Military Romance Collection

by E Cleveland

  “No, that was my father,” I admit.

  “Yes, but what I’m saying is right here, right now, you’re the field general, OK? Those men in there, they’re your guys. They’re looking to follow your lead. You need to rally your troops and pull this out for us.” He slaps his hands together.

  “Yes, Coach!” I bark back.

  “You got this, Armstrong. Now go fire up your guys and hand Colorado State their asses in a sling,” he slaps my shoulder and I nod. Jogging down the field, I make my way to the players’ exit and navigate my way inside the concrete walls. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the lacking sunlight as I get my bearings.

  I find the door to our locker room and stride through it. Inside, the team is finishing up getting their padding clipped on and their laces tied up. The room is filled with the usual buzz of activity before any of our games, but it’s like it’s under water. The movements are less crisp; the energy is less convincing.

  “Listen up!” I fill the room with my voice, “Gather ‘round and take a knee. I have a few words I want to say before we head out there today,” I stand tall and bark my orders.

  The guys shuffle around me, a few with confused looks on their faces. Eventually I have the entire team surrounding me, all supporting themselves on one knee and looking up at me to continue.

  I clear my throat and my mind. This isn’t the kind of speech you give from your head. It’s one you give with your heart. “Alright! Every single one of you knows why we’re here today. You know what we’re expected to do, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right.”

  Their enthusiasm is underwhelming to say the least.

  “Well, let me tell you right now, if this is how you plan to play this game, if this is how you intend to face off with the Rams, you might as well just hand them the cup now and we can all call it a day.”

  “What the fuck, man?” I hear a voice from the grumblings around me.

  “Listen to me!” I roar, my voice reverberates from the lockers around us and hopefully imprints on their hearts. “I think you all know by now that before I joined this team, I fought with the army over in Afghanistan, right?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  I see others nodding their heads at me.

  “I did five years in the military and let me tell you, it wasn’t all that different from being on this team. You get to know those guys like brothers, you travel around with them, you learn who they really are under pressure. There’s more in common than you think. And when I went to war, I shit you not, it was a lot like heading into these fucking games here.”

  I can see some skepticism on the faces looking back at me. At least I have all of their attention. The eyes of the room are all on me.

  “When we were over there, do you think every day was a victory? That every task was a success? No! It wasn’t! There were days when we were getting our asses handed to us. But let me tell you this, if we had a bad day or a bad week and then we moved on with it hanging over our heads, it didn’t get better. We had to put it out of our minds, live to fight another fucking day, boys.” I swallow hard as the memories of my time in the desert flood back.

  “Many of you know, when I was in Afghanistan, my company came under ambush. We lost men that day. We lost that battle. I know what it’s like to bleed into the dirt for something you believe in and still lose. I’ve been there.” I grip my helmet tight under my arm and focus on the guys in front of me, pushing away the faces of the men we lost so long ago.

  “Let me tell you this. If you don’t get up, even when you’re broken and beaten down, if you don’t keep pushing, then you’ve already lost. Not just the one battle, you lost at life. It’s over because you gave up. You quit. Is that any way to go out?”

  “No!” A few of my guys yell back.

  “Is that anyway to fucking go out? To quit!” I yell louder.

  “No!” The room echoes with their voices.

  “You never quit. You never even understand the concept. You push that shit out of your minds, you hear me? This battle might not be in the desert, it might not be for freedom, but it fucking matters. And we WILL NOT quit, we will not falter, we will not even doubt that we can win until it is taken from us. Until it is over and we’ve bled on that field out there. Until we’ve left it all out there, honestly, with nothing left to give. Even then, even then boys, we won’t quit. Will we?”

  “No!” The lockers shake with our voices.

  “So get up, get your fucking game faces on and show this crowd, this school and this state what we look like in battle. Show them a game played with integrity and with heart and I’ll show you a game we’ll fucking win. Let’s go! Let’s go!” I wave my hand in a circle, like I’m trying to sweep them back up onto their feet.

  “Fuck yeah!”

  “We got this!”

  “No such thing as quit!” They yell as they rise to their feet and smash their helmets down onto their heads.

  We march out the doors together like soldiers in battle. The sun glints in my eyes and I have to squeeze them almost shut so it doesn’t blind me. As I jog with my men around me, I search the stands. The smile on my face hurts it’s so broad, when I see Chelsea sitting in the crowd.

  The cup, the girl, the life I’ve always wanted. It’s all mine for the grabbing.

  We got this.

  I’ve got this.

  23

  Chelsea

  After the game, I’m waiting outside the players’ exit of the stadium, I feel like just another fangirl jostling for position. The difference between me and these other ladies, besides an age gap of about a decade, is that I’m not just some football groupie. I try to hold back the disgust on my face as I look at the group of twenty-somethings in front of me. I never thought that on a cool October day I’d feel overdressed in a jean jacket and skinny jeans, but apparently I missed the memo about being braless under a crop top and wearing shorts so small that the bottom part of your ass hangs out.

  One part of me is annoyed by how desperate these girls look, begging for attention from just about anyone coming out of the locker room. Another part of me is amazed that they aren’t shivering and shaking from the nip in the autumn air.

  I hate being lumped in with them. I feel like I deserve my own spot to wait for Cameron in private. Right now, this is like forcing a rock star's wife to hang out with the girls who linger around the tour bus. The ones who are all willing to do anything to sleep with the lead singer, but will fuck the sound check guy if it means walking away with a story.

  Each time one of the guys on the Buffaloes struts out the door, they go wild. It reminds me of the old news footage I’ve seen of Beatlemania. I can’t even imagine how much worse this must get for the NFL guys.

  Finally, I see Cameron slip through the door, his duffle bag slung casually over his shoulder.

  “Ohhh! Armstrong! I’ve been waiting over an hour to see your face, gorgeous,” one of the bold, young girls practically humps his leg as she shimmies on up to him.

  “An hour? That’s nothing! I’ve been waiting all day, Cammie,” another practically identical blonde competes with the first. “I don’t even like football, so really I’ve been waiting this whole game just to see you,” she pretends to bite the tip of her French tipped nail and drops her eyes to his feet, slowly climbing his body with her stare.

  I’m not sure if I stop listening or if my mind just has a low tolerance for horse-shit and shut off my ears. Either way, as the crowd of girls spreads around Cameron, I can’t make out their one-liners anymore. They all blur together, like their interchangeable faces and their identical wardrobes. My heart sinks as Cameron stops in his tracks and scans the faces of the women surrounding him. I thought we were done with this.

  My shoulders slump over as he gives them his signature smirk and his autumn-blue eyes twinkle. Why do I do this to myself? I’ll never be able to compete with this kind of attention. I don’t want to spend my life being compared to his youthfu
l fans either. It’s like the line from that movie, Cameron keeps getting older, but his fans always stay the same age.

  I begin to slink away, letting the ravenous group of women slip away from me and in its center, the man who owns my heart.

  “I said excuse me ladies. I need you to make some room, please,” Cameron raises his voice and I turn around to watch. “Chelsea! There you are,” he squeezes past the sea of crop tops and jogs over to me.

  Before I have a chance to do anything, Cameron swings me off my feet with his hands circling my waist and twirls me around dramatically. His lips crush down on mine and my mind spins in tight circles as my tongue welcomes his. Cameron kisses me passionately, like the kind of kiss you save for your wedding day. Or maybe your wedding night. My knees weaken and my heart thuds hard in my chest. He pulls away and only then do I realize we have an audience. I’m not sure if I feel creeped out by their stares or proud to be kissed by the guy they all desire. A little bit of both, I think.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Cameron loosely drapes his hands over my shoulders, blanketing me from the pack of wolves ready to tear me to shreds. “I saw you in the stands. I told you that you were my good luck charm,” he murmurs to me.

  “You were amazing,” I admit. I’m not sure what’s more thrilling, when Cameron dominates the football field or when he dominates me.

  No, that’s a damned lie. Me then the field. Most definitely in that order.

  Cameron clears his throat, “So at the end of the month, I’m going to my parents’ house,” he says loudly. Too loudly for someone who’s standing inches away from my ears. I look over to the ladies still watching us, their faces contorted with jealousy. I realize that he’s making sure they hear what he has to say. This is his way of making an announcement to his former harem.

  “I’d love if you’d come with me, you know, meet my family. My mom is gonna love you. Even my brother is gonna be there and he’s a riot. What do ya say?” His deep blue eyes match the October sky above us, but instead of chilling my skin like the crisp air around us, his eyes warm me to my core.

  “Absolutely, I’d love that!” I also answer loudly and not just because I’m excited to go.

  Cameron slinks his arm around my shoulder and guides me away from the stadium, from the girls, from the games played in both. We walk away together, as a couple. An official couple. Away from his crazy past and toward our unforged future together.

  24

  Cameron

  “Oh, you see that hill there? We used to call that one the ‘suicide slide’ ‘cause we’d take our crazy carpets to the top and play chicken with each other to see who would stay on the longest before they hit the chain link fence at the bottom there,” I chuckle at the memory. I can still picture the white snow covered in droplets of blood from whatever guy managed to prove his manhood that week.

  “Why are boys so dumb? You never see girls doing crap like that,” Chelsea shakes her head and watches the hill slide by the passenger window.

  “I guess it’s all training to learn how to impress you ladies. You gals spend your early years learning how to do hair and make-up and all the stuff that impresses us and we learn how to be brave and strong and all the shit that impresses you. It’s science,” I joke.

  “Wow, you should really teach a class or something,” Chelsea rolls her eyes dramatically. “Let me guess, you were the one who always made it closest to the fence?”

  “Nah,” I run my fingers through my hair and keep an eye out for my parents’ street. “Well, yeah, I did one time. Back in second grade I had a mortal enemy, Collin Beatrice. We would compete over everything and he usually beat me. I decided that come hell or high water I was making it the furthest that day, so I stayed on. Watched that chain fence get closer and closer until I smashed my face off it,” I still remember the horror of spitting out my own tooth into the crimson stained snow. Luckily it was a baby tooth, but that didn’t stop my mother from having a fit. “I won though.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me,” Chelsea smiles and runs her fingers down my arm. “I’ll tell you one thing though,” she looks up at me.

  “What’s that,” I glance over at her and try not to get distracted from the road. With her looking at me like that, it’s not easy.

  “It worked.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you said you were learning to impress the girls and I gotta say, I’m definitely impressed. So, I’d say it worked.”

  I lean over and give her a quick kiss on her beautiful lips. “I’d smash into a hundred fences for you, baby,” I tease her.

  “Hahaha! Oh you are a charmer aren’t you?” She plays along.

  We reach my parents’ street and I hit the signal and make the turn. “Speaking of my irresistible charm,” I nod across the street at the bus shelter we’re driving up to, “that little bus stop there, that’s where I had my first kiss,” I wiggle my eyebrows at her jokingly.

  “Oh, really? When was that? Should I be jealous?” Chelsea’s relaxed smile tells me she’s anything but. She’s enjoying my little trip down memory lane with her and I’m enjoying taking her.

  If you don’t count the thirty minutes my grade twelve prom date spent at my parents’ house, this is the first time I’m taking a woman home to meet my family. I never expected to find someone that was worth bringing home to them. I’ve never been so happy to be so wrong.

  “For sure,” I open my eyes wide and nod my head solemnly, “you should be blind with jealousy. I was head over heels for that girl. She was an older woman too.”

  “You seem to have a thing for them, huh?” Her eyes twinkle as she throws our own two-year age gap into it.

  “What can I say? There’s something sexy about a lady who can teach me a thing or two,” my voice drops down and my mind spins as the last month of sex flashes through. Chelsea has definitely taught me a thing or two in the bedroom, mostly not to judge a book by its cover. My sweet little school teacher is a freak in the sheets and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Anyway,” I continue, “her name was Wanda and she was in grade five and I was in grade four. I was pretty sure I was in love. If she would’ve asked me to have her name tattooed across my heart, I would’ve.”

  “Wow, that is serious,” Chelsea smirks.

  “It was. We used to wait at the same bus stop for school and after we had been holding hands the whole way home, we got off the bus and she told me it was over. Just like that. She broke my heart.”

  “Awww,” Chelsea mock sympathizes with me.

  “Yep, she was a cold one. I was telling her I could be a better man, that I would hit a growth spurt soon and almost be as tall as her,” I keep going. “She wasn’t having it though. She told me I was sweet, but she found someone else: fucking Collin Beatrice. Wanda gave me a kiss and marched off leaving me broken and alone.”

  “Wow, that’s a sad first kiss,” Chelsea answers softly. Her smile has washed away.

  “Nah, it was OK. It made the next one that much sweeter,” I shrug.

  We pull into my parents’ crescent shaped driveway and my mother stands up and waves from where she’s arranging jack-o-lanterns on the walkway. Behind her on the front door is the friendliest looking skeleton you’ve ever seen and the windows of my parents’ imposing house is covered in cotton spider webs and “Happy Halloween” signs.

  Mom has always been a huge lover of the holiday, but in recent years she’s gone crazy with it. I think it’s because she gets to see tons of cute kids all dressed up for a night and it gives her the grandmother fix that my brother and I still haven’t filled in her life yet.

  “She looks nice,” Chelsea’s nervous tone doesn’t match her words. It’s more like she’s reassuring herself than making a statement.

  “She’s gonna love you. Trust me.” I throw the car in park and lean my forehead against hers. “You have absolutely nothing to be worried about. Just be yourself and they’ll all love you as much as I do.”

&n
bsp; Chelsea’s eyelashes flutter and she looks down at my lips. I want to kiss her. I want to do more than that, but with my mother slowly making her way over to the car, the only thing I can do is unbuckle my seatbelt and go say “hi”.

  I open Chelsea’s door and hold out my hand, helping her to her feet just as my mother makes her way over to us.

  “Oh, Cammie! It’s so good to see you again!” She throws her thin arms around my neck. “And you must be Chelsea. Oh you’re so beautiful,” she practically tosses me away to spill her affection over onto my girlfriend. If I’m not careful, Mom might scare her away. Her biggest dream in life is to watch her boys get married and have kids and you can practically smell that desperation on her like a perfume.

  “Thank you,” Chelsea smiles at her feet shyly.

  “Hey! Hey!” The front door of the house flings open, threatening to throw the friendly skeleton off of it. “Is that Jake? I’ve been waiting all day for you to show up,” Dad explodes through the doorframe and practically jumps down the front steps. He stops in his tracks when he sees the scene in the driveway though.

  “Nope, not Jake,” I answer, ignoring the disappointment on his face.

  “It’s Cammie and Chelsea. Isn’t she beautiful, Don? They’re just such a lovely couple, aren’t they,” my mother responds dreamily.

  “Yeah, sure,” my father scans the driveway like he’s hoping my brother is just hiding behind a car or something. “It’s, uh, it’s sure nice to meet you, uh…”

  “Chelsea,” I fill in the blank that shouldn’t be there. My mother literally just said her name a second ago.

  “Right, sorry, mind’s not as sharp as it once was,” Dad practically marches over to us in his sock feet and offers a stiff handshake to Chelsea. You can take a man out of the army, but you can’t take the army out of the man. At least not in my father’s case. After a full thirty years, he retired as a General and never really shook the idea that people didn’t have to salute him anymore.