want you hurting for a week. We don’t have a bye next weekend and we need you functional. The Washington Wolves are gonna want blood. If we aren’t in shape to go for the throat, they will take us out of the running in a heartbeat.”

  I wave him off. “Yeah, yeah.”

  Mention of next week’s game against the Wolves circles the vultures and they go back to their rapid fire questions. Suddenly, a voice pops out loudly over the deluge of yammering voices.

  “LENNOX! LENNOX HARDY! SAC-BEE HERE. AS AN INFLUENTIAL PUBLIC FIGURE WITH TIES TO SENATOR DALEY AND WITH THE UPCOMING ELECTION, READERS ARE CURIOUS TO SEE WHERE YOU STAND ON FAMILY VALUES.” The voice booms over the locker room public address system. All eyes turn to Bomber girl, holed up in the trainer’s office holding the telephone receiver to her ear. Then, they all look back at me.

  What...the...fuck?

  Did I know her? I ran through my mental black book. Not a clue.

  She didn’t look too surprised when security showed her the door and she didn’t look at all surprised when thirty minutes later, I storm o
ut to the parking lot and stride towards her beat-up old Karmann Ghia. Shit. I think the player just got played.

  “Okay, Sweet Cheeks. While I will admit you are a fine piece of ass, what in the hell was that about in there? Who gives a fuck where I stand on family values and, more importantly, who’s asking?” I bellow in her face.

  She looks stung. “Sloane?”

  I stare blankly. She presses on. “Sloane Armstrong? Seriously? Nothing? Jesus, I thought I’d be at least a little memorable considering that one position.”

  That generates a raised eyebrow.

  She gets a little hitch in her hip and a little more ice in her blue eyes. Damn, but they were blue.

  “Well, I’m sorry you don’t remember me, Mr. UFL, but I think we have a subject worth discussing, if not in private, then at least away from the prying eyes and ears of the Greater Sacramento Press Corps.”

  “Like you?” I tease, flicking her press badge.

  She stations her small hands on those curvy hips and her full lower lip pokes out, almost inviting me to suck on it.

  “Alright,” I decide out loud. I’ll play along with her little game, whatever it is. Did I mention her curves? I could think of worse ways to blow off the steam threatening to boil me over.

  Her stomach snarled inhumanly. Her defiant little stance melts a little.

  “Alright,” she repeats. The snarling gets louder. She grins a little on the sheepish side. “Do you mind if we hold this little meeting at Mel’s? I would kill for some Gourmet Mel Fries, right about now.”

  Gourmet Mel Fries? Was she serious? That lip gets just a little pouty again. I start to feel a warm stir downstairs.

  “Fine. But, that’s not happening.” I point to her ride.

  She shrugs. “Why not?”

  I give her a blank stare to make my point, then lead her to my top-of-the-line Cadillac Escalade. She shrugs nonverbally, physically admitting maybe an Escalade has a little more leg room for a six-foot five UFL star than a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.

  I peel out, gunning the car east on Railyards Boulevard then right. I make the sharp left and lean heavily on the accelerator, urging the SUV a little faster than H Street can handle. She wants to ride with an UFL star, then I was going to give her a ride.

  Surprisingly, the next few miles pass in measured silence. All she does is stare. I try to keep my eyes on the road, but I can’t help but catch her studying me out of the corner of my eye. She watches the flex of my quads under the fabric of my jeans as I work the pedals. A smug smile tugs the corner of my lips as I catch her trying not to look too hard at the manly crest near my crotch. One of my best features, without a doubt. She follows the ripple of my tight abs pressing against the tight weave of my Polo shirt. But, then she keeps looking. I mean really studying. She even leans in a little, squinting at something on my face.

  My biceps contract as I tighten and loosen my grip on the steering wheel. I didn’t mind being admired, but this was getting a little intense. I’m starting to feel like somebody’s science experiment.

  “What the hell!” I finally explode. “Look, I’ve gone along with your little game, whatever it is you’re playing at. I even agreed to driving you all the way out to Pink’s ‘cause you had some whacked out craving. But, what the fuck is with the fangirl stare?”

  Curiosity seems to be overriding any discomfort my sudden outburst might have generated.

  “I’m just looking for your scar.” She waggles her finger under my chin in explanation. “I could swear you had a thin little scar across the dimple in your chin. Did you have some work done, or something?”

  My brows knit together in a puzzled furrow. Work done? I turn the Escalade onto J Street.

  I rub two fingers absentmindedly across my chin. I make a sudden hard pull into Mel’s parking lot and slam my fist into the steering wheel. The abrupt maneuver veers us up and over a parking block before we settle back down to the asphalt. The sudden shift provokes my passenger into brilliant yawn of vomit across the center console of the Escalade. My shirt suddenly looks like a kindergarten finger-paint fiasco.

  I sit, in a remarkably stoic silence. I calmly reach into the console for a tissue. Sudden tears start rolling down her face. Yeah, I’d be crying too if I’d just jacked up my chances of scoring some of the best sex of my life. Then, it hits me.

  Weird cravings.

  Puke fest.

  Mood swings.

  Family values.

  Holy shit.

  “I’m going to take a wild guess what you wanted to discuss tonight,” I begin after I take a few calculated wipes. “But, you’ve got the wrong guy.”

  I give her a pointed stare. “My twin brother Logan has the scar...and from what I’ve seen tonight, a helluva surprise coming.”

  Chapter 3

  Sloane

  “What do you mean, ‘your twin brother’?” I stammer in between some really sour expressions, half from the acrid, bilious taste in my mouth, half from the bomb that Lennox has just dropped on my head. He hands me the tissue box and turns his head, affording me at least a little privacy as I try to clean myself up a little.

  Okay. So, maybe he’s not a complete ass. His brother, on the other hand?

  “He introduced himself as Lennox Hardy,” I mutter. “He said he was Lennox Hardy. I thought I was sleeping with...”

  “...Lennox Hardy.” He completes my thought. He shakes his head. “I can’t believe he’s still pulling that old trick. I mean, we used to pull it over on our girlfriends in high school, as a gag. Just to see if they could really tell us apart.”

  I give him a withering look of disgust.

  He waves his hands in self-defense. “We never let it get that far!”

  “That certainly explains why you weren’t answering any of my calls. I’ve been trying to contact you for days. Ever since...”

  “...your monthly friend stopped coming to visit?”

  In case you missed it, Mr. UFL, the look on my face is disgust.

  “Seriously?” I say out loud. “Do you have any clue how scary that little plus sign is? Especially when you’re all alone.”

  “Look at it this way. In nine or so months, you won’t be alone anymore.”

  “Screw in nine months! What about right now?”

  “Pretty sure screwing is what got you here in the first place,” he sniggers. I reward him with a solid jab in the triceps. It doesn’t do much in the way of moving his massive body, but from the wincing smile, I knew I had connected solidly. Ma had insisted Frank train me on the heavy bag growing up.

  “The world’s a dangerous place, Slo-Poke,” she’d used my childhood nickname. She almost never called me Sloane. But, she could nearly always call me late. I always seemed to take my time with everything, always wanting to get things just right. Even as a kid, I planned everything.

  I hadn’t planned on her dying.

  “Hey, easy on the moneymaker. Without that, I don’t have shit,” Lennox grumbled, bringing me back to the present. He rubbed his throwing arm with a little more gusto than was probably necessary.

  “Oh, yeah,” I quip. “That’s right. You’re a big football star.”

  His brows knit together, furrowing a deep crease in that otherwise perfect forehead. “Yeah. You’re damn straight I am. And don’t act like that wasn’t part of the reason you hooked up with me in the first place!”

  Something starts churning in my gut. This time it’s not my little onboard passenger. It’s something else entirely. And it bubbles over before my brain has time to put my mouth in check.

  “I hooked up with you because I thought you were hot!”

  Aw, crap. Was that out loud?

  Judging from the sophomoric grin on his face, I’m going to go with yes. I start backpedaling furiously. “What I meant to say was, I hooked up with your brother because I found him to be relatively attractive and it had been a long week at the office. I was feeling overly stressed and needed to blow off some steam, and an opportunity pres
ented itself.”

  “An opportunity you thought was me,” he presses, not letting the situation go.

  “Of course I thought it was you. What else was I supposed to think? I didn’t even realize you had a brother, let alone a twin. If it’s anybody’s fault I’m in this mess, it’s yours.”

  His eyes widen incredulously. “How the fuck did you get there?!”

  “Most athletes adore the spotlight. You? Not even so much as a sound byte. You never talk about yourself. You don’t give interviews. And you damn well don’t talk to the press.”

  A few terse moments of silent pass. His knuckles whiten as his hands tighten around the leather grips of the steering wheel. His brown eyes have turned an unfathomable black.

  “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” he grits through clenched teeth.

  “Oh,” is all I can manage. He has a point. I’ve been so focused on the confrontation with the man I thought was the father of my child, it didn’t even dawn on me till this very moment that Lennox Hardy, the mystery man, the unattainable story, has not only allowed me, a member of the press corps, into his vehicle, but has actually held a conversation with me longer than “no comment”.

  Why?

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice the flex of the muscles under the skin of his forearms. His golden skin stood out against the pale blue of his Polo, evidence of long days practicing under a grueling sun. The muscle in his jaw worked as he clenched and unclenched his teeth. A raw, animalistic move that made him seem almost feral. A wild spirit wrenching to get loose. I felt a sudden surge of warmth flush from my neck all the way down between my legs. I clenched involuntarily.

  “Look, um, what did you say your name was?” he asks, startling me out of my reverie.