Rough Play: A Football Romance

by Kira Ward

  I disconnect the call and start to look on the internet, but another call comes in. I turn off my phone and pad out into the living room to use my laptop. I unplug the landline, too, a little shocked to find there’s already fifteen messages on the machine.

  How did they get that number? I only put that in to meet the requirements of my contract with the school district. No one but my principal ever calls that number.

  I turn on the laptop and wait impatiently as it loads the operating system. Then I go to the internet, clicking on the bookmark for TMZ that I’m ashamed to admit I have on my favorites list. It doesn’t take much to find the story the caller was talking about.

  Cricket Monahan, the woman Magnus Fuller knocked out at the season opening game back in September, is reportedly pregnant. There has been a lot of speculation over whether their relationship was real, especially after this website got ahold of pictures of Magnus enjoying a late Sunday party with another young woman. But a source close to Ms. Monahan claims that she is ten weeks along, putting the date of conception somewhere close to the New York Giants’ bi-week. This source also states that Magnus Fuller is unaware of the pregnancy due to a split in the relationship.

  I stare at the article, my heart pounding. How could they do that? How could they report this crap without so much as talking to me or Magnus? Why would they? Are they really that interested in reporting gossip? And who the hell was the source close to me?

  I think back to our lunch conversation and remember that there were several other people on the porch near us, but not really close enough to overhear us. Were they? They must have been because Amelia would never do this to me.

  And then I realize that everyone is about to find out. My mom is a kind and gentle woman, but she loves gossip. She loves to go on TMZ. If she sees this before I have a chance to explain myself…

  I rush into the bathroom and jump into the shower, washing quickly before I dress in the skirt and blouse I’d set out last night to wear to work. All my clothes seem to be getting a little tight and this skirt is no exception, but I ignore the discomfort and rush out of the house.

  My dad’s standing on the front porch with a cup of coffee in his hand when I pull up. “Hey, beautiful,” he says as I join him on the porch.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  I reach up and kiss his cheek, feeling kind of bad that I didn’t come to dinner on Sunday. I feel like I haven’t seen him in months even though we work at the same place and ate breakfast together just two days ago.

  “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you and Momma.”

  His eyebrows rise. “Your mother has her book club today, so she ran to the store to get some more brownie mix. You know how those women like their chocolate.”

  I can feel the color draining from my face. I lean against the rail, wishing none of this was happening. Why did I agree to go out with Magnus in the first place? But then I think about the way he looks at me when I walk into a room, the way he touches me when we’re alone together, and I know I can’t regret being with him. I just regret being in this situation.

  My dad leans into me, resting his head against mine for a long second.“I think I know what this is about. And I want you to know that your mother and I support you no matter what you decide to do.”

  Tears flood my eyes. I shake my head a little, reaching up to wipe the tears from my cheeks. “I’ve messed everything up, Daddy. I didn’t tell him when I should have and then I walked away when he refused to promise me any sort of commitment. I never even gave him a chance.”

  “Well, he knows now. TMZ made sure of that.” He takes my shoulders in his hands and makes me face him. “What he does now will show you what kind of man he really is. If he stands up, if he does the right thing, then that’s great. If he doesn’t…” He rubs some tears from my face. “Well, you’re a strong woman. You’ve been fiercely independent since you were a baby. You’ll be a wonderful mother to this baby.”

  The heaviness that has been sitting on my chest since I knew I was pregnant is suddenly lifted. It’s like sharing the news is sharing the burden. I move into my dad’s arms and sob against his chest.

  He holds me a long while without saying a word. “You should have told us sooner,” he eventually says. “We would have been there for you.”

  “I know. I just didn’t want to disappoint you.”

  “Oh, Cricket.” He lifts my face. “You could never disappoint us.”

  I force a smile, but the truth is, I’m a little disappointed in myself.

  He walks me to my car a few minutes later, promising to arrange a substitute for me at the school. “You need sleep,” he says, caressing the side of my face. So, instead of going to work, I take the slow, short drive back to my house.

  He’s sitting on the trunk of a rental car when I pull up, his hair an attractive mess, his eyes darkened by exhaustion.

  Magnus.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Magnus

  Cricket climbs slowly out of her old Wrangler, her eyes never leaving me. I watch her come toward me, my eyes moving over her, looking for signs of anything different. Doesn’t pregnancy change a woman’s body? She doesn’t seem different. Well, except for her breasts. They seem a little fuller, but that could just be the way her blouse fits. And her skirt seems to stretch a little more over her belly, but it’s just as flat as it ever was. She’s just as beautiful as she ever was. But maybe there’s a little more color in her cheeks.

  When she comes a little closer I can see that she’s been crying. Her eyes are red, her mascara smeared. I want to touch her, but I’m not sure my touch would be welcome.

  “Hi,” she says softly.

  I stand and tuck my hands in my pockets to keep from touching her. “How are you?”

  She shrugs. “Been better.”

  I bite my lip, all these things threatening to slip out. But I can’t keep the one question that’s been on my mind since the moment I saw the TMZ report last night.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She studies my face for a long second, then turns and surveys the neighborhood.

  “We should probably do this inside.”

  Without waiting for my comment, she brushes past me and walks up to the house, leaving the door open after she steps inside. I follow, closing the door behind me.

  The house smells like her. It’s a little two-bedroom house, brick. But it has a large living room and kitchen and the bedrooms are a good size, too. It’s not a bad place for a single woman. And the décor, the paintings she chose to hang on the walls and the furniture she chose to fill the empty spaces, say so much about her personality. The place feels like her. As I look around this place that’s not as familiar as I wish it were, and realize that it’s a home in a way that my condo back in Jersey is. A condo that has the potential of being someone’s home, but not mine.

  I stop just inside the living room and stand with my hands behind my back, a soldier at attention. She paces between the couch and the flat screen hanging on the wall. She drags her fingers through her hair, refusing to look at me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  She looks up almost as if she forgot I was there. “I tried,” she says, pulling at her hair again. “The day I found out, I called you as I was coming out of the doctor’s office, but you were at practice and you didn’t want to talk.”

  “But after that…”

  “There was Thanksgiving, but every time I started to say something…” She sighs. “It just never seemed right.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Magnus.”

  “Was it because of my reputation?”

  “No.”

  “The pictures, then.”

  She scoffs, this sound coming from between those beautiful, full lips. “I never cared about those pictures. I just hated that you didn’t tell me about them.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  She stops moving, her eyes coming up to mine for a secon
d. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me why. If I can understand why—“

  “I was afraid.”

  “Of what? My reaction?”

  “Sort of. I thought…I was afraid you would end this thing between us. That the baby would make things too real and you would stop coming around.”

  “Instead, you walked out on me.”

  “I didn’t…” she stops midsentence. “Is that what you thought I’d done?”

  “I watched you do it.”

  “You didn’t come after me.”

  “You made it clear you didn’t want me to.”

  “How?” Tears are suddenly flowing down her face. She brushes them away angrily. “I thought I was making myself pretty clear. I needed you to make a commitment to me, to us. But you were refusing to do that.”

  “Because I wasn’t sure.”

  “Why not? I thought we were in the same place, that you wanted to be with me.”

  “I did.”

  Pain flashes across her face. She turns away and I can’t stand this anymore. I can’t stay away from her and watch her struggle with this fear and hurt that’s written all over her face. I stride across the floor, grab her shoulders to make her face me.

  “I do,” I say quietly. “I want to be with you, Cricket. I just…I’ve been struggling with all this stuff. My reputation, my dad always telling me I wasn’t good enough, my coaches expecting perfection out of me. I was afraid you were too much of a distraction, but if these last few weeks have shown me anything it’s that you keep me focused.”

  “You haven’t called. You haven’t texted. I thought it was over.”

  “I thought you didn’t want me anymore. I let you down and when I let people down, they tend to disappear from my life.”

  She touches the side of my face. “I’m not your dad.”

  That cuts through a lot of bullshit that I’ve surrounded myself with. I stare at her, realizing she’s right. I’ve always judged the people around me by the standard my dad represented. I judged her by the behavior of a raging alcoholic and that was totally unfair.

  I take her face in my hands and pull her close to me, kissing her with all the emotion that’s been buried inside of me all this time. She sobs a little as she opens up to me, her arms slowly snaking around my neck. We stand there for a long time, kissing with a gentleness that belies the need that’s growing rapidly in my chest.

  But then she pulls back.

  “I want to be with you, Magnus,” she says softly. “I want the whole package. I want a commitment. I want you to be here when the baby comes. I want you to be a father to this child. And I want you to be a partner to me. If you can’t do that…”

  “I can do that.”

  “Magnus, I—“

  “I can do that.” I pull her face up to mine again and kiss her roughly. “I love you, Cricket. I want to be with you and I want to be a father to this baby.”

  She melts into me with that, touching me softly as we kiss again. I lift her up and consider carrying her to the bedroom, but the couch is so much closer. We fall onto the cushions, my hands sliding under her skirt. I slip my fingers under the edge of her panties, tugging at them until the edge rips. They pull away easily and my fingers find their way to her soft, swollen lips, pushing them open until they allow me inside. She moans, lifting her hips against me.

  “I love you,” I whisper against her lips as I slowly begin to make my way down the length of her body. She’s crying, big, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. But they’re not sad tears.

  I tug open her blouse, tearing at her buttons until some of them pop open. I kiss along the top edge of her breasts. They are definitely bigger than they were before, swollen and tender from the pregnancy. I play with her nipples as gently as I can, loving the moans slipping from between her lips. Then I move slowly down her body, kissing her ribs, nibbling at her skin. When I tug her skirt from around her waist, I’m a little surprised by the perfect little lump just below her belly button.

  “Is that…?”

  She runs her hand slowly over it. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  I touch it, too, surprised by how solid it feels. It’s just a tiny lump, no bigger than a softball, but it’s there. It’s real. I bend low and kiss it. “Hello, baby.”

  A sob slips from between Cricket’s lips.

  I stretch out beside her and pull her into my arms as she sobs against my chest. I want her—God, I want her!—but I keep my hands on her back as she curls naked against me. Her tears are rough at first, coming with lots of sobs, with lots of gulping for air, but they slow down after a while. When she’s finally still, I run my hands slowly down the small of her back to her ass. I love the feel of her firm, little ass. When my fingers brush her warm lips, I expect a quick reaction. Instead I get a little snore.

  She’s asleep.

  What can I do but laugh? I carry her into the bedroom and lay her in the middle of the bed. I undress and crawl into bed beside her.

  If you can’t beat them, then join them.

  I wake late in the afternoon, a sudden panic coming over me. I’m supposed to be on a plane back to Jersey. We have a game in three days. But then Cricket sighs, moving into my arms.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Come to Jersey with me.”

  She sits up a little so she can see my face. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Come to Jersey. We have a lot to talk about, but I still have three regular season games and the playoffs to get ready for.”

  “You do.”

  “We can talk about the future between practices.”

  “What do you think we need to talk about?”

  I touch the side of her face. “Wedding plans, to start with. And we need to decide where we’re going to live. If the Giants renew my contract, as I suspect they will, I’ll have another three or four years in Jersey. But I’ve had offers from a few other teams, too, so—“

  “Wait,” she says, pressing a finger to my lips. “Did you just ask me to marry you?”

  “I kind of thought that was a given.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “It wasn’t.”

  I pull her close to me, kissing her lightly. “Marry me, Cricket.”

  She giggles even as she kisses me back. “Yes, yes, yes!”

  I roll her over onto the mattress, sliding inside of her as I do. She moans, moving her hips to welcome me.

  “I love you. I’ve told you that, right?”

  “Yes,” she says against my lips. “I love you too.”

  I groan as I pull her hips up against mine. “I don’t want to be away from you again. I don’t think I could handle it.”

  She wraps her body around me, pulling me tight against her. We move together in a rhythm that is just ours. I watch her face as pleasure dances in her eyes, as moans slip from between her lips. She screams when she comes, her back arching up against me. And I fall over the edge, dragged down by her pleasure. And its heaven.

  I never want to miss this again. I love this, love everything about being with her. I think I knew it the moment I met her, knew that she was the one who would change everything about my life. I’m in love and, for the first time in my life, I’m almost optimistic about my future.

  This is what I fought so hard for. This is why I fought to get out of my dad’s house, why I fought to make something of myself. I fought because I knew if I did, I would eventually find a happiness that would make all the pain worthwhile.

  This was happiness.

  Chapter Thirty

  Cricket

  I fly to New Jersey Friday night after school lets out for the holidays. I have reservations about missing Christmas at my parents’ house, but I am about to have a family of my own. It’s time to start looking forward to creating some traditions of my own. Magnus is waiting for me at the airport, wearing a hat and sunglasses like some celebrity trying to keep fans from noticing him. I feel almost like Grace Kelly running off to be with my princ
e.

  He lifts me up into his arms as I come through the gates, kissing me like it’s been more than twelve hours since we last saw each other. I laugh, throwing my head back as he pulls me even closer against him. The people around us must think we’re insane.

  “Come on. Let’s go home.”

  He loads me into his car—the first time I’ve seen his actual, he went and bought it, car—a huge Dodge pickup. I laugh.

  “What?”

  I shake my head. “I knew there was something about you that I liked.”

  He lifts me up into the cab of the truck, stealing a kiss before he slams the door. I watch him walk around the truck, climbing behind the wheel with the grace of someone who’s used to doing it. We speed out of the airport, the landscape passing in hurry as he drives confidently to his place.

  “It’s not much,” he warns me as he pulls into his spot in the parking garage. “I bought it when I was drafted, but I never took much care to decorate it.”

  “It’s alright.”

  But I have to admit to a great deal of surprise when we walk through the front door. It’s a nice place, an open floor plan with the kitchen flowing into the dining room/living room combo. There’s a loft that looks down on the living room and it’s all chrome and steel, marble and tile. Very modern, very clean. But it’s also very empty. He’s got a couch and a television. And that’s about it.

  “Wow,” I say quietly.

  “I know. It’s pretty empty. But if we decide to stay here, you can have free range. You can buy anything you think we need.”

  “As long as you have a bed…”

  He takes my hands and leads the way toward the stairs. “I definitely have one of those.”

  We go upstairs and his bedroom is just an open space at the top of the stairs. It’s a long, deep room that could be quite impressive. But there’s only a very large, very impressive bed in the center and a dresser off to one side. Nothing more. But I’m so tired, the sight of that bed, even unmade, looks so inviting that I just want to fall into it.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” he says next to my ear.