Chapter 36

Jane was pressed up against the glass, waving wildly at Sam as he blew her a kiss.

“He can’t see you, dumb-ass,” Randi McInish said. “He’s too far away.” Jane had just met her when she snuck into the skybox. Randi was a cop who was involved with the Rebels quarterback and a coach, one of the infamous Rebels threesomes. Jane didn’t think Randi liked her much.

“He blew me a kiss,” she argued.

“Well, he’s not stupid. He knows where the box is. Jesus.” Randi plopped down in her seat beside Jane. “I can’t believe I got roped into babysitting you.” Randi was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. She was gorgeous. Curvy, with wild, curly hair and freckles dotting her café au lait complexion. She was seriously foulmouthed, which would have made Jane laugh under different circumstances. Jane felt foolish and overdressed in the clingy wrap dress and high heels Margo had bought her. She wished she’d worn her usual jeans and T-shirt. At least she’d been able to take off the itchy wig once she was in the box.

“I don’t need a babysitter.” Jane sat down, trying to keep track of where Sam and King were on the sidelines. “What are they doing?” she asked, frowning. The team was lining up on the field, but Sam and King were still on the sidelines. “Aren’t they playing?”

“They play defense,” Margo explained patiently. “The Rebels won the coin toss and chose to receive first.” At her blank look Margo continued. “The Rebels are on offense first. Sam and King will play when the other team gets the ball.”

“Look, I don’t like you very much already,” Randi said. “Are you telling me you don’t know anything about football? Not even the basics?”

“I know the injury statistics,” Jane said. “I’ve wrapped broken arms and ankles and heads from football injuries. Seen more concussions than I can count. I know they run into each other a lot, thus the injuries. And everyone is chasing a ball.”

“Am I going to have to spend the whole game listening to her explain football to you?” Randi complained, and made her feelings clear with a loud raspberry. “Because, if so, I may have to shoot you.”

“Randi,” Chloe Alvin snapped. “Quit being such a bitch.” Her husband was one of the oldest players on the team, and she was sort of the unofficial den mother up here, as far as Jane could tell. She was tall and thin, with dark-brown skin and long, straight hair. She looked like a supermodel in a pencil skirt and silk blouse with sky-high heels.

“I am a bitch,” Randi said. “So that’s kind of hard to do.”

“You got that right,” some smart-aleck girl said from the back of the room. Randi turned and glared at her.

“You have less right to be here than she does,” Randi told the girl. “He’s just fucking with you. She’s a future baby mama.”

“Whoa,” Jane said. “I wish everyone would stop trying to get me pregnant.”

“TMI,” Randi said. Just then Ty Oakes, the Rebels quarterback, got hit after he threw the ball, and Jane saw Randi’s fingertips turn white as she dug them into the arm of her chair. Other than that, she still looked cool as a cucumber, but she wasn’t fooling Jane.

“I can’t believe we haven’t met yet,” Jane said, trying to take Randi’s mind off the game. “Most of the cops in Birmingham have been through my ER for one reason or another.”

“They took me to UA when I got shot,” Randi said, not looking away from the game.

“Wow, someone shot you,” Jane said, deadpan. “Go figure.” At that Randi turned slowly to face her, then she grinned.

“Go figure,” she said. “I was working undercover as a hooker.”

“Now you’re just giving me freebies,” Jane complained. “You should at least make me work for the insults.” At that, Randi laughed.

“Okay, one bitch to another,” Randi said. “Why’d you disappear? That was seriously not cool. Sam and King nearly lost their minds this week. The whole team has been off. They’ll be lucky to get out of this game with points on the board.”

“What?” Jane asked, shocked. “But, why?”

“One man down, the team goes down,” Randi said. “Ty said they’ve really gelled this season. They’re working as a unit, finally. Sam and King have a lot to do with that.”

“How?” Jane asked, truly curious. “Because of their relationship?”

“Oh, hell, no, that’s new,” Randi said with a snort. “Half the team nearly wet themselves over that. The other half said they knew all along. No, because of who they are. King’s always so laid-back, right? The islander with the surfer attitude, he helps everybody maintain their equilibrium. And Sam…well, he’s Sam. He’s quiet, and fucked-up, and he makes you want to take care of him.”

“He is fucked-up,” Jane said with longing. “And I do want to take care of him.” She thought about how Sam was when they were making love. She wanted that Sam, too, the dominant one who ordered her around and fulfilled all her fantasies. And King, who would do whatever she or Sam wanted, give them whatever he thought they needed. “Both of them.” She looked down at them and saw they were jogging out to line up on the field. “Oh, they’re playing now.

“Oh my God,” she said a few minutes later, jumping up as the teams ran at each other. Sam and King both hit players from the other team. King flipped one over his shoulder and then slammed into another, driving him back several yards, almost reaching the Packers quarterback. Meanwhile, Sam tackled a player to the ground and then got kicked in the head by another Packer who’d been trying to run past him. She pressed up against the glass, waiting to see if he got up. After the play stopped, the Packer who’d kicked him held out his hand and pulled Sam up. They slapped each other on the shoulder and went their separate ways. Jane fell back down in her chair, already exhausted from the highs and lows of the evening.

“This is going to be a long night,” she said.

“They all are, honey,” Chloe Alvin said, coming over to sit down on Randi’s other side. “They all are.”

The Rebels won the game 17–13. King had two sacks and Sam made an interception and ran the ball to the ten, which led to their second touchdown. According to Randi and Margo, they both had an exceptional game and would be very happy with their performance.

Jane was a mess by the end of the game. Having to sit there watching them make punishing hit after punishing hit was sheer torture. All she could think of were the football injuries she’d helped treat in the ER. In her mind, Sam and King’s injuries were magnified ten times, because they were playing in the NFL, and not Pop Warner ball. She had to excuse herself to go to the bathroom at one point, because she thought she was going to throw up. Sam had gone down hard and, as he lay on the field for a few seconds, Jane’s vision had dimmed because she was sure he was paralyzed.

All the women in the box were talking smack and bitching at each other and Jane completely understood. They were all as worried as she was. What a nightmare. She’d never imagined that being with a football player would be so hard. She didn’t worry so much about King, because he was clearly one of the biggest guys on the field. His arms were as big as any two other players’ arms put together. She’d known he was big, had seen him next to Sam and some other Rebels, but she didn’t realize how big until she saw him on the field. He was totally jacked. She got a little horny just thinking he was hers.

There was no indication on the field at any time that Sam and King were involved. They kept it professional during the game, teammates and nothing more. That had to be hard, too. King held back when Sam was down, letting Darius Alvin check him out and help him up. When Sam walked past King after he got up, he’d punched King’s shoulder pad. That was it. Jane had seen other players doing that to each other the whole game. Jane wanted to go down there and throw herself on Sam, and kiss him and make sure he was all right. She was pretty sure that’s what King really wanted to do, too.

“I can’t believe I held out for almost a whole week,” she told Margo when the game was over. She had collapsed in her chair and was rubbing her temple. She had a killer headache. At this rate, football would kill her before either of the guys even got hurt. “It’s all I can do to stay up here and wait for them and not run down to the locker room and tackle them.”

“Yeah, we all get jacked up after a game,” Randi said. “Best. Sex. Ever. Seriously. Half these ladies won’t even make it out of the stadium before they’re fucking. They don’t care how much their man hurts, if he’s alive and walking he’s going to get some pussy.”

“Randi,” Chloe said mildly, dusting some imaginary lint off her sleeve. “You’re so bad.”

“I know you and Darius have some secret closet or something in the stadium,” Randi accused her. “I’m going to find it. You know I am.”

“Not all of us are lucky enough to be banging a coach with his own office,” Chloe replied. “We have to improvise.”

“I just want to see them,” Jane said. To her utter mortification her eyes filled with tears. “It’s been a long time.”

“Going to be even longer,” Randi said unsympathetically. “They’re doing the fireworks show in a couple of minutes and the guys have to stay out there for it.”

“Oh, God,” Jane said, jumping up. She pressed her hands against the glass again. She was leaving permanent handprints there. “Sam hates fireworks.”

“How can anyone hate fireworks?” Shonda asked in a bitchy voice. She was the girl in the back who it turned out was sleeping with Dominique Reyes.

“Because they sound like bombs,” Jane told her without turning around. “They make him jumpy, like he’s under attack again.”

“Oh.” For once Shonda didn’t have a smart-aleck reply.

“Well, who the fuck thought fireworks were a good idea on Veterans Day?” Randi asked in disgust.

“Because fireworks are an American thing,” Margo said. “I mean, Fourth of July, apple pie, and fireworks. Right? I get it.”

“Help me find them on the sidelines,” Jane said, dragging Margo to her feet. “There are too many people out there.”

“Isn’t that King?” Chloe asked. “Next to Darius. You can always tell which one is King.”

Jane followed Chloe’s directions and found King. The crowd parted a little and she saw that Sam was sitting on the bench in front of King, his helmet off, his elbows on his knees as he stared at the ground. When the first firework boom split the air, she saw him flinch, and then the crowd hid him again. “I can’t see Sam,” she said, panicked.

“He was on the bench,” Margo told her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He’s fine.”

“I don’t think so,” Shonda said. “Look at the TV.”

Jane spun around and saw a close-up of Sam on the screen. He’d lowered his face to his knees and covered his head with his arms. King sat down next to him and put his arm around him. Danny Smith was standing in front of them. He turned to the camera and shoved it away and the TV cut to the commentators.

“…suffers from PTSD,” one of them was saying. “He probably shouldn’t be out there with the rest of the team for the fireworks display.”

“Well, he and King Ulupoka almost made it through the game without touching each other,” another commentator said in disgust. “I don’t think people at home need to see that on their TV screens.”

“What a dick,” Randi said loudly. She turned to Jane. “Come on.” Without waiting for a reply, she took Jane’s hand and dragged her toward the door.

“Where are we going?” Jane demanded, trying to tug her arm free. “I need to keep an eye on Sam.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Randi said. “I think he’d appreciate a personal touch right about now.”

“Then what are you waiting for?” Jane said. “Run. I can keep up.”