Secret Tutor: A Football Romance Story

by Amber Heart

Eli leaned against the bay door on Monday night and eyed Shane. Shane was eyeing the Superbird. Eli had stopped on his way to clock out because he thought that his friend was finally making plans for what needed to be done. The longer he watched though, the more sure he was that Shane didn’t even see the car that was right in front of him.

  “Everything all right?” Eli finally asked.

  Shane spun around. “What? Yeah, of course.”

  Eli raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look like it. And staring at the car isn’t gonna fix it. I think you might actually have to put your hands on it.”

  Shane shrugged negligently. “He said I could take my time.”

  “Well sure, but I think he probably expected to hear something by now. At least a diagnostic. It’s been two weeks, man.”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not your name on the door,” Shane snapped. “I don’t need you to tell me how to run my business.”

  Eli held back the retort that came to mind and took a breath. He hadn’t been to a meeting since leaving prison, but AA had ingrained some things into him successfully. He counted to ten before he said anything else.

  “Okay,” he said in a level voice as he turned to walk out. “I’m headed out for the night. Call me if you need anything.”

  “Hang on,” Shane said.

  Eli stopped and turned back. Shane combed his fingers through his hair and sighed in frustration. This was the most that they’d spoken all day, so Eli waited patiently for Shane to spit out what was bugging him.

  “It’s been a hell of a day, but I shouldn’t take it out on you. Sorry.”

  Eli shrugged and crossed his arms. “We all have ‘em. Anything I can do?”

  Shane shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not unless you want to try to convince my sister that she’s being an idiot.”

  “What’s she doing?” Eli asked, trying to sound casual and not worried. Riley had kept her word about not calling him again over the weekend. He’d spent the time trying desperately not to call her.

  “She’s moving out, for one thing,” Shane said.

  “Oh. Did she, uh, did she meet someone?” Eli put his hands into his pockets so that Shane wouldn’t see how tightly his fists were clenched. That couldn’t be it. She’d been with him two nights ago. But there had been that other guy in the bar. Now that he thought about it, he had no idea how far things had gone between the two of them. But she wouldn’t have moved in with him. Or at least, he didn’t think she would.

  Shane shook his head. “No, she’s moving to a place by herself.” He sighed heavily. “At least, I think she is.” He dropped down onto a chair and gave a bitter half laugh. “Hell, I don’t know. She probably wouldn’t tell me if she was moving in with someone. I can count the number of conversations we’ve had since she got back on one hand.”

  “Come have a beer with me,” Eli offered.

  “Not tonight, I--”

  “Come on. You said it yourself. It’s been a hell of a day. If you go home you’re either gonna fight with your sister or get ignored by her, so let’s go out and have a responsible number of drinks.”

  Shane smiled slightly. “A responsible number of drinks does sound pretty good right about now.”

  ****

  In the bar, once they’d ordered and had beers set down in front of them by a waitress who couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off of Shane, Eli said, “All right, Harris. Spill it.”

  “I already did,” Shane said in confusion as he took a long drink of his beer.

  “No, you didn’t. Come on. Tell me all your problems.” When his friend didn’t look inclined to do so, Eli said, “I don’t play counselor much. You should take advantage of it. Offer expires in three...two...one and a half...”

  Shane frowned slightly and took a longer drink of his beer. “All right, fine. The thing is, Riley was always such a good kid.”

  Of all the ways that Eli would have described her: headstrong, impulsive, temperamental...he hadn’t really expected to hear that. He tried hard not to look surprised.

  “She got straight A’s from kindergarten all the way through college,” Shane went on. “And I thought that she was happy with the job she found after college too, but she didn’t even give them notice when she left, apparently.”

  “What did she do?” Eli remembered that she’d said something about computers, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He’d been distracted by other things that day. Things like her body and the fact that she was his best friend’s sister.

  “Hell, I barely understood it,” Shane admitted with a shrug. “Some kind of computer software thing. She was always talking about it when she called, but it was completely over my head.”

  “Shane, word documents are over your head.”

  “Fuck off. Anyway, about a year ago, she stopped calling as much, but I kind of figured that maybe she was busy. She said she was taking on a lot of extra hours at work and I thought that she and Mark were maybe planning a wedding. I don’t know. I mean, I know most sisters don’t call their brothers on a weekly basis, so I tried not to bug her about it. Now I wish I had. Maybe then she’d still be talking to me.” Shane leaned back and sighed.

  “Sounds like the two of you were really close.” That made Eli feel even worse.

  “Yeah. I mean, it was just the two of us after we lost mom and dad. She was only fourteen when they died, so I basically raised her.”

  Oh God. “I’m gonna get another,” Eli said. “Want one?”

  Shane nodded abstractedly and Eli headed for the bar. There was no way around it. He had to tell Shane what was going on. Or rather, what had been going on. Maybe after the second beer. That made sense. The second beer was going to be the best possible time.

  As he was waiting for their drinks, his phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. Apparently he’d gotten several texts and hadn’t heard the ringer. All of them were from Riley. He opened the message and read over it quickly.

  “Hey there. Miss me?”

  “Eli, are you ignoring me?”

  “I kind of need you to come get me. I’m not feeling so great.”

  “Fine. I found a ride with somebody else. Don’t bother to answer this message.”

  There were enough spelling and punctuation errors to convince him that she’d been pretty drunk when she was typing. He was just about to call her in spite of the last message when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Shane was standing there, his face completely white.

  “What’s wrong?” Eli asked.

  “I just got a call that my sister’s in the hospital,” Shane said, his voice tight. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Eli said without thinking. “Whoever she got a ride with must’ve been drunk too.”

  “What? How do you...” Shane trailed off when he glanced down and saw the messages on Eli’s screen. “Are those from...you’ve been seeing Riley?”

  “Not...I mean, sort of...but...”

  Shane cut him off. “I don’t have time for this right now,” he said. “Let’s just get to the hospital.”

  Chapter 7

  “I’m Shane Harris,” Shane said when they got to the reception desk of the emergency room. “My sister was admitted here after a traffic accident.”

  “The doctor is seeing her now,” the busy receptionist said with a quick glance up at Shane. “Have a seat, we’ll call you back when they’re done.”

  “Can you at least tell us how she is?” Eli asked.

  The woman looked up, and up, into his face. Then she nodded. “I’ll find out.”

  Sometimes looking like a big bad biker paid off. Eli nodded and they waited for her to return. Shane was so tense that Eli could practically feel it radiating off of him.

  “She’s a little banged up,” the woman said. “And her blood alcohol is through the roof. They’re going to keep her overnight to be sure that there aren’t any issues, but they think she’ll check out fine. You’ll be able to see her once she’s been tran
sferred to a regular room.”

  “So she was drunk?” Shane asked in disbelief.

  “Sir, there’s really nothing more I can tell you.”

  Eli followed Shane to a secluded corner of the waiting room. He dropped into a chair to wait it out. Shane sat down as well but stood back up within seconds and began to pace. Eli leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and thought about the texts she’s sent. If he’d heard them, this never would have happened.

  But God, what had she been thinking? Especially given what he now knew about her. She wasn’t normally reckless, so why start now? Anger joined the worry and he vowed to give her hell when she woke up.

  “Riley’s never had a drinking problem,” Shane said finally, turning to look at Eli. “Do you know anything about this?”

  Eli shook his head. “No. I mean...I met her in a bar. And then I picked her up from a bar last Friday night, but I--.”

  “And you didn’t think that might be a problem?” Shane demanded. “Why the fuck didn’t you say something?”

  Eli winced. “I...I didn’t know who she was the first night,” he said. He knew that even the beer they’d had wouldn’t blunt the news if it was delivered this way, but he’d waited too long and missed his chance to do this right.

  “When?” Shane asked suddenly. “What first night?”

  “The first night she came back.”

  His friend’s eyes widened in sudden comprehension. “So when she didn’t come back that night, when I was worried sick about her, she was with you?”

  Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah.”

  “Jesus.”

  “But I didn’t know who she was,” Eli repeated, wanting to make sure that was clear. “I swear, Shane, I never would have...not if I’d known that she was your--”

  “When did you find out?” Shane cut in.

  Eli cleared his throat. “The, uh, the next morning.”

  Shane scoffed and turned away. Then he turned back. “So when I was telling you that my sister hadn’t showed up, you knew damn good and well where she was?”

  Eli looked down at his boots. “Well...yeah.”

  “Jesus,” Shane repeated. “And then what? You just walked out on her?”

  “No!” Eli said firmly. “She pretty much called me a one night stand and then I didn’t hear from her again till Friday night when she called me and asked me to come pick her up from Lion’s Den.”

  “Lion’s Den?” Shane shouted.

  A nurse, passing through the waiting room on her way to speak to someone else, stopped and looked at Shane with a severe frown.

  “I’m going to have to ask you to keep your voice down,” she said sternly.

  Shane muttered an apology and she walked away. He dropped down into a chair across from Eli and looked at him.

  “You knew how worried about her I was,” he said. “And you didn’t tell me any of this.”

  “There’s not much to it,” Eli said. “It was just--”

  “If there’s not much to it, then why is she sitting in a hospital room right now?”

  “Shane, I don’t know. I wasn’t with her.”

  “Yeah, and maybe if you’d told me what was going on, I could have been.”

  Guilt ate away at Eli. “I didn’t think that she had a problem, okay?”

  Shane made that scoffing noise again.

  “Look, I’ll go if that’s what you want,” Eli began, but Shane held up his hand.

  “No. I’ll go. You’re the one she texted.”

  “Yeah, but she was drunk. I’m sure she’ll want to see you when--”

  “I’ll be back later,” Shane said.

  He’d turned and walked out before Eli could speak again. Eli grabbed a magazine. It was going to be a long night and he hated hospitals. And he’d probably just lost the best friend he’d ever had and the woman that he was falling for had been going home with another man before she’d ended up here. Eli rubbed his hands over his face and went to the vending machine. Coffee wouldn’t fix everything, but it was better than nothing.

  Chapter 8

  “Eli?”

  Eli looked up from his phone. He’d been killing time on it since they’d let him into Riley’s room in the early hours of the morning. The battery was nearly dead and he didn’t have any way to charge it, so he sent Shane a text before he answered her.

  “She’s awake.”

  Then he turned the phone off, shoved the phone into his pocket and looked at her. She looked like hell and she probably felt like it too.

  “Yeah,” he said simply.

  “So I guess you got my text?” She flashed him a short smile. There was a scrape on her cheek and she put her hand to it quickly. She probably hadn’t realized it was there.

  He didn’t return the smile. “Yeah,” he said again. “Why’d you text me, Riley?”

  “Well, you did a great job of taking me home last time. I thought I’d just stick with what works.”

  “This is funny to you?” he asked.

  Eli gestured at the IV drip and the bandages on her arm. She probably had a hell of a case of road rash. She hadn’t been wearing a helmet or any protective clothing and it was only the fact that the driver had been so drunk that they’d basically been going at a snail’s pace that had saved her from much more serious injuries.

  Riley shrugged. “Not particularly, no.”

  “Who were you with?”

  She gave another shrug. “I don’t know. Just some guy.”

  “Were you going home with him?” Eli heard the edge in his voice, but it was too late to do anything about it.

  “No. We were just going to a different bar. He said the next place was more fun.”

  “And after that bar, what were you gonna do?”

  Riley smiled again. “Jealous, Eli?”

  “I might be,” he admitted, but he didn’t give her a chance to speak before he went on. “If I thought we had any chance at a future, that is. Since I know we don’t, I guess it doesn’t matter much who you go home with.”

  Her mouth dropped open and hurt flashed in her expressive eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I’ve been down the road you’re on,” Eli said simply. “I don’t plan to make a trip back.”

  Riley scoffed. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

  He leaned back in his chair and stared at her. “Almost as dramatic as riding a motorcycle drunk as shit with no helmet.”

  “I wasn’t that drunk,” she muttered, dropping her gaze to the bandage on her arm. It was a little bloody.

  “Hospital records say different.” Eli contradicted.

  “Okay, fine. So I drank a little--”

  “You drank a lot.”

  “So I drank a lot one time--”

  “You drank a lot at least twice.”

  “You know what?” she demanded, jerking her head up and narrowing her green eyes at him. “You’re a real asshole, Eli.”

  “Yeah? I never said I wasn’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re making some fucked up choices here.”

  Riley gave a bitter laugh. “It seems like I can’t please the guy I’m sleeping with no matter what I do.”

  Eli raised an eyebrow. “How do you figure that?”

  “I didn’t do anything right for a year and a half with my ex,” she said, her cheeks flushing with angry color.

  “I guess I find that just a little hard to believe,” Eli said. “Nobody can fuck up an entire year and six months. Especially not if you’re really the perfectionist your brother says you are.”

  Riley scoffed bitterly. “Perfectionist? I guess that’s one way to put it. You want to know what Mike said right before he dumped me?” she asked, her hands clenching on the thin hospital blanket. “He said that I was too predictable. That being with me had gotten stale and boring. He wanted some adventure in his life before he hit thirty.” She practically spat out the words. “Nearly ten years! We’d been together nearly ten ye
ars, and now suddenly I’m not what he wants?”

  “So you left because he thought you were boring?”

  She laughed. “I didn’t leave him, Eli. He...he was seeing someone else. Before I even knew that he wanted out.” Her mouth twisted. “She wanted to move in, so I had to go. There wasn’t time to find another place. And if I was going, I figured I’d just go home. He probably expected that too.”