Roughing the Kicker

by Eden Butler

  When Ryder shook his head and stood, looking like he’d had enough and was about to leave, Gia mimicked him, pushing off from her desk to stand as well. “We’re not done here,” she told him, her voice lethal, serious.

  “I have other obligations—”

  “Do you understand what it looks like, Ryder? You telling the first contracted female player in the league to fuck off?”

  He lowered his eyebrows, his face losing all the tightness as though he knew where Gia was going, and the thought made him sick. “I wouldn’t ever…”

  “Doesn’t matter what you meant or why you said it. You cursing at her, you not having your brand-new teammate’s back in front of assholes who already doubted her, just because she’s a woman? Doesn’t speak well for you as a leader. Doesn’t really make you look worthy to be captain, does it?” Gia stepped around to the front of the desk, staring right into Ryder’s eyes as she faced him. “Leaders lead. They set the example on that field, or in a club surrounded by their teammates. Both scenarios? You lead.” She closed her eyes, like she needed a pause because the tension had gotten too thick in the room. Then Gia continued. “Our fanbase is full of very traditional, very conservative good ole boys and girls who aren’t comfortable with change. But you know yourself, Ryder, change is here. You can either lead them through it, or you can get out of the way and let someone else do it.”

  Gia slipped her gaze to the side, staring at Reese with a frown that made the woman feel wretched. “You’re paving a way. You’re breaking down doors. You better make sure that road you’re walking isn’t mucked up by shit you can’t let go of. There’s no room in this business for pettiness.”

  With a jerk of her hand and a glare at the door, Gia dismissed her players, not bothering to bid them goodbye or tell them how disappointed in them she was. They knew, and Reese followed after Ryder with her gaze on the floor, feeling stupid and childish and very afraid that she’d fucked up beyond repair. What would her father say about this? What would the others think about her going toe-to-toe on day one with Ryder?

  She was out of the office, returning the smile Cat offered, and almost to the elevator when Ryder called after her. She stopped, squaring her shoulders before she faced him, sure that he had no intention of listening to anything Gia said to him.

  “That was cool, you having my back.” He shuffled his feet, looking up to Gia’s office door as he spoke, like the words came out with biting, searing pain.

  “We’re teammates,” she supplied, figuring that was explanation enough. She wouldn’t say what she thought. She couldn’t and still keep her composure.

  “This thing with us…” he started, hands in his pockets, attention on the empty hallway around them, anywhere but at Reese. “We’ve got to squash this…for the time being.”

  “Squash it?” she asked, grunting when he nodded but wouldn’t look at her. “Ryder.” The name came out soft enough that the quarterback finally turned, moving his gaze to her mouth, then right at her eyes. He moved his eyebrows up as though he’d hadn’t expected her to ever speak his name that calmly again. His frown eased, and a confused, worried expression shifted over the smooth contours of his face.

  “You want to pretend like we’re just teammates.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t anything more than Reese expressing her astonishment that he could forget the past so easily. They did have a job to do, but the past wasn’t exactly something that could be glossed over. They’d been through a battle of their own making. They’d both inflicted wounds that would likely never heal. “You’re telling me there’s nothing but the game between us now? After…everything?”

  For a long time Ryder only watched her. His blue eyes were clear, but there was a puffiness around them that made Reese wonder if Ryder had made up for the bourbon he refused on his own. He still had an expressive face, eyes that were gentle; he’d always been the kind of man that looked right at you when he spoke, like you were the only person he had any interest in seeing at that moment. There was a cleft on his chin, and his jaw was square, the edges as sharp as a blade. He was handsome. He was talented, and once, Ryder Glenn had belonged completely to Reese.

  But that was a long time ago. He no longer held her gaze and kept it. He seemed to no longer want it at all.

  “Everything?” he asked, voice clipped. “There is no everything anymore.”

  Reese couldn’t speak, but managed a nod. She wasn’t sure she trusted herself not to yell or cry or say what edged close to the tip of her tongue when he watched her. The fire and anger had slipped back into his eyes, and now he looked at Reese like he either wanted to throttle her or kiss her stupid.

  “Fine,” she said, turning to hit the elevator button, feeling his stare and the low, warm breath that hit her back while she watched the numbers grow higher and higher overhead.

  “You’re too far up on the ball when you kick,” Ryder said, sounding hesitant. There was no attitude in his tone, no insult intended. This was him trying to lead. Reese looked over her shoulder, surprised to find him standing so close to her. He looked over her face, gaze on her mouth before he settled his attention back to her eyes. “You were nervous with that first kick yesterday. It was obvious. You kept rubbing your fingers on your shorts.”

  “It was hot. I was sweaty.”

  He nodded, but otherwise ignored her explanation. “The second kick was still high. We can’t have that. You kick too high, and it makes the ball…”

  “Easy to block,” she said, repeating the advice her father had always given her. Ryder hadn’t moved, kept looking over her as though he was just seeing her for the first time. She turned, watching the numbers again, too uncomfortable with his scrutiny.

  The elevator bell chimed, and Reese waited as two middle-aged men came out through the doors, nodding to her and shaking Ryder’s hand. She reached for the first-floor button the second she stepped inside the elevator, not bothering to hold it for Ryder as he said goodbye to the men that greeted him.

  Just as she hit the button and the doors started to close, a large hand slipped against the open space between them, and Ryder pressed the doors open again, watching Reese’s wide eyes and dropped mouth.

  He paused for half a second, like there was something he wanted to say and was pissed that it had almost left his mouth.

  “Get this straight,” he warned, keeping the doors open with his wide shoulder against one side. “On the field, around our team, I’m that guy, the one you knew. The guy with…”

  “Honor?” she asked, shutting up when he nodded once.

  “Whatever you wanna call it.” Ryder straightened, ignoring the alarm that sounded at the doors being forced open too long. “Off the field, away from the game and the fans and the kids at the camp, when we aren’t in each other’s spaces, I don’t exist to you. There is no everything between us anymore.”

  Ryder didn’t give Reese a chance to respond. Instead he stepped out of the elevator, walking down the hall before the doors had closed, and Reese wondered if she’d ever felt so cold or miserable in her life.

  5

  Ryder

  She still moved with grace. Funny thing to think about a football player, but Ryder couldn’t deny it. Reese Noble on the field, guiding the ball through the uprights, was like a dancer gliding across the stage.

  Shit.

  He knew looking at her wasn’t something he was supposed to do. He hated her. He hated Reese for knowing him deeper than anyone ever would. He hated her for her lies, for the things she withheld and the damage it caused. But, hell, he wasn’t blind.

  “She always been this good?” Wilson asked, joining Ryder in the bleachers, five rows above the field. The stadium was quiet except for the field staff cleaning away the bottles and towels from the team’s practice, and Wilkens and Reese out there as Ricks worked them hard, Mills watching from the sidelines. The special-teams coach didn’t look happy, and Ryder guessed Ricks had made good on his promise to teach the man a lesson: you don’t take out your
bullshit issues on Ricks’ players. Mills had a problem with women doing shit he thought was just for men. Ricks had a problem with Mills jeopardizing his season.

  Ryder leaned forward, tugging his black and gold Steamers jersey from his neck as he watched Wilkens struggle to keep up with the drills Reese managed with little effort.

  She was younger. She had more to prove than Wilkens, and it showed. Her legs were strong, wide, quads like a lineman, but still somehow feminine. Ass like she moved in perpetual squats, stomach so flat Ryder bet if he got a close enough look, he could make out the lines on the muscle over that smooth expanse of skin.

  But he’d never get that close again.

  “No,” he finally answered Wilson, keeping his attention on the field and Reese, who stepped back to the row of balls on tees. Ryder squinted when she approached the first ball, watching where her foot hit, surprised she’d corrected from his critique from three days before. “No,” he said again. “She’s better now.” He looked at Wilson, shrugging. “Stronger.”

  Wilson grinned, a look that reminded Ryder that the man was all about the game. But there was something else in his expression. Something that made the quarterback’s stomach twist with worry.

  “You fuck her?” Wilson asked, gaze on the field as he plucked an empty cup from the step at his right.

  “What?” Ryder hoped he put enough offense in his tone. No one needed to know about them. It would fuck up what the entire team hoped would be their best season in five years.

  “Women are on you all the time. Not just the blonde you keep around for some stupid reason. Bet that’s not something new. Noble, she doesn’t strike me as the ugly duckling sort. She’s hot. Hot people go at each other like magnets. You both from Duke, you around her and her daddy all the time…” Wilson pulled out a bag of sunflower seeds, dropping a few into his mouth as Ryder watched him. “There was something behind the bullshit arguing you were doing with her. That was deeper than any college rivalry.”

  “There’s nothing there,” Ryder said, wishing he could take back telling Wilson anything that had gone down in that meeting with Gia. Especially filling him on why he’d fought with Reese.

  “You’re full of shit,” the running back said, shrugging when Ryder turned down his offer for seeds. Then he laughed outright at the glare his quarterback shot his way. “I got eyes.” He moved against the seat, feet on the railing, crossed at the ankle, and scrubbed his head. He wore his hair in a low fade with sharp lines on the sides and short afro curls at the top, neat and tight. Ryder had never known another man that took as much time with his fucking hair and trimmed beard as Wilson. “I also got four older sisters. Every last one of them had exes they could never be cool with once it was all over. Might only be one of them, but those were the assholes they hated most. Hated them most because they loved them most. Anytime they caught up with those fellas on the street—hell, even at church—it went bad. Yelling and cursing and flying insults.”

  Wilson spit the shells out into the empty cup and kept watching the field, ignoring the attention Ryder gave him. “I learned early on, a woman screams at a man the way Noble screamed at you, the way you screamed back…shit, there’s hate there that wasn’t always hate.” He turned, glancing at Ryder with a look the quarterback couldn’t read. “What you do, who you do it with, that ain’t my business, but don’t lie to me, man. Don’t tell me there won’t be shit starting in our house,” he waved his hand, motioning around the stadium, “when you know there will be.”

  Wilson stared at Ryder a few seconds, waiting for an agreement that didn’t come. Below them, on the sidelines, Pérez greeted Kai Pukui, their best defensive lineman, who’d just landed from a long visit with his daughter in Hawaii. Wilson spotted the man and jetted away from Ryder, forgetting their conversation and the question he didn’t get answered.

  But the quarterback didn’t follow. He sat still, quiet, as Ricks set Reese and Wilkens on one-legged squats. He could see Reese’s quads shaking from his seat on the bleachers and leaned further in his seat, elbows on his knees as she moved.

  He hadn’t lied to Wilson. She was stronger now than when he’d first met her. Back then, at Duke, Reese had been in the background, the shadow always lingering around Coach Noble. Then, as her first semester lingered, she became his little sister’s shadow. Actually, they shadowed each other.

  A whip of memory shot to the front of Ryder’s head, and he closed his eyes, trying hard to rub away the flash of his sister’s face and the sound of her and Reese’s laughter that first summer, at his folks’ place back in Raleigh, splashing in their pool.

  Reese had been a fixture around the stadium and on the field. She worked out and drilled like she was prepping for a game. The more time she spent, the more their own kickers and punters relied on her to offer suggestions. She’d been trained since high school. She’d helped Lancaster High to three consecutive state championships. She was a Noble and that meant she knew the game.

  But Ryder thought of her as background noise. Reese was part of the landscape. The coach’s awkward kid. His little sister’s annoying best friend. Wilson had been wrong. Reese wasn’t always beautiful, and there had definitely been an ugly duckling phase she went through, but that shit ended her junior year, just as she started officially playing for Duke.

  Ryder was almost done. The NFL loomed. He had plans. He had intentions and already had an idea where he’d land in the draft. He was going to walk away from Duke and never look back.

  Then, that damn party happened, just months before graduation. Ryder had promised Coach he’d look after Reese that night. He just hadn’t realized what a hard job that would be.

  It was the first promise he’d broken to his coach.

  “Watch your eyes, knucklehead.” It took Coach Noble a long time to get over walking in on Ryder and Reese naked in her room. But that day on the field at Duke, as Ryder watched her practicing, working, thrashing her energy on the field, Coach seemed to understand why Ryder couldn’t keep from watching her.

  “You love her.” It wasn’t a question and Ryder didn’t bother trying to convince Coach that wasn’t the truth. He never could lie to the old man.

  “I do.”

  Coach stood next to Ryder, so close that his shoulder brushed against the quarterback’s arm, irritating the bare skin there, but he didn’t move. Reese running, doing sprints, took too much of his attention.

  “Alright then,” Coach said, curling his long fingers to the back of Ryder’s neck. He expected pressure there. He expected a threat, but the man didn’t give either. “You take care of my girl, Glenn. Can I trust you to do that?”

  “Course, Coach.”

  Coach’s trust had been misplaced because Ryder didn’t do what he asked.

  How could he?

  Ryder scrubbed his palm against his eyes, pushing back that day on the field, focusing on

  the field, where Wilson and Pérez met Miles Baker as he came to their group, talking to Pukui and waving Reese over when Ricks dismissed the practice. Ryder watched Reese as she talked with their teammates, laughing at something Pérez said, something that had her pushing back her hair behind her ear, a nervous, flirty move that Ryder had seen Greer do a thousand times, especially when they first started hanging out. It was woman-code for “I’m flattered by your attention.” Or so Greer explained.

  Whatever that gesture meant, Ryder didn’t like it. From the way Wilson jabbed Pérez in the ribs when Reese turned to speak to Pukui and Baker, the quarterback guessed he didn’t like it either.

  Professionalism. That’s what the team needed. They had a job to do, and Ryder worried that Reese’s presence would prevent that. That notion got confirmed when Pukui nodded at Reese, offering her a smile that only died when Gia hit the sideline and grabbed Reese’s attention. She waved to their teammates and followed the manager, who had to know her players watched both her and Reese as they left the field. Wilson pulled out his phone, shooting a text that landed on Ryder’s pho
ne as Pérez and Pukui watched the women leave.

  Let’s go eat. Puk’s craving Huck Finn’s.

  He didn’t want company tonight. Especially not when he knew the conversation would likely steer to Reese. Pukui had only just met her. He’d have questions. Pérez was interested, too, and Ryder could think of a million other things he’d rather do than listen to those two assholes fight over her.

  Nah, man. I’m good, Ryder replied, waving off Wilson when the man stared up at him.

  His attention got split when another text sounded, this one from Greer and Ryder opened it, rolling his eyes of her naked image on the screen. It was nothing new. It was nothing original. Greer liked to think that sending Ryder pictures of herself naked across a bed or covered in bubbles from a bath would keep him interested.

  He was. Somewhat.

  But things had been strained for a while and Ryder was tired of the games their… whatever they were had become.

  You miss me? she texted and Ryder deleted the message, stuffing his phone into his pocket.

  Wilson, Baker, and Pukui had left the stadium and Ryder followed after them, taking his time, walking through the concrete hallway, past the murals of his teammates and coaches staring down at him as he went. There was a private garage for the players, and Ryder took the elevator up, trying to keep memories from surfacing again as the bell chimed on each floor it passed. He let his attention go fuzzy. He let his mind drift, something he’d forced himself to avoid for years. He’d never wanted to relive those memories. Now, though, with Reese everywhere he didn’t want her to be, it was harder to fight the recall.

  Reese had been beautiful that night at that party. Ryder had seen the dress on his sister a thousand times, mainly when her and that asshole Luke Ford started dating. But Rhiannon hadn’t filled out the top the way Reese had, and Rhiannon’s hips hadn’t been wide enough for the fabric to curve around her the way it had on her best friend.