Third and Long: A Sports Romance (23 page)

Meanwhile my bride-to-be flies back to Houston on a private jet. She wouldn’t lower herself to fly with the commoners.

Our flight lands in Houston as dead silent as when it took off. Everyone would like to forget the game ever happened even as it has drastically affected our chances to make it to the national championship. Instead of controlling our destiny, we now have to hope and pray that Alabama loses one of their last games.

Katerina’s waiting by limousine outside the terminal. It’s not a great look for me because all the other guys have to ride the team bus back to Rome. Normally I’d do that too because I don’t like reminding the guys about my family’s wealth. I’ve never shoved it in anyone’s face.

Before I get into the limo, Cam grabs me. He wants to scold me. I can see it in his eyes. He lets it go.

“Hey man, drinks?”

I look to Katerina. I feel so fucking dumb that I have to get permission like I’m already married.

“Plans Katerina?” I ask.

“That sounds fun! I’d love to meet the team. Would you like to ride with us?” she asks Cam.

He shakes his head. “You should be on the bus, man.”

I know I should. This is embarrassing.

“Sorry Cam. I’ve got…shit,” I mutter low enough that Katerina can’t hear.

“Whatever bro,” he says, before returning to a group of guys on our team, all giving me the side eye.

The ride back is excruciating. I try to sit in silence and go over the game in my head. When Katerina isn’t looking, I shoot off a message to Tamber that goes unanswered. I wonder if she watched the game, not that she missed anything.

The limousine drops us off at The Library on my recommendation. Katerina is way overdressed for the place. I don’t care. All I want is to be around people that like me, and they always welcome me at The Library.

When we walk in there’s nothing but silence. There’s way less people here than normal. Not surprising. There’s nothing to celebrate. I text Cam. The team bus is still about thirty minutes out, so Katerina and I grab a table.

After a few drinks, Cam finally shows up.

“Who else is coming?” I ask.

He orders a beer and grabs a seat. “Just us tonight.”

“Aw that’s a shame. The team doesn’t like to party?” Katerina asks.

“Nah that’s not it exactly,” Cam says.

I know exactly what it is. I lost the game for the team, and I didn’t even have the dignity to ride the bus home. I bet the team thinks I took my own ride to get out facing the music. They’re going to give me hell next week, but I’d rather take my lickings sooner rather than later.

Cam’s quiet. He’s only here because he’s my best friend, otherwise, he’d be elsewhere with the team. I’m sure the guys are over at The Graveyard or The Dusty Cowboy. They didn’t go home. They’re out getting drunk without me. Cam’s a good guy.

Finally some people start filtering into The Library once it gets closer to midnight. I’m about four beers in, and Katerina looks bored out of her mind. Good.

Absently I start texting Tamber right in front of Katerina. I don’t care anymore. At this point all I want is to hear from my girl. My short, sexy, runner. It’s been a week. I need to talk to her more than anything in the world.

Katerina grabs my phone to see who I’m texting. She frowns and hands the phone back to me.

“Your dad told me you had a little thing going on with this girl Tamber. You need to end it,” she says.

I’m staring at her unsure what to say. That certainly isn’t the response I was expecting. I figured she’d be mad and passionate. In that moment, I realize that Katerina is nothing if not cold and calculating. She’s not looking for a loving marriage, she’s looking for a means to an end. This is surgical for her. Then she gets really nasty.

“I can’t even believe you would go out with a girl like that. Her mom is in jail for dealing drugs. Her father is a loser. Her two sisters seem equally worthless. What is wrong with you Logan?”

Dealing drugs. Somehow Katerina knows more about Tamber’s mom than I do. I have my dad to thank for that.

I’m mad. I’m getting angry. I’m angry at every single person in the world. Except Tamber. I want to hit something. That’s when everything goes wrong.

“Hey Third!” I hear some guy yell at me. “Nice picks. Try to throw the ball to our team next time, eh?”

I look for the guy. It’s some drunk asshole giving me the finger. Even though he was probably singing my praises last week when I crushed Ole Miss, I can’t take it. I’m too angry.

“Yeah fuck you too asshole!” I yell. Katerina grabs my arm, trying to stop me from getting up. She can’t. I’m pissed and a little drunk.

“Say that again dick!” the guy yells back at me.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” I scream, losing my grip. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not personal. It’s just bullshit. But it doesn’t matter because when he steps to me, I step back.

Then he throws the first punch. It’s off center, the punch of a drunk, so I tackle him to the ground. We’re punching each other blindly, a couple of drunk assholes having a go at each other for no reason other than we’re both pissed off. I don’t even know the guy’s name when I hit him in the face.

It only takes seconds for the bouncers to pull us off each other, but in those seconds dozens of bystanders bust out their phones and snap videos of us. Another thing that’s going to be all over the news tomorrow. That’ll play well, do wonders for my draft stock.

The entire time I’m throwing punches I don’t even care about anything, except what Tamber is going to think about me. If she’ll ever take my call again.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Tamber

Fuck my life. Really. Gwen and I got so drunk Saturday night that even though Logan had been texting me, I woke up having forgot all about him. Seriously. My head hurt so incredibly bad that I couldn’t remember his name! I considered myself cured of a broken heart when Gwen also couldn’t remember his name.

So as luck would have it we turned on local television only to find it completely fucking dominated by Logan Oliver III. Is there no escape?

Not only did he play the worst game of his career, but also he got into a bar brawl that ended with him in handcuffs. According to witnesses the other guy started the fight, and Logan declined to press charges.

That’s not to say he’s free in the eyes of the media and football. Gwen and I spent all Sunday afternoon watching commentary about how Logan’s character concerns are now so great that he probably won’t even be drafted until the third or fourth round if teams are even willing to take a chance on him at all.

In spite of everything conflicting emotion I’ve had about him the past week, there’s a terrible pit in my stomach for him at the thought that he could lose everything. Meanwhile Gwen is laughing her ass off. Our apartment still smells like weed.

I hit the track Monday morning running mad. At this point I want nothing more than to forget the last three weeks ever happened. Take me back to the moment that I met Logan and erase that stupid bet I ever made with him. Take it all away. He’s a stupid, self-centered jerk that took me to his parents house to play games with me.

That he texted me Saturday night meant something to me until I found out that he was drunk. And he got into a fight! The kind of guy that gets into bar fights is exactly the kind of guy that I never wanted to fall for. That kind of guy is the ultimate distraction, the ultimate waste of time. My oldest sister Mary married a bar fight kind of guy. Now they’re divorced.

On the eighth lap around the track, I realize that I’m back to square one. I’m going to finish the semester. The project is done. There are no boys on my radar. Life is normal again.

Running feels good. It feels free.

It’s six in the morning and the sun barely crests the horizon. The track feels so familiar to me that I don’t even need to look. I close my eyes and concentrate on the chill wind biting my bare skin. My body shivers in the cold reminding me of the danger of losing my way.

My mom. The things she’s done in her life. The choices she made. Every single one was in service to my dad. She never made a decision for herself. Back at Logan’s mansion, I told him that sometimes we need to stop caring what our parents think. That was only half true.

What I didn’t tell Logan is that my mom never actually made me promise anything. It was a promise I made to myself because of what my mom had done.

With my eyes closed, I run a full lap around the entire track. The soft clay pushes against my feet. Something is always pushing back against me. My sense of the track senses a disturbance. I open my eyes and scream.

He’s standing right in front of me! I don’t have time to stop, and I run right into him. His big arms catch me and spin me around, my momentum carrying me a full three hundred and sixty degrees around him.

When I finally come to a rest, he puts me down, and I beat on his chest.

“You fucking jerk!” I scream.

“Hey, hey come on. Enough people have tried to beat me up lately,” Logan says.

“What are you doing out here?” I ask.

“I’m mad, so I wanted to run. I didn’t know you’d be here,” he says.

“Oh fucking bullshit.”

He smiles that wry smile that gets me every time. Nevertheless, I cross my arms and step away from him, wondering how long he’s been watching me run, wondering how long he’s been staring at my ass.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“What for?” I ask looking anywhere but at his beautiful blue eyes.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t text you. This Katerina shit has been terrible. My parents sprung her on me right after you left Monday. They didn’t tell me she was coming I swear,” he says.

“You could have fucking called you jerk. I left Monday thinking we were still keeping up appearances. I thought you were going to come back to Rome and tell people that I was your fiancée,” I say.

“How long would that go on for?” he asks.

“Until we got married!” I scream.

Then nothing. Silence. I can’t believe the words came out of my mouth, words that I had never even purposely thought in my brain.

“You…what?” he asks, trying to piece together what I just said.

Every muscle in my body wants to take off down that track and run. Fuck it! I’m tired of running.

“It stopped being fake for me Logan,” I say, realizing that I have never put myself out there as far as I am putting myself out there right now.

He looks shocked. He looks like he got sacked by the biggest, meanest professional football player.

“I’m not going to marry Katerina,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not giving up football. It’s like you said. Fuck what our parents think,” he says.

“That’s not exactly how I put it but…”

“Can I take you to breakfast?” he asks.

“Logan,” I say letting his name hang on my tongue. “I think that ship has sailed.”

He looks crushed. There’s a tiny little voice in the back of my mind telling me to get out of my own way. I wonder if it’s the voice of Gwen or my mom.

“I’m not going to play these games. I like honesty. I like people being straightforward. I played your game, but I’ve had enough.”

“Honesty?” he asks. “You didn’t tell me your mom was in jail for dealing drugs!”

“First of all fuck you. I didn’t tell you because it’s none of your business!”

I’m angry. However he found out doesn’t matter.

“I want to know because I care Tam,” he says.

I kick the dirt in front of me. To be honest no one has ever actually asked me before. In Eden people assumed the worst of my mom, so they didn’t bother to find out.

“Look Logan, my dad is the drug dealer. He’s a wreck.”

“Then why isn’t he locked up?”

“Yeah ironic, right? He was going to get caught and my mom took the fall. She went to prison for him. She never made me promise anything. I just didn’t want to end up like her.”

“I thought your dad was an asshole? Why’d your mom take the fall?”

“Because she loves him. Every stupid thing she’s done in her life is because she loves my dad no matter what. She’s selfish that way.”

“So that’s why?” he asks piecing together why I’ve never wanted to fall in love. The gears are turning in that meathead brain of his. he’s finally figuring me out. Took long enough.

“Do you want to know something?” he asks.

“What?”

“Every second this week was complete torture because I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t concentrate during the game because of you. I punched out that guy because I wanted you to be there and you weren’t. I can’t stand to be without you, and I hate that I didn’t realize it sooner.”

I’m standing there on the track staring at Logan. He’s sweating, his muscles are flexing. He’s incredibly worked up. We’re both standing in the cold like a couple of idiots letting our emotions pour out. For the first time we’re being real with each other.

“It’s not fake anymore is it?” I ask thinking about the engagement.