RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (17 page)

I don’t even know if she finished the article, but that didn’t matter, I pressed ahead with someone else anyway, got a PR team to check it out, made sure it told as sad and heartstring-tugging a story as possible and got it out in enough time to give the world a whole new impression of me.

That was over a month ago now, and even though I’ve not exactly been Mr. Limelight Seeker I get the feeling it’s having an effect. Whatever, I’m kind of in two minds about the benefit of it anyway. I’m still under scrutiny like I was better, still as fucking lonely.

Oh, and by the way, I haven’t even gone there with anyone else. I’m not interested in it at all. I’d much rather play football, smile like a fucking moron for the pap, take that cheesy grin all over the city and escape when I’ve done enough to satisfy them. I guess that’s enough for now. Concentrate on the coming season, try and forget about Lucy, try not to be a bad boy and wait for the press to get bored enough to look the other way. Nah. My girl chasing days are over. I didn’t even bother chasing Lucy. I got that message loud and clear, PA system, fucking Heartbreakers FM.

We do publicity shots in the new uniforms, and what feels like a million and one different angles on the new helmets. This season we’ve paid a fuck ton for the logo to be redesigned and it looks like it’s been drawn by a four-year old girl. Last season I’d have said something about that, this season I just don’t have the energy. My goal from now on is to keep a low profile, albeit a profile nonetheless.
Low
is definitely much easier to slip under the radar than
not there at all
, and I think I’m beginning to finally learn it.

I’m going to be a Chandler Jones, a Kyle Long, even a Drew Bledsoe if I have to. Go out there, get the job done, and go back home without a single complaint. Nothing like the old Alex Vann Haden at all. Nothing for the press or the fans to throw their toys out of the pram for, nothing for Lucy Parker to hate.

The island is shut up now I’m back in New York and the season is about to start. There’s nothing to say I won’t go there if I can get away for a few days, but to be honest, after what happened, it’s kind of left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. I still have Lucy’s things. When I left to come back here, I stuck them in a box, and they’ve been in my cupboard ever since.

It’s kind of sad really, pining over someone I hardly even know. I’m like a college kid with a crush on a girl he knows he’ll never have. I haven’t given up hope, but then again, the phone isn’t ringing.

After the official pre-season press conference is over, I escape, only to get mobbed by waiting paparazzi. I have no idea how these people even manage to find their way in here, but I guess it’s kind of the same as ants looking for food. I try and push past but there is no way through. All I want to do is get in my car, get home and have a drink, but right now I’m totally swarmed.

I’d think this was unusual, but then again, I guess not many people have seen a rhino up close.

“
So, who’s the lucky lady?” someone says to me.

“
Excuse me?”

“
Come on, Alex, a man like you doesn’t stay single for long.”

“
I’m unattached.”

“
Anyone you’ve got your eyes on?”

I want to tell them to mind their business but I bite my tongue.
Give them what they want and they’ll leave you alone
isn’t that what everyone says?

“
I’m just concentrating on football at the moment.”

“
Are the Giants going to win this year?”

“
Next question.”

“
Do you think your brother would have been better than you?”

That makes me stop. It makes me screw my eyes up into a frown and it makes everyone else look where the question has come from. Some bullshit, young looking reporter with a grin from ear to ear.

“
Luke would have been the best quarterback this country has ever seen. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get home.”

My heart is beating hard as I get into the car. Outside, photo bulbs flash and onlookers join the swarm of pap, and I feel like an animal in a zoo.

I don’t know how everyone can do this so easily because right now, one day in, I feel like I’m ready to explode.

I pause to catch my breath, before I shut the whole world out, put the keys in the ignition and fire the accelerator home.

Ten.

Alex

I’m all over the place at the moment. Billboard ads, magazine pages, I’m even the face of a brand of soap I’ve never even heard of. People are chucking money at me left right and center and I figure, what the hell, if I’m going to be hanging myself out to dry, I might as well make the most of it.

I’ve been offered a modelling contract too, which I’m thinking over. My dick in a variety of different sized boxer shorts. They showed me the promotional material and some of those things I didn’t even know existed. I’m not sure if I’m ready to have my dick staring down at people from Times Square, but if the money is right, and the boxer shorts aren’t all that stupid looking, I might be convinced.

Who knows, it might just be enough to win her back.

Two months and nothing, not even a message to ask for her things back.

We start the season on a winning streak and I find myself playing some of the best football I ever have in my life. I guess not having the distraction of bed-hopping is helping, mixed with the genuine desire to impress. The coach, the other players, the naysayers and that one person in particular, I hope will be watching from the bleachers like she always did.

I look for her at every game, I wait for her after every press conference, and I even hang around after the game like a lost puppy looking for its mother, but nothing. I feel pathetic and needy and I don’t like it, but I can’t tear myself away.

Our rookies are talented but lack direction. In the draft, we pick up a linebacker from LSU built like a fucking tank, and a wide receiver as fast as a greyhound, who I link up well with almost immediately.

I feel old. My sixth season since turning pro, my six with the same team, and each year I feel like I’m changing. It could be the years I’ve spent hiding myself away, or it could be a number of other things, you know who included, but whatever it is, I feel like I’m closer to the way out than I am the way in, which for a quarterback not even anywhere near thirty, is some seriously depressing shit.

Others notice it too, but what they take for focus and dedication is clearly something else entirely.

I train hard, hit the gym daily, throw until my arm feels like a hammer hanging onto my body with a thumb tack and thread and I run in the evenings, just to take my mind of it, or to try and focus my mind on working out how to get what it wants or cope with not getting what it can’t.

My route takes me all over, and I’m ten miles deep before I can even think about the possibility of moving forward without her. I can still close my eyes and be there with her, lick my lips and taste her sweetness, lie in bed and feel her alongside me but it isn’t the same.

I visit Luke, but it doesn’t help. It’s been something I’ve put off for years, and when I get there I see a well-tended grave, a perfect headstone, and message of compassion I’d forgotten I’d put on there that I’d prefer not to have read at all.

We go 4-0, and I lead the division in touchdown passes. There are four other teams with perfect records, none of whom have scored as much as we have. We are dominant, well organized and worthy of our position, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by the press.

“
An amazing turnaround.”

“
Impressive.”

“
New man.”

Are some of the things that get thrown around about me, which compared to last year's headlines is a complete reversal.

I feel good on the field, empty off it. I throw myself into the game, to the exclusion of almost everything else, besides sponsorship and press obligations, and the infrequent social get togethers I find impossible to get out of, while I politely decline invitations of all kinds, just because my head isn’t in the right place to say anything else.

I turn down a lot of opportunities with a lot of good looking girls the old Alex would never have even considered, and I do it so often the papers print a story about the possibility of me already being involved with someone, so secretly it seems that no-one has been able to get even a single photo of her.

It’s bullshit obviously, and I deny it when asked, but the papers seem intent and the story carries itself along way longer than is necessary. I feel like proving them wrong by accepting one of the opportunities, fire myself up to do it and then pussy out right at the last moment because my heart’s just not in it.

After the fourth game and the first month of the season is up, the light on me begins to fade a little. It begins to shift direction to other players in the league, the rookies making good, or the surprise stories, or the bad boys who can’t keep it in their pants. It feels good not to be the main focus of their attention and even better to read about some else doing the kind of shit that I used to do and getting called out for it. Andy Lynch getting so drunk he was found wandering down a highway dressed as a chicken, Julio Rodgers in a sex scandal that has got him suspended and the best one of all, Gerhart Grevin in a weird sex film being covered in thin slices of Spanish ham by a black midget. I kid you not, the board have no idea how to react to that one. Obviously, the kind of shit that I used to do and get called out for was nowhere near as weird as that, my point is, it’s nice to have the focus shifted for a while.

Our fifth game is a division rivalry and the game everyone all over the states has been waiting for. Whether you’re a fan or a neutral, as far as most people are concerned, this is the game of the season. Superbowl winners three years in a row, with arguably the best defensive line-up the football league has ever seen, this is the team we need to beat again if we have any chance of making it two in a row. Last year, as a result of injuries and bad luck they didn’t make it to the Superbowl final, a game we won against a wild card team that no-one expected to get into the playoffs, but they did beat us twice in our division - the only two games we lost.

We played well in both of those games, but got outplayed by a smart unit, with tight offensive plays and a wall of a defense we just couldn’t get past. This year I promise it’s going to be different. This year I’m more focused. This year there is no way I’m going to let them get to us.

We finish the first half down by 10-17, although I think we are the better team. We give away a sloppy touchdown at the end of the first quarter, and a decision goes against us in the second that leads to a rush on the far side of the field we can’t stop them from converting from.

The wall of noise around us from their home fans is intimidating, but nothing we can’t block out or use to fire us up. They know they’ve been lucky too. They know they are playing the Superbowl champions and even though we haven’t beaten them in two seasons, I can tell they're scared.

In the third, we sack their quarterback three times in the first five minutes, and the crowd go wild and then silent. It’s as though a completely different team has come out for the second half and with a clever dummy play on third and six at the twenty-five-yard line, Hurley rushes in to even the score.

At 17-17 and five minutes to go in the third, pinned into our own half and under a wave of pressure, Kowalski stands strong to block what looks from where I’m standing to be a wall of advancing players, before ending up at the bottom of a pile of them. When they peel off him to get up, Kowalski doesn’t move and I know that it’s serious.

We finish the third quarter with another injury to Michaels, and a touchdown off the pace at 17-24 down.

Kowalski has a concussion and a broken rib, but nothing overly serious. Michaels, our rookie tight end from last year, has a twisted knee and looks like he’ll be out even longer. I’m tired but fired up, battered and bruised but not willing to give in just yet. We’ve been unlucky, but this isn’t over. With fifteen minutes left, I know we can win it still. I’m throwing the ball like a dart, and with a couple of good opportunities, I know this game can turn around. They may have the best defense in the league, but they are up against the best quarterback this game has ever seen, and if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s win.

I fire the team up as best as I can, which isn’t easy considering we’ve been knocked all over the field and these guys are hurting like hell all over. The crowd has gotten noisier as well, and as we take to the field for the final quarter I can feel them baying for blood.

This is what I love about the game, but I know it’s not for everyone. I’ve seen rookies come through from the draft who think they know everything about football, come to play in a rival’s stadium and shit themselves so much they would rather do anything else but return. For me, the louder the rival crowd chants, the more it makes me want to smash them into the ground and win.

I have history here. Last year was the worst game of my career, what followed it to make myself feel better an embarrassing front-page headline across several national newspapers, coupled with a one-game ban and a hefty fine. I’m not prepared to let that repeat itself today.