Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance) (12 page)

“Of course. I won’t tell.” It would have never occurred to Nathan to leave. If his quarterback had a secret, he needed to know it.

“I was scared. I’ve been scared that I would do something wrong and you would send me to my aunt’s, but today, just for a little, I was scared I was going to die.”

“Oh, baby.” Nathan heard the creak of bed springs and could imagine her sitting on the side of Kirby’s bed, brushing his hair off his face. “I was scared too. At first, I didn’t know what to do with you. Now, I can’t imagine what I’d do without you. There is nothing you could do that would make me send you away. You’ll go to college. You may never come back to Merritt to live, but know this: You will always have a home with me no matter where you are or where I am. You don’t have to worry about that. I’m not your mother. I don’t know what I am to you, but we’ve made our own little family of sorts, don’t you think? And families don’t just fade away.” Maybe in her world.

“Yeah. Love you, Miss Tolly,” he muttered.

“Love you too, honey.”

“Only — ”

“Only what, Kirby?”

“I like it here with you. I like that we’re winning most of our games. I was having fun today before the wreck. But I miss my grandmother.”

And the boy started to cry. Oh God. Anything but that. What was with all this crying today? Maybe he should go in and help.

“Of course you miss her,” Tolly said. “None of us wanted this to happen. I’d get her back for you if I could, but I’m not sorry I have you here with me. And I think Miss Eula is glad you’re starting to feel happy again.”

“Yeah?” Kirby’s crying reduced to a sniffle.

“Was there ever a time when your grandmother did not want the very best for you? For you to be happy?”

“No.”

“Then we will have no guilt over you feeling happy.”

Clearly she didn’t need his help. And that was good. Done. He needed to remember he was done.

“How’s your headache?” Tolly asked.

“Hurts.”

“Well, I want you to go to sleep. The next time I wake you, you can have another pain pill.”

“Can’t I have one now?” Kirby asked.

“No.”

He heard her get up and move around, he figured adjusting covers and gathering glasses. On the surface, Townshend seemed pretty good at this mothering thing, but since when could mothers be trusted? His certainly couldn’t.

He shelved the idea of taking Townshend back to bed. Like she’d said, she and Kirby had their own little family — somewhere else he’d never fit in. After all, how could he?

She didn’t even know why she’d kept his jersey.

He slipped quietly down the stairs to retrieve his blazer from her bedroom. As he started to leave, the jersey caught his eyes. No, not
the
jersey.
His
jersey.

Nathan logged about four — mostly sleepless — hours between the clean sheets he’d put on his bed in anticipation of his date with Audrey. Seemed like ten years ago. He sat up on the side of the bed and tried to flex his knee. It always took a while.

He caught that smell again — Townshend’s smell. Why hadn’t he showered last night? Now she was all over him, all in his hair, and all over his bed. He’d have to change the sheets again. Only he couldn’t, not without doing laundry. He only had two sets. Now they were both dirty. Well, one was dirty and one was tainted.

His plan to purge Townshend from his system had been a bad one, not to mention futile. She loomed over him like a soul sucker in silk and high heels. Only now it was worse. Now, he knew what she looked like without the silk and high heels. He knew her body, her touch, how he could make her his, make her come, and the sweet way she had clung to him after.

He
knew
. It hadn’t been good enough to just memorize her like names and dates for an eighth grade history test. And he would take that knowledge to his grave
.

He got to his feet, gingerly testing his knee. Okay. Looked like he’d be able to walk on it at least one more day.

If he’d been living in Townshend Hell, now he was in the deepest, blackest most vile part. Not the Dante version or the Baptist one either; that was going light. This was the late night cable channel evangelical television hell.
“Send five thousand dollars and Townshend Harris Lee won’t eat your soul for breakfast anymore.”

If only. It would be cheap at the price.

Game film. That’s what he needed. He wasn’t hungry. He’d gotten up and eaten Chips Ahoy at two
A.M.
and cold pizza at four. He would shower first. Hot water to loosen his knee and wash her scent away. With any luck, she’d go right down the drain and he’d be free of her.

Who was he kidding? There wasn’t any luck. Not for him, where she was concerned. But there was game film. There was always game film.

He was just pulling on his clothes when the bell rang.

He knew it was her even before he jerked the door open. The Townshend detection system probably came with entrance into the deepest part of Townshend Hell.

Gone was the girl from last night, with her face devoid of make-up and her hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. She was wearing nice pants with a starched white shirt tucked in and her sleek hair was held back with a silver headband. She’d used her war paint — probably because she had come for war. Though you wouldn’t know it from her expression. Cold. Neutral. Everything about her said, “I don’t give a shit about this planet or anything on it — especially you.”

Yet, she was here.

• • •

Tolly thought he might still be in bed, but not only was he awake, he didn’t look like he’d been asleep. There were bruises under his eyes, and though his hair was still wet from the shower, he hadn’t shaved.

He leaned on the doorframe and put his hands in the pockets of his sweatpants.

“This is not a church,” he said.

That threw her off. “What?”

He gestured to her. “You’re all tricked out like you’re going to church.” He pointed upward. “See. No steeple. No bell. You took a wrong turn.”

“I know where I am, Nathan.”

“Yeah?” He put some more energy into leaning on the doorframe.

“You stole my jersey. I want it back.”

He acted like she hadn’t spoken. “Where’s Seven?”

“At home. Texting. Eating blueberry muffins. Watching ESPN. And I don’t want to leave him alone too long. So give me my jersey. Right now.”

“What makes you think it’s yours?” he asked.

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” That wasn’t true, but Nathan didn’t know that.

“Yet you don’t possess it, do you? I do. I have
re-
possessed it.”

Damn. He had a point. “I’ve had it for thirteen years, Nathan. Just give it to me. It’s mine and you know it.”

“You don’t even want it.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You just want to see if you can make me give it to you.”

Her mouth went dry. And the ice started to melt. She had never entertained the thought that he wouldn’t give the jersey to her, if for no other reason than to get rid of her. After all, he’d left without a word.

“Admit it,” he said. “Admit you don’t want it. You know you don’t.”

“I do.” Her voice came out in a whisper, probably because her throat was so dry. She let her chin drop to her chest. She didn’t really understand why she was here. She’d fought coming, tried to tell herself she didn’t need the jersey. But here she was, close to begging. Well, for whatever reason she
had
to have it. Had to. She’d beg if that’s what it took.

“What? Louder. I didn’t understand you.” He was taunting her and she hated him for it, hated him even more than when she’d gone downstairs last night expecting to go back into his arms, but instead found him gone — and her jersey with him.

“I do. I do want that jersey.”

“Why?” His voice had a different tone now and she looked up to find that there was no taunting in his face. He was asking a raw, simple question, maybe one that he deserved an honest answer to.

She swallowed and met his wide eyes, met them full on. “It was all I had left,” she whispered.

Moments passed. No blinking. No breathing. No moving at all, not from either of them.

“Then I guess you’d better come on in.” And he moved away to admit her.

She stepped into what should have been a living room, but it didn’t have much life to it. A home theater system and the biggest television she’d ever seen dominated one wall. Facing it, two sofas flanked a brown leather recliner that could only be described as a throne for a god of the gridiron. She could see him in the chair, barking orders to assistant coaches lined up on the sofas.

“Sit down.” Nathan gestured to one of the sofas. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

Maybe he intended to sit in the recliner and bark orders at her. “I’ll help you,” she said and made to follow.

“No. You stay out here. I mean it, Townshend.”

What was that about? Instead of sitting, she stepped closer to examine the enormous recliner. It had cup holders, slots for remotes, and pockets on the sides for play sheets and DVDs. There was a swing out lap desk where a playbook lay beside a pad of paper where he’d diagramed plays with X’s and O’s. Best of all, there was a control panel with a dozen buttons and a joystick. When she leaned in to look at the controls, she tripped over something laying on the floor — a heating pad and an ice pack.

Not wanting to think about why he needed a heating pad and ice pack, she began to play with the chair’s buttons.
Vibrate. Heat. Recline prone
. Dear God. There was a built in light.

“Here’s your coffee,” said a voice behind her. She expected it to be black like his, but it was just like she liked it, with two creams and one sugar. How did he even know that?

She turned the chair off and it snapped back to its original dormant state.

“Will this thing transport you to the Super Bowl?”

“Yes.” He pointed to the sofa and waited until she sat to let himself down beside her. “Or really to any bowl — Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl, Rose Bowl. And its magical powers are not limited to Bowl games. It will take me to the Manning Passing Academy and to the lounge of the ESPN offices. But, Townshend, there is a place it will not take me, the same place nothing will ever take me — the past.”

She turned her mug in her hands and considered this. “I wish it would. If we could work though what happened, we might find ourselves able to have a conversation. All we do is snipe and argue.”

“We can talk without all that.” He took a sip of his coffee. “But we can’t talk about the past. It’s over and I will not wear it out.”

“I see,” she said, though she did not.

He pushed his hair out of his eyes and sighed deeply. “I give up,” he said.

“What are you surrendering to exactly, Geronimo?”

“I thought sex was just an unfinished piece of business between us. I thought if we did it, I could move on. But I can’t get you off my mind.”

“I don’t understand,” she said and she truly did not.

“I have thought of this from every angle I can. I could leave town, but it wouldn’t help. We could be friends with benefits. Or maybe enemies with benefits, more like. But that’s not what I want. For whatever reason, no matter what happened, I want you. I don’t care what you did. I want us to try to — ” His voice hung in the air.

“Try what?”

He took a drink of his coffee. “Hell if I know. Just try. See what happens.”

Could he possibly mean — ?

“See what happens? With you and me? As in try to have a romantic relationship?”

“I damned sure can’t have one with anyone else.”

All of a sudden she was a little mad. “So you want me because you can’t have anyone else? So you are
surrendering
to me? How flattering. And you are mighty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Oh, come on, Townshend. I wasn’t the only one in that bed last night. And I may not be the Grade A piece of prime rib that I once was, but I could get someone else. I put a perfectly nice woman on the road last night because she wasn’t you. That was after I asked her out because she looks like you — though I didn’t realize it until Harris saw her from behind and mistook her for you.”

“What? That’s just crazy.”

“My point exactly. And I am not the only one. I think you came over here today for more than that jersey.”

She couldn’t deny it. “I don’t see how we can try anything without talking about what happened.”

His mouth went hard. “Well, it’s that way or not at all. I can put it behind me but I can’t dissect it.”

“So you aren’t saying you forgive me and you aren’t willing for me to explain?”

“None of that would change anything.” He set his coffee on the floor. There was no table. “I want you. I think you want me. Can’t we see what happens?”

Every bit of good sense she possessed warned her against this. The best thing would be to clear the air, make amends, and then see what could happen. But the best way didn’t have to be the only way. She’d learned that in the courtroom.

And he was so right. She did want him, so much. She wanted to kiss him, make love to him, and make sure his clothes were ironed. She wanted to curl up under a blanket and watch a movie with him at the end of a good day and rub his back and bring him his favorite ice cream on a bad day. She wanted to make sure he had birthday cakes and a Christmas stocking with his name spelled out in sequins, filled with candy and silly little wrapped gifts.

She wanted to make up it up to him.

“Can you do it, Townshend? Can you just look forward?”

“Yes,” she said and she hoped it was true.

“All right, then.” He smiled. It was a real smile, the first one she’d seen since she’d walked away from him that day in Tuscaloosa when he was so sick. That day, he’d smiled because he was sure she was coming back. He rose and pulled her toward the recliner. “I’ve never tried this but I think it could be very rewarding.” He sat, pulled her into his lap, and fiddled with the joystick until she was lying in his arms and their pelvises were slightly elevated. Then he a pushed a button and the chair began to vibrate.

“Nathan,” Tolly said. “There’s something I need, too.”