RUNNING GAME (A SECOND CHANCE SPORTS ROMANCE)

by Nikki Wild

  But now, she’d turned into some sort of Nurse Ratched. She was pulling on my leg, forcing it to move in ways that it wasn’t ready to move.

  “It fucking hurts,” I grumbled.

  “Have you been taking your pain meds?”

  “No. Fuck that stuff. I don’t like drugs. I gotta stay sharp,” I replied.

  “You just had surgery. Are you insane? If you don’t take the meds, we’ll never get anywhere.”

  “And if I do, where will we get?” I asked, flashing her a smile that had worked magic on dozens of women before. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. Hell, I might as well have been a big, steaming pile of dog shit, as much as she seemed to be opposed to my presence.

  “We’re both here to do a job, Jesse. I’m here to help you get better. But I can’t do it on my own. You have to take your meds. You have to do your exercises. You aren’t invincible, despite what your adoring fans probably tell you. Now - lift!” she demanded, pulling my leg up and bending my knee. I was laying on my back, staring up at her as she kept moving and stretching my leg.

  “Where’d you go?” I asked, changing the subject. Of course I would do my part. That much was a given. I had millions of dollars on the line here, and I wouldn’t jeopardize my career by not taking this recovery seriously. I’d take the fucking pain killers, sure, but probably only half the prescribed dose because I wasn’t a total pussy. Besides, I didn’t want to lie to Maisey, or piss her off by not taking the damn things.

  Which was insane, because really, what did I care how she felt? But for some reason, I did. Shit, I should be the one that’s mad at her for standing me up all those years ago, but she was acting like I was the one that’d done something wrong. That was pissing me off…

  And making me even more curious…

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “When you took off from Ault. Where’d you go?” I asked. I’d asked around back then a little, tried talking to her few friends, once I’d even seen Clyde at the corner store buying beer and I’d asked him where she’d gone, but nobody ever had any answers. She’d just disappeared. As if she’d never been there at all.

  “I moved to Denver,” she replied, then clamped her mouth shut. “Let’s do your other leg.”

  She walked around me and her hips swayed with each step. She’d turned into such a beauty. She was feminine yet strong. Her attitude towards me was hard, yet there was a lingering softness just underneath the surface. Or, maybe I was just projecting the past onto the present, I don’t know. Something about her made me want to get to know her better, made me want to get to the bottom of the What-Happened-to-Maisey-Jayne mystery.

  Maybe it was the fact that she was the only woman who’d ever left me hanging.

  Or, maybe it was because she represented something I’d lost a long time ago.

  Those years in Ault were magical. An innocent time before my life changed so drastically. I’d been so close to my family. My parents were kind and supportive, letting me and my little sister, Nina, experience the kind of love that every child needs to become a happy adult. Nina and I were the best of friends, even though she was so much younger than me.

  I’d graduated and gone off to college full of naive dreams that my life would always be perfect, that nothing bad could ever touch me.

  But then, everything changed. Nina died suddenly one night during my sophomore year in college and our world turned upside down.

  Maisey was there in the middle of the calm before the storm. She was someone who’s memory was bathed in that era of my life when everything was just as it should be right before everything fell apart.

  And I desperately wanted to hold onto that memory…

  Yeah, my life is amazing now, but I’d give anything to go back and have those days with Nina again. She was such a spunky kid, full of life, in love with everything under the sun. Nobody could make me laugh like she could.

  And nobody was ready for her passing. A healthy girl isn’t supposed to just… Go…

  It turned out Nina had a genetic heart condition so rare that nobody at the hospital had seen it in person. One tiny little gene out of place put a ticking time bomb in her chest. If we had known our family had a history of this sort of thing maybe the doctors could have done something to help, but my father was adopted… We couldn’t have seen this coming.

  My parents were devastated. I was devastated.

  Everything was ripped away from me. The innocence I’d believed in. That belief that everything would always turn out all right became a joke. I’d been jaded and broken hearted ever since.

  I’d been yearning for those feelings of pure joy ever since… Those feelings of such immeasurable happiness I’d experienced when I didn’t know there was anything else to feel. I missed all that. I wanted it back. Part of me didn’t believe it was possible, though. So, I stumbled through life just looking for a few moments of superficial pleasure and left my heart out of it.

  The past, though? Those good times? Maisey was a part of that. Even if it was briefly, she was still etched into my mind - her laughter, her sweetness, that connection we’d felt that one night together. To hell with the pain shooting up from my leg… Being here with Maisey made me feel better than I had in years.

  To say I wanted answers was putting it lightly. If I had to drag them out then so be it. I had at least three months to get her talking. I shook my head and let the bad memories fade.

  “Why? Why’d you move?” I asked. That was what I wanted to know the most.

  She hesitated before answering. A good, long pause, that left me wondering if she even heard me. She kept stretching my leg up, her hands massaging my thigh.

  “I turned eighteen. That was always my plan,” she finally answered.

  “That’s all you’re going to give me?” I asked.

  “What more do you want?” she snapped.

  “An explanation, for starters. Why did you stand me up?” I asked. “And don’t say we didn’t have a date. You left your prom dress hanging in your closet.”

  The look on her face was priceless.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “I went to your house that night looking for you. You were gone. You left your dress behind.”

  “I see,” she said, her voice steely and tight. “Does it really matter, Jesse? After all these years? It’s been so long, it’s all water under the bridge.”

  “Of course it doesn’t matter now,” I replied. “I’ve just always wondered, that’s all. It was important at the time, though.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I just needed to leave.”

  “That night, huh?”

  “Yeah, that night.”

  “Okay, Maisey, whatever you say. If you don’t want to explain, you don’t have to.”

  “Thank you,” she nodded. I wasn’t finished, though, not by a long shot. I’d let her off the hook right now because she looked like she was going to explode from tension all of a sudden and there was no need to rush things. I’d get my answers eventually.

  “That really fucking hurts,” I said, as she dug into my thigh muscle painfully.

  “You should have taken the pain meds,” she shrugged, digging in harder.

  “Turn over,” she demanded. “Lie on your stomach.”

  “I like it when you tell me what to do,” I winked, before turning over slowly and laying on my stomach like an obedient dog. Her hands began massaging the back of my thigh, and if it wasn’t so fucking painful, I’d have been completely turned on.

  “That’s good,” she snapped. “Because I’ll be telling you what to do for several weeks. Get used to it.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I joked.

  “I know what you meant. You know what I meant.”

  “Oh, Maisey,” I sighed. “Why are you so tough now? You used to be soft and funny.”

  “I’m still funny,” she replied, “just not at work.”

  I laughed.

  “Okay, th
en - fuck! What are you doing? That hurts so bad.”

  “Of course it hurts, the bruise is incredibly deep in this spot.”

  “Can’t you be more gentle?” I asked.

  “Can’t you be more of a man?” she replied, her voice laced with sarcasm.

  “Wow, okay,” I replied, ignoring the pang of hurt that shot through my heart. She didn’t have to attack my manhood, for fuck’s sake. If I wasn’t practically an invalid, I’d show her right now how much of a man I really was.

  “Sorry,” she muttered under her breath. “That was unprofessional of me.”

  “Whatever, it’s fine,” I said.

  “Turn back over,” she said. I did so, and we both saw my huge shaft poking out of my loose athletic shorts at the same time. I guess I wasn’t in too much pain after all.

  Her mouth opened in shock, but her eyes were glued to it. I reached down slowly, adjusted it to the side and shrugged.

  “You’ve always had that effect on me,” I said.

  “It’s not me. It’s perfectly natural. Not a sexual thing at all,” she snapped, turning away quickly, giving me a sweet view of her luscious backside again.

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” I replied, gripping my cock through my shorts and squeezing.

  “What?” she asked, turning back around, catching me staring at her ass.

  “Trust me, it’s definitely sexual,” I replied, my cock throbbing in my hand.

  “Look, Jesse, you’ve got to stop this,” she said, her eyes flashing with anger. “I can’t work like this. We barely knew each other. It was a long time ago. It didn’t mean anything. It’s best we just keep things professional.”

  “That’s true, it was a long time ago,” I replied slowly. “And it was just one night. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t mean anything.”

  “I meant - I - well - you - goddammit, Jesse, I really don’t even remember. Can we please stop talking about it?”

  “Don’t remember!” I roared. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Do you?” she asked, her voice dripping with irritation.

  “Yes. It was amazing,” I replied. She’d returned to my side and was roughly rubbing some kind of minty smelling lotion on my leg now, her face turned away slightly. I reached up and wrangled a loose curl, tucking it behind her ear. She shuddered, her eyes locking with mine as she looked at me in shock. “I didn’t forget, Maisey. I’d never forget. It was the best night of my fucking life… Tell me you didn’t forget either. It was your first time. I know damn well you didn’t forget that.”

  She shook her head, slammed the bottle of lotion on the table and walked out, leaving me with a silent answer to my question.

  She hadn’t forgotten a goddamned thing.

  10

  MAISEY

  I closed the door to my office, sinking against the wall and falling to the floor. As if having to massage his fucking thighs and groin weren’t bad enough, I had to deal with him touching me? Yeah, maybe it was no big deal, but the act of touching my hair like that was so familiar, so intimate, it had completely unnerved me.

  I’d never imagined it would be this hard to see him again. I’d been so in love with him, as much as a naive teenager can be in love. But over the years, his effect on me had lessened to a tolerable level, and I’d learned how to push the thought of him far in the back of my mind. In just a few years, he’d demolished years worth of resistance that I’d built up.

  I felt like a teenager all over again. Fumbling, stumbling, butterflies, sweaty palms and a fluttering heartbeat. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I had a virus. But I didn’t. It was all Jesse. I was sick with every emotion under the sun right now, and if I didn’t get a grip on it, I was going to lose everything I’d worked so fucking hard for. My job. My stability.

  I couldn’t do that. I owed it to Maddy to keep my shit together. She needed a parent that didn’t fall apart just because my past had marched back into my life.

  My head was spinning, but I had to get back in there. I stood up, squared my shoulders and walked back down the hall.

  Grady was waiting again, like a faithful puppy. I wondered if he had his own life, or this was it. He barely nodded at me and I knocked and walked in again.

  Jesse had taken off his shirt and was sitting on the edge of an exercise bench in the corner, lifting weights over his head, his arms raising up and down, his tight muscles rippling down his naked back, his biceps twitching and flexing and covered with a light sheen of sweat.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “You should start slow.”

  “My arms aren’t fucked up. Besides, you walked out without telling me what to do. I don’t like just sitting around and wasting time. Time is money, right?” he winked.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, forcing my gaze away from his amazingly toned body. I’d seen pictures of it. He’d been photographed many times over the years and his body was probably plastered on many teenaged girl’s walls, but there was something different about seeing it in person. He was a perfect man, if you were only looking on the outside. His body was flawless, outside of the swollen and scared knee and bruises on his left side and thigh. Somehow, I didn’t see those though. I just saw the hard work he’d obviously put into developing his body into elite athletic form. It was breathtaking, and it took me a second to gather my wits about me before I could begin speaking again.

  “So,” I began. My voice was shaking and it was beginning to piss me off. I was a grown woman acting like a virginal teenager. “We have a pool and hot tub down the hall. Water therapy is a big part of what we do here.”

  “Does this mean I get to see you in a bikini?” he asked.

  “What? No! I won’t be getting in.”

  “That’s too bad, it was starting to sound fun,” he said.

  “We’re not here to have fun, Jesse,” I replied, trying to sound as stern as possible.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because fun isn’t going to make you feel better!” I snapped.

  “Wanna bet?” he asked, winking at me again. “Maybe we’re not talking about the same kind of fun.”

  “You’ve got to stop,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “You’ve got to stop being so uptight,” he insisted.

  “Look, take these papers,” I shoved the aquatic intake therapy papers and instructions in his hand. “They’re waiting for you down the hall. Give the top one to the therapists and keep the rest. Those instructions show you all the exercises you need to run through while you’re in the pool. When you’re done, sit in the hot tub for fifteen minutes, no more, no less, got it?”

  “And what are you going to do?” he asked.

  Sit in my office and try not to lose my shit, I thought to myself.

  “I have another patient,” I lied. He was the only person I was seeing, since Larry had cleared my schedule so I could spend more time with Jesse. If he knew I was pawning him off on the aquatic therapy department, he’d be pissed I wasn’t at least supervising like I was supposed to be.

  Fuck Larry. I’d asked him to take me off of this case, and if he insisted I work with Jesse, then I didn’t need to spend every minute with him. I couldn’t. I needed breaks, to catch my breath, to make sure those walls I’d erected stayed firmly in place.

  I hated to admit it, but every second I spent with Jesse was slowly chipping away at my armor. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “I’ll see you in a few hours,” I replied, leaving him alone in the room once more. I’d gotten through these last few moments without having to touch him, and without him touching me - a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

  I’d never wished I was independently wealthy and didn’t need to work more than I did today.

  11

  JESSE

  After two hours in the water, I was ready to go home. The pain was more than I’d expected, and I was beginning to question my decision about not taking all of the pain killers. I’d grown increasingly irritated througho
ut the day, partly because of the pain, but also because no matter what I did, I couldn’t break through Maisey’s impenetrable wall. I tried to remind myself that I was just getting started, maybe she’d been hurt really badly or something, but it was still fucking with me.

  I wasn’t used to be turned down.

  My charms were foolproof. I knew how to work women, how to get exactly what I wanted out of any situation…

  Maisey was proving to be impervious to my best efforts, and my attempt at getting under her skin only seemed to piss her off.

  She’d shot me down over and over throughout the day, and of course instead of making me want to back off, it made try harder. If it was anyone else, I’d have moved on instantly. But this wasn’t just anyone.

  It was Maisey and I couldn’t just walk away this time.

  “Have dinner with me, Maisey,” I’d asked again before leaving for the day. She was in her office, having already said goodbye to me, but I’d found her office and stopped in before leaving. Grady waited outside the door as I hobbled in on my crutches. She was staring intently at her computer, a pair of reading glasses on her nose, making her look even more adorable. Her hair was up again today, and now with the glasses, my dirty librarian fantasies were kicking in hard.

  “Nope,” she replied to my offer, not even looking at me.

  “Maise,” I said, shortening her name the way I used to. “Come on. One dinner. Hell, just one drink.”

  “I said no, Jesse,” she replied, finally pulling her eyes up to mine. “Thank you, but no. Have a good night.” She nodded, as if her word was the last one on the subject.

  And I guess it was, because her refusal made me feel so bad that I really didn’t have anything else to say. I certainly wasn’t going to beg. That was right up there with apologizing on the list of things I didn’t do.