Dirty Tackle: A Football Romance (17 page)

When she was ready and emerged from the bathroom, she gave a little twirl as we clapped for her. Scarlet asked if Shane would like to read her a bedtime story. We had been making our way through the
Harry Potter
series, and I luckily had my e-reader in my purse.

“It’s a scary part. Harry’s getting ready to fight the bad guy, and he’s not sure he can win,” Scarlet said as she tried to bring Shane up to speed.

“Somehow, I have a feeling that Harry will be fine,” Shane said. He took Scarlet’s hand. “But we should probably confirm just to be sure.”

Scarlet nodded solemnly and let him lead her towards her new room. I followed behind them and watched just long enough to see Scarlet get settled into her new bed and lean against Shane. He had a look on his face as he scanned the first page, and I could tell that despite his bluster, he was a little bit intimidated by the situation. This wasn’t something he did every day. I had to chuckle to myself. A man who had the weight of millions of eyes on him every week was nervous about reading a story to a little girl.

After listening to him get started, I decided to give them their privacy. I retreated back to the living room and flipped through the channels on the TV until I came to the evening news. That was where Shane found me half an hour later. I looked up at him expectantly. “How was it?”

“There’s a whole lot of words in there that I don’t recognize from the dictionary,” Shane said as he rubbed his face. “I think Scarlet was laughing at me as much as she was anxious about the story.”

I nodded in understanding. “The author does a good job of keeping us on our toes.”

“That seems like pretty advanced stuff for a kid her age,” he said as he sat down next to me. “She was the one that was correcting me half the time.”

“She loves Harry Potter right now. Her entire room is decked out in Harry Potter gear.”

“I suppose I should buy her some of that stuff then,” he said.

There was a long span of silence between us. It was just another realization for me that if we didn’t work things out between us, there was the inevitability that I would be spending time away from Scarlet on a regular basis. That idea cut me sharply. But I knew it was just a small fraction of what Shane must feel having missed out on eight years of her life. And that was all my fault. I had made my bed, and now I had to lay in it.

“I suppose you can sleep in my bed. I’ll stay out here on the couch,” Shane said.

I protested, “I won’t take your bed.”

“You’re not sleeping on the couch,” he said.

We looked at each other, and then he gave a long sigh. “I suppose you can sleep in my bed with me. But none of the funny business.”

I liked the idea of being close to him. But then I thought about the fact that Scarlet could wake up and come looking for me. What would she think if she found me in Shane’s bed? I didn’t want her to get her hopes up there was going to be something more between us if Shane couldn’t find his way past forgiving me. I didn’t want to do that to her.

“No, it’s okay. If you want to sleep out here, I appreciate you letting me stay at all.”

“It’s not as if I had much choice in the matter it seems,” Shane said. “I suppose I should tell you that I’ve already spoken to a lawyer to get some legal advice regarding the visitation schedule.”

It was as if he had dumped a bucket of cold water over the top of my head. “A lawyer? Why do you need a lawyer?”

“You and I are not married, and we’re not together. I have a daughter that I want to make sure I have proper rights to see and who is taken care of,” he said.

“I’ve already told you that I will let you see Scarlet whenever you want to,” I said.

“It’s for my protection, Madeleine.”

Protection? This didn’t sound like Shane at all. “I thought that if I gave you time, you and I might be able to start over. Like what we had started to talk about before your dad’s funeral.”

He looked away from me then. I didn’t know how to address this. It was as if he putting the nail in the coffin in the idea of us ever having a future together before we even had time to figure out what we could have.

I knew that I needed to roll the dice. I needed to be the one that made the grand gesture considering I had been the one to make the grand screw-up. “Shane, I love you.”

The look that he gave me was an expression of raw hurt and anguish. It made me pull back from him. “This is not the time to talk about these kinds of things, Madeleine. Do you want me to deny that I have feelings for you? Of course, I do, but I just don’t know if I can trust you. This was the biggest betrayal I could ever imagine. I never expected you could do this to me.”

“I know that, and I know that you need time. But I had hoped for a more positive outcome for us. I hoped that if you have time to get to know Scarlet, and we spent time together as a family, you might be able to forgive me. If you forgive me, then we can start over.”

“I need more time,” he said. He looked away and then back at me. He leaned over, and for a brief moment, I felt butterflies in my stomach. But he simply kissed me on the forehead. “That is for being a fantastic mother. But, I can’t forgive you. Not yet.”

The words hung in the air between us. There was nothing else that I could do. I had put all of my cards out on the table, and he was still as closed off to me as ever.

With whatever shred of dignity I had left intact, I stood. Then I picked up my purse. “I’m going back to my apartment, but I’ll be back before Scarlet wakes up. I can tell where I’m not wanted. If you want, I can have my mother bring her to the game.”

“They can watch the game from the team’s suite,” Shane said. The fact that he didn’t argue with me leaving caused a wrenching anguish in my gut, but I hope that I kept any sign of that off my face.

I made my way to Scarlet’s room. She was fast asleep under the covers and barely moved as I tucked them up under her chin. I pressed my hand against her cheek and whispered to her that I loved her. I knew that Shane would take good care of her. He was settling into his new role quickly, and he seemed to love it. I had to consider myself lucky on that account.
 

I gave Shane a short nod as I made my way back out into the hallway toward the door. Then I left before he could see the tears in my eyes.

Everything came to a head late in the third quarter. I started to run a play that I should have known stone cold and twisted the wrong way to go after the ball coming in my direction. I felt a sharp tweak of pain shoot up through my knee. I went down to the ground hard missing the ball by a mile.
 

It took me a lot longer than it should have to get up off the turf. I was supposed to go back to the huddle, but I started to make my way to the sidelines instead knowing that I was visibly limping. I could hear the roar of the crowd as they expressed their concern wondering what had happened. I had intended to say I need a quick rest before heading back out, but I couldn’t clear the wince of pain off my face quick enough. The coach saw and yelled for Maddy right away. “Doc, get over here!”

Maddy was by my side a moment later. I tried to brush her off. I didn’t like showing any sign of weakness on the field, but she was insistent on putting her shoulder underneath mine as she motioned for the other players to clear the way to the bench.

“I’m fine. I got it.” I said in a low growl.

“Until we can assess if there’s anything wrong with your knee, I need you to keep your weight off of it,” she said. I was sure that the announcers and press in the stadium were speculating on what had just happened, and all of the cameras were now zeroed in on me. I didn’t like it one bit.
 

I sat down heavily on the bench, and Maddy knelt in front of me. Usually, this would have brought up some kind of erotic visual to mind having her kneeling in front of me, but all those thoughts flew out of my head as a yelp of pain emerged from my throat as she dug her fingers in and around my kneecap.

“What happened out there?” The coach barked in my direction as he came up behind Maddy.

“Nothing. I just twisted in the wrong direction trying to make the play,” I said.

“Hell, yeah you did. You might have had a shot at catching the ball if you had run the right route. I don’t know what the hell you were doing out there,” he said.

I screwed up my face as I thought about what play the quarterback had called in the last huddle. Shit. I had gotten my routes confused. I had run the wrong one. That hadn’t happened to me since college. I saw Maddy’s sympathetic look in my direction. Dammit. I needed to get my shit together and do it fast.

“Sorry, Coach. It won’t happen again,” I said trying to hide my chagrin.

“I want you back on the field. Doc, fix him up,” he snarled. Then he stomped back to the sideline to watch the next series of downs.

Maddy seemed to be ignoring Coach as she continued her careful inspection of my knee. I could tell that it was tender everywhere around the kneecap. I hoped that whatever had tweaked in it was something minor. She took my leg and had me move it in several different directions seeming to be assessing my flexibility and range of motion. Each time, it made my knee joint feel a little looser, although there was still some pain.

“Let’s put some ice on this, and wait about ten minutes,” she finally said. “How’s the pain?”

“Manageable,” I said.

She gave a short nod. She was all professional now. “I’ll only recommend you take something for it if the pain gets worse. I think that you just strained the muscle a little bit. It should be fine. Although, I’m going to recommend that you take it easy for the rest of the game.”

“You’re not recommending taking me out, right?” I had never been removed from a game for an injury, and I didn’t intend for that streak to be broken today.

“I know how important it is to you to be able to keep playing. If I thought it was something worse, I would bench you. But, I just think this is a minor strain. We’ll keep an eye on it for the rest of the game.”

“I’ve played with worse,” I said, and it was the truth. I had played with bloodied limbs and far more severe muscle strain, and the coaches had been willing to look the other way as long as I hid the pain and kept making plays. Of course, I’d been a lot younger then. I had started to notice that the tackles hurt just a little bit more these days, and my recovery time seemed to take just a little bit longer. But I didn’t let any of that stop me, and I didn’t quit. I had a job to do for my team.

Maddy looked at me with a look of consternation as if she could read my mind. It was uncanny. “My job is to keep you healthy. I’ll make sure you can play, but you have to do things my way, and you have to trust me,” she said.

Trust. That was a very funny and ironic thing for her to say to me in any context. I gave a short bark of a laugh, but then shook my head. I looked at the field, longing to be back on it. My fingers twitched to have my hands on the ball again so I could show everyone I was just fine.

“I just don’t know what’s wrong with me today,” I said under my breath. I hadn’t meant for Maddy to hear the words.

“You’ve had a huge week,” she said quietly. She continued to inspect my knee, but I had a feeling she was doing that only so she could stay close to me. “What with your dad’s funeral and with… everything else.”

She knew as well as I did that it was that ‘everything else’ that was messing with my head and my game. My eyes wandered up the stadium walls to an area where the suites were situated. I knew that Scarlet was up there with her grandmother watching the game. I hadn’t expected to feel nervous about having her watch me play. After all, I had millions of eyes watching me do this exact same thing every week. But somehow, today felt different. I felt like I had something to prove. It was an odd feeling considering I hadn’t felt that way in years.

“She’s just happy to be here in the same place with you,” Maddy said as if she had read my mind again. There was no need to say who she was.

“I just wanted to have a big play today so she could see it up close,” I said. The words slipped from my lips, but I knew they were true and the crux of my problem.

Maddy stood up and crossed her arms. She looked away from me, but I could still hear her words. “She doesn’t care about any big plays. All she cares about is being able to spend time with you.”

“Well, the feeling is entirely mutual,” I said.

“Then that is all that matters,” she said. Then I heard a low muttered curse followed by, “Great.”

I thought that she was talking about Scarlet, but I looked up and my gaze found Olivia headed in our direction. She wore a skin tight red skirt, and her matching top was cut so low that I had to wonder if her breasts were going to fall out. It was an outfit that seemed entirely inappropriate for the sidelines of a major NFL game.

As soon as she got close, she leaned down giving me an eyeful of cleavage. “Anything you want to say to the fans on Twitter? Everyone’s concerned that you’re going to be out for the rest of the game. Your fans are in an uproar.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

Olivia cut a glance at Maddy. I sensed the level of tension between us had increased tenfold with her arrival. There was something going on between the two of them. It didn’t take a genius to see it or to know the cause of it.