RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (30 page)

It’s a sleight of hand, a classic draw and distraction and the Bengals fall for it hook, line, and sinker.

I have more time to make the play that I expect, a bunch more tricks up my sleeve if it doesn’t come off. The whole thing goes like clockwork, though, from snap to draw to the moment I make Wesley Cadon a lifelong star. The boy earns it for the way he’s played this season, but I doubt many moments in his oncoming career will match the moment the ball comes to him like a golden egg, finding him unmarked deep in the corner of the end zone, to gather up a perfect ball that anyone’s grandmother could easily have held on to.

For a moment, Cadon can’t believe it either. No one can believe what’s happened. And then, as soon as it dawns on us, as soon as the realization hits us like a fucking hammer, the place erupts. Not only have we won the match, not only have we scored the kind of touchdown fourteen-year-olds practice in the park, we’ve won the fucking Superbowl.

We’ve beaten the Bengals in a game that for much of the second half we looked like losing. Arguably, we haven’t been the better team either, but here we are, about to lift the trophy for a second time running. We convert, but the game is already over. When the buzzer finally goes, and the field gets overrun by supporters, players, band members and everyone else in between, I drop to my knees, suddenly overwhelmed by emotion.

I can hardly believe it. I never doubted myself, but what we’ve done here is frankly extraordinary. We were dead and buried right up until the last minute and the way we won it just shows the tenacity and belief we have.

My ankle is swollen and when I stand back up I realize just how bad the injury is. Adrenaline and cortisone shots have kept the pain from reaching me, but right now, with the game finally over, it feels for all the world like the thing is broken.

I’m swept up in a wave of players who lift me up onto their shoulders to carry me around the field on a victory lap. I congratulate my team, apologize to the coach for almost giving him a heart attack and go around to the Bengals players and console each and every one of them.

When I’m done, I sit on the fifty-yard line, exhausted but overjoyed and watch Lucy walk slowly towards me from a distance, like an angel parting her way through a battling crowd.

That was one of the most incredible moments of my life, but as good as it was, it doesn’t compare to what I have with this girl.

“
Not bad”, she says, all swaying sass and smiles.

“
You think?”

“
I’ve seen better.”

“
I’ll have to practice more.”

“
There’s always next year.”

“
We might have other distractions.”

Lucy puts her hand on her belly despite there not being a bump there yet.

“
Imagine if it were twins”, she says.

“
You know it does run in the family.”

“
Mom would be over the moon with four grandsons.”

“
I think she’s over the moon anyway.”

Lucy stretches out her hand to me. “Come on. There are people that want to interview you. I can’t keep you all to myself.”

I take her hand in mine and let her lift me to my feet. “I think I broke my foot”, I say.

“
Then it’s a good thing the season’s over, you can rest it when we head back to the island.”

I wrap my arm around Lucy’s neck and let her support me as we hobble towards the technical area.

“
I can take you out on the boat again.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “If you make sure you check the gasoline levels before we go.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a wave of TV reporters rushing towards us. “Anyway, we might have other plans”, I say.

“
Other plans how?”

The reporters are here before I have a chance to answer, microphones thrust towards us both, and a gabble of questions that sound like a wall of noise.

“
What a game.”

“
Talk us through it.”

“
What else do you have left to achieve?”

“
Did you ever think you were going to lose that?”

“
How’s the foot? Is it broken?”

“
Was that the hardest thing you have ever done?”

I pause for a while before I answer, every single one of them waiting with baited breath, until I see Lucy and I up on the big screen around us.

“
Can you get sound on that?” I say pointing up to it. “I’ve got something I want to announce.”

“
Oh my God are you retiring?”

I don’t answer that question. I wait until I’m told there is sound now coming from the image above us, and when I begin to talk, the stadium suddenly goes silent around us to listen.

“
I’ve got something to say”, I begin. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to say for a long time.”

I turn to Lucy momentarily, and I can tell immediately she has absolutely no idea what I’m about to do. We’ve not talked about it before, not even hinted it’s something we should be thinking about.

“
I’ve known Lucy Parker for the best part of a decade. For the first nine or so of those years, we didn’t share a single word with each other, even though, secretly, we were both thinking the same thing.”

There is hushed conversation around us, people guessing what’s about to come.

“
Lucy is, without doubt, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I turn to her, drop down to one knee and from the sock that surrounds my bust up ankle I take out the ring I’ve had concealed there for the whole game.

The crowd gasp. They might have thought I was going to give a breakdown of the game - the first time in every year I’ve won it - but no, they have to wait for something else first.

Lucy has her hand over her mouth. She can’t believe what’s about to come. I can hardly believe it either. Six months ago we were practically strangers, and right now, with my baby inside her, I want to make her my wife.

I hold the ring out to her, and with the whole world watching, I say the words that have been going around my head in one form or another since I first laid eyes on her.

“
Lucy, will you marry me?”

Lucy bites her lip. She looks away and back again. She lets the question hang just because she can, long enough that even I begin to doubt myself, and then finally, all smiles, and as cool as a cucumber, says the words I’ve longed for a lifetime to hear.

“
Yes. Fuck, yes, of course I will.”

Winning the Superbowl, getting MVP, even if they put me into the sporting hall of fame, none of it would compare to what I feel right now. With the crowd going wild around us, and Lucy up in my arms like the best trophy anyone could ever hope to win, tears of happiness streaming down my face, and a little baby on the way, I feel like I’ve finally won.

Nothing gets better than this. Bad boy Rhino to expectant Dad, Alex Vann Haden has made the world his own, and he couldn’t have done it without Lucy Parker by his side. The book nerd and the jock, the intellectual and the sports star, the college sweethearts who never had the balls to tell each other how they felt.

We got there in the end, and there is no better feeling in this world than having to make up for lost time.

Hand in hand, we walk the length of the field together swarmed by a swelling crowd, and swallowed by a legion of fans desperate to pass on their congratulations, shaking with excitement, buzzing with the promise of what’s to come.

At the edge of the tunnel, the cameras find us again, and up on the big screen, while the thunderous noise of support surrounds us, I pull Lucy towards me and press my trembling lips to hers.

Retiring
I think. Fuck that. I’ve only just begun.

Epilogue.

That summer...

Lucy

We take the boat out on our one year anniversary, this time with a full tank of gasoline and this time, thankfully, without a storm brewing on the horizon. I’m showing much more now, and the press know that not only are we having a baby, we are going to have twin boys.

It’s crazy, and I can hardly wrap my head around the idea. Not only one child but two, not only one boy but a pair of them. I’m only seven months in but I feel absolutely massive even though Alex keeps telling me he thinks I look even more beautiful than I did before.

If that’s true, I don’t know what it says about The Rhino and his perversions, but even if it’s not, it’s super nice to hear.

I never thought I’d be a mother at all, let alone with Alex Vann Haden as the father, and I still haven’t adjusted to the reality of it. Until these little boys pop out, I’m going to continue thinking it’s a joke.

That’s not the only thing I’m still in shock about either. The whole Superbowl win in the dying seconds followed by Alex’s completely unexpected wedding proposal still hasn’t fully sunk in.

I’ve often asked Alex whether he would have gone through with it anyway had they lost, to which he always responds, as cocky as ever, that neither of those things were ever in doubt.

We’ve decided to get married officially in the fall in a small celebration with close family members, with a party later on in the year here on his island, which I expect to be adequately debaucherous. Alex says those days are well behind him, but as long as I’ve had the children by then, there’s no chance I’m going to hold myself back as well.

Nine months without a drink with two huge boys growing inside you is nothing short of a miracle for me.

That’s part of the reason we’ve decided to push the wedding to the end of the year too. I’m not going to even attempt to get into a wedding dress if I can’t see my feet without the help of a mirror.

We wanted to wait until after the anniversary of Dad’s death too, which I know is going to be a shitty time for me. He would have fainted had he seen what happened after that incredible game, which is being talked about as the number one sporting event of the year, better even than Alex’s winning touchdown pass, even though it’s not in itself technically a sporting event per sé.

Not content with awarding him a record-equalling fourth Superbowl win, they also gave him MVP again, and this year, finally, he was immortalized in the hall of fame. It only took them six seasons but hey, at least that’s still quicker than most.

He continues to be the all round superstar he promised me he always was, not only out on the field, but here, at home, with me, my family, in our everyday lives, which are anything but ordinary.

I’ve never felt more loved, more in love, more able to understand what that actually means, and I’ve never felt happier than I do with Alex.

It sounds fucking cliché, but this man is my world, and every day I wake up and wonder what I did that made him want to choose me.

He has his faults like everyone else, and we have our challenges like everyone else but I’ve never doubted him or us, or what we have strived to create for one another.

I’m about to have twins, I’m about to get married to the sexiest, most talented quarterback in the world, I’m floating on a boat in the middle of the Caribbean sea and I can’t think of anything that would make me happier.

I’m living a dream, and somehow, through magic, design, perseverance or sheer luck, or perhaps a wicked mix of all of them, Alex Vann Haden is here to share it with me. Not only that, but he’s here to stay too.

Gemstone eyes, rock-hard abs, and did I mention that massive, massive-.

“
Are you alright Lucy?” he asks me.

“
Babymaker”, I say without thinking.

“
Sorry?”

I smile but don’t take my eyes off him.

“
Never better”, I say, correcting myself. “I’ve never been better.”

Alex

Twins. I can’t fucking believe it. I mean, hall of fame, MVP, record-equalling number of Superbowl rings, but twins, fucking twins. Quarterback and wide receiver. Two safeties. A fucking team all in one go.

I still can’t believe it. I have to pinch myself from time to time, even though Lucy has swollen up like a balloon. I swear she’s so big she looks like she’s going to pop out a whole offensive line up.

Life has never been as good as this. Kids on the way, wedding round the corner, mother in law placated, even Jack’s taken to me. In one year my whole life has turned around, and every time I think back to the moment I finally decided to get back in touch with Lucy - a decision I agonized over much more than anything else I have done in my life  - I feel so happy I had the balls to finally go ahead and do it. None of this would have happened otherwise. That incredible first fuck almost a full year ago, the subsequent explosion of our desire in the corridor afterward and everything finally falling into place for us a full two months after I wanted it to.