Going Long (Waiting on the Sidelines)

by Ginger Scott

  GOING LONG

  Waiting on the Sidelines 2

  By Ginger Scott

  Text copyright © 2013 Ginger Scott (Ginger Eiden)

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Ginger Scott

  For my readers…

  Thank you.

  You mean the world to me.

  Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Reed

  The first time I thought about marrying Nolan Lennox, she had just saved my father’s life. The thought was fleeting, and it scared the hell out of me. I was only 17.

  Nolan and my dad were the only two people to have ever seen me cry. I mean snot-dripping-from-your-nose, gasping-for-breath, body-shaking cry. And I was a child when I cried in front of my dad—not so much a child when I let it all out in Nolan’s arms while my dad lay under some surgeon’s knife, his heart cut open and failing.

  It was something about the way Nolan knew what to do, the way she took care of my dad when he had a heart attack—the way she took care of me. The moments were brief, bit-flashes of time, but they also filled my mind with visions of forever. I recognized it right away, but chose to ignore it for a while. It happened again when I thought some asshole had raped her, and all I wanted to do was go to jail for having beat the shit out of him. And it happened the first time I kissed her, I mean really kissed her.

  I stopped ignoring it, though, when I drove through the desert from Tucson to her dorm room at ASU, 110 miles away. The sun was setting, and I had just read her name in the newspaper story about the accident that broke us apart our senior year in high school—her words so sad, full of regret and guilt. I let her go because I didn’t think I was good for her, didn’t want her to give up her dreams for mine. I didn’t want to carry that weight on my shoulders, I guess. But she blamed herself anyway. And I just had to fix it, had to hold her. And when it hit me that I never wanted to stop holding her, I hit the gas hard and made it to her building just as dusk was setting in.

  The guy working the front desk of her building recognized me and let me in, but not before ribbing me about playing for the wrong school and letting me know that ASU’s line was going to flatten my ass more than a few times. I let him heckle me for a bit, before he reached for my hand and shook it—almost like he was star struck, and I was his bro. I was going to have to get used to this kind of attention.

  He gave me Nolan’s room number, and I charged up the steps three stairs at a time. When I got to her door, I pounded on it manically. The hallways were quiet, her neighbors gone, and most of the doors were closed and dark underneath. A short, mousy girl opened a door down the hall, and I walked over slowly, smiling so she wouldn’t freak out. She told me everyone had gone to some dance on campus. I just thanked her and told her I’d wait so she didn’t wonder why I was hanging out in the hall.

  I must have dozed off after a few hours, my head buried in the music pumping in my ears, my hat shielding my eyes from the florescent lights of her hallway. I jumped when she kicked my feet apart, but when I saw her face, I remembered why I’d come all this way.

  Being in her room felt so right, everything so familiar, even though it wasn’t a place I’d ever been. It was full of her. When I saw the pictures of her and me on her wall, my pulse sped up a bit. And when I saw that damn hat I’d given her—my lame attempt to let her know I still loved her—I knew I still had a shot.

  I’ve never been more careful choosing my words than I was for that brief conversation I had with Nolan that night. And I probably should have led with begging for forgiveness from the start, but instead I wanted to make sure she knew that everything was because of me, not her. I wanted the blame, all of it.

  And with that one small word from her breath, yes, I knew I was done. The sensation of her lips on mine was an addiction. The miles on my Jeep read 93,728, and all but 3,000 of those miles were treaded by my many drives from Tucson up to Phoenix, just to see the girl who rules my world. I knew she was worried when I first came to surprise her at her dorm room two years ago and begged her to give me one more chance. But I made a promise to her then, and I had every intention of keeping it.

  I wanted her to know that she could count on me being there to greet her as soon as her classes were done on Thursday afternoons. I didn’t give a shit that it meant I had to turn around and drive the same miles back to campus for light practices on Fridays and games on Saturdays—sometimes making several trips each week just to see her. And when games were done, I spent my nights with her, holding her close, and letting her call all the shots.

  My freshman year, I took a lot of shit from the guys on the football team, who all expected me to head to the bars with them every night and rule the parties on fraternity row. But I wouldn’t go unless Nolan was with me. Sometimes she would, and I spent most of those nights making sure strangers didn’t try to ply her with liquor or hit on her.

  She finally convinced me to go alone once, about halfway through our freshman season. She was stuck at ASU, working late on a midterm psychology paper, and couldn’t make it for our game against Stanford. We were serious underdogs, but managed to pull out a win, and there was no getting around celebrating. The entire UofA campus was teeming with energy, and it was the first time in months I let myself get a little loaded. I drunk-dialed her that night—several times, so I was told. I was so sure I said something stupid, but she assured me I was nothing but sweet and romantic. I’m pretty sure I embarrassed myself, but she didn’t tease.

  I was careful not to drink too much now. That was another vow I made when I left home for college and signed to play for the Wildcats. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a college guy, and I can chug with the best of them. But I try not to let it get stupid, and usually Noles is there to keep me in line or tell me when it’s time to go home.

  I wasn’t going to be my brother; I wouldn’t be the asshole. Being the asshole was the easy way out. And I was fine with things not being easy. Jason was quickly becoming a business big shot with our father’s company. He was good at business, sales and working a room full of important people into doing exactly what he wanted. People always wanted Jason to like them, even as adults. It stunned me that they couldn’t see through his bullshit, but I guess, deep down, most of us want to be liked by the in crowd, even if the guy at the head of the table was a massive dick.

  Now that Nolan and I were juniors, it was harder to sync our schedules. Nolan’s schedule was pretty full. She was taking 21 hours to make sure she could graduate in four years with her specialty. And I was seriously considering entering the draft after this season. Our Rose Bowl win, and number four finish last year, put me in a pretty good position to be a top pick, and we were already ranked pretty high heading into this seaso
n. I didn’t want to lose my chance to do this for a living. I loved the game, almost as much as I loved Nolan. But that’s what made it all so damned hard. I knew I could end up on the other end of the country, and the thought of spending a year away from her tore up my insides.

  We talked about it a few times, but Nolan always shut down. She was a planner, and when I brought up the possibility of her transferring, or doing her student teaching somewhere else, she just nodded and said she’d think about it. But it was the kind of nod that I knew meant she really wouldn’t, and was instead hoping the possibility would just go away.

  I didn’t have to make my decision yet. But come December, I needed to have a pretty good idea of where I was headed. I had four months to work on her, but the whole thing was just making my stomach sick. And the fucking ring in my pocket was just making my stress shoot through the roof.

  I wasn’t going to ask her today. I probably wouldn’t ask her this year. But I knew I’d ask her, and I just wanted to be ready. I had most of the day off and stopped by the house to talk to dad on my way up to see Nolan. He loved her like a daughter already, and when I brought up the idea of one day making her a permanent part of the family, he hugged me so hard that my feet left the ground. I didn’t expect him to give me Grandma’s ring; I just wanted his help picking something out. So when he disappeared upstairs, and came back down with the antique box, I knew I was making the right decision.

  I shoved the stress back down in my body and reminded myself to stay in control the second I saw my girl round the corner of her building—just like she did every Thursday afternoon. She was looking for me, her heavy bag slumping down her shoulder and her hair knotted up on top of her head. Damn she was beautiful. And I was so lucky.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” I smiled at her, kicking off the wall I was sitting on and reaching for her bag to throw it over my shoulder so I could take her hand. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed me, reaching inside my arm to hug me tightly. I’d never get tired of this.

  “Hey, I’m so happy to see you. I’ve had the crappiest day,” she sounded exhausted.

  “Let me guess, you just found out you have to take a test for a class you’ve never been to,” I was teasing her. She’d had this dream several times. I heard it was a common dream, though I’d never had it. She smacked my chest with her palm when I started in on her. I caught her arm and wrapped her up in mine, kissing her for real this time.

  “I’m kidding. Tell me about it,” I followed her into her building and to the elevator. A few of the freshmen walking by us stopped and stared, one of the guys questioning who I was. We got this a lot. Both because it was strange for me to be at a rival campus, and because I was starting to get a bit of a celebrity following—at least, as far as the college sports world was concerned.

  Noles had taken a job as a hall monitor this year when her best friend Sienna decided to move in with her boyfriend, Micah. She had to be available to students most nights, which made it even harder for us to find times to see each other, but it meant her room and board were covered, so it was a trade-off we both were willing to work around.

  When we got to her door, she unlocked it and immediately walked to her bed flopping straight forward on her face, slowly sliding it sideways to look at me through her tired eyes.

  I sat down next to her and pulled her hair from the band that was holding it up and started to brush it with my fingers. I knew she loved it when I did this.

  “Mmmmmm, can you do that for the next six hours?” she giggled a little.

  “Well, I can do it for the next four at least, then I have to hit the road,” I just smiled down at her. “Tell me about this crappy day.”

  She rolled over on her side and propped her head up. “Ugh, group project,” she rolled her eyes.

  I laughed a little, knowing how Nolan felt about group projects—never mind that if it wasn’t for a group project, we might not have ever gotten together. Nolan was the perfect student, but she also expected perfection from others. And when a group couldn’t deliver that, it stressed her the hell out.

  “Bad group?” I asked, already knowing.

  “The worst,” she let out a heavy breath, her lips quivering a little with it. “We have to perform practice IQ tests on each other, and the two other jackasses in my group started building towers with the blocks today, rather than lining up the colors for a pattern like you’re supposed to do.”

  I laughed a little at her, but the look she shot me shut me up pretty quickly. “Sorry, it just doesn’t sound sooooo bad,” I said, stroking her hair again to make up for my gaffe. “I bet they pull it together for you.”

  She sat up then and looked me in the eyes with a serious expression. “You didn’t let me finish. Then, they pulled out their Angry Bird stuffed animals and started catapulting them into the towers. This went on for 30 minutes; I prepped an entire test before they knocked over six blocks!”

  Stifling the laughter was too difficult, and finally it broke free from me. Nolan just shoved her pillow in my face and leaned onto me roughly as she stood up. I couldn’t help it though, the scene was just too much to handle.

  “I’m sorry, Noles,” I pulled myself together. “But you have to admit, it sounds pretty funny. I don’t know what’s better, the fact that they have stuffed animals in college, or that they came up with this idea.”

  The smirk on her face when she turned around let me know that she was starting to see the humor in it a little, too. “Well, thank goodness I have one more group member. He couldn’t make it to today’s meeting, but he’s actually pretty smart, plus he runs the fifth floor, so I can work on the project with him at our building when we fail to get anything done with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.”

  I didn’t miss the he part of her statement. And I didn’t really like the idea that this guy lived only two stories up from her, or that she thought he was pretty smart. But I kept that deep inside and put it in line with the other things I talk about—and probably swear about a little—to myself when I’m driving through the desert between our two schools. Instead, I just smiled at her, pulled her to my lap and went to work on her mouth. I had four hours with her today, and I was going to spend most of those minutes kissing her.

  Chapter 2

  Nolan

  I never got tired of seeing Reed waiting for me by my building. It made the day rush by, and I wanted to run to him every time I saw him sitting there waiting for me. It was only a hundred miles between our two schools, but it was still a hundred miles. I drove to his school a few times, mostly on game days. But he didn’t like me driving through the desert, still a little shell-shocked from our accident.

  Some days he was tired, and I could tell. But he made the trip anyhow. I knew he couldn’t stay long today, and I knew he desperately wanted to have the conversation about me transferring schools if he went through with the draft, but I wasn’t ready to have that talk yet.

  I knew he loved me. Damn, he’d gone far to prove it. But the thought of uprooting things, just for him to find out that there were options in the big world—women out there, that were better still plagued my mind. It didn’t help that his mother, Millie, never quite warmed to me. She got my name right when we were in each other’s company now, but there was always an air of disdain in how she spoke to me. Reed always denied it, but it was there. I sensed it—my girlfriends sensed it. Hell, Reed’s dad, Buck, even sensed it too, telling me more than once not to let her bitchy streak get to me.

  But all of that didn’t matter when I lay in his arms. I enjoyed the now. It calmed the constant churn of stress in my gut from my studies and the fear of blowing my scholarship—the one thing in my mind that edged out the worry over Reed’s draft decision.

  “You’re still stressed about this project, aren’t you?” Reed whispered in my ear, his breath sending chills through me. I just took a deep breath and turned on my side to face him, burying my face deep in his chest while he wrapped his massive arms around me.

  “That
transparent, huh?” I let out a big sigh.

  “You were never very good at poker,” he chuckled. “Can I help? Do you want to test my IQ? I mean, I’m a genius, so it will probably throw everything off, but I’m willing to play dumb if you need me to.”

  His damn smile and comforting humor always soothed me. His hair was shorter now, but still long enough for me to grab fistfuls, and his face was no longer the baby-skinned one I had first kissed years ago. It was rough, and almost always in need of a shave by the time I saw him. It was perfect. He was perfect. Kissing his stubbly chin, I looked up at him while I lay tucked tightly in his arms.

  “You know, it’s not fair that you’re so smart and also so good looking,” I said, for once giving him a compliment without back-loading it with a joke. He just looked at me skeptically, and I couldn’t resist. “Something had to give, though. I guess that’s why your hairline’s receding.”

  I held my serious face as long as I could without breaking. When I finally did, he just rolled on top of me and dug in with a breath-stealing tickle round. He finally let up, standing to look at the clock on my desk, his face souring a little because it was time for him to go.

  I grabbed my keys and walked him down the hall to the stairs. I always hated this moment, but I knew I’d see him in two days for his game. We stood still just staring at each other for seconds, our fingers interlocking with one another, not willing to let go. I sensed the heaviness on his mind, seconds before his brow creased and he looked down, kicking at my feet a little.

  “Spill it, Wildcat,” I nudged him.

  “We have to talk about the draft, Noles,” he grimaced. I had made him afraid to bring the topic up, which I didn’t like. But I also dreaded talking about it.