Shut Out

by Liz Crowe

  She sighed, noted the time, and stood. “I’ll think about it.” But she was already accepting it in her head. “Let’s get ready for Brody, shall we?”

  Jack stayed very still. “You should tell him about Sam.”

  She froze. Susan had recommended it to her once, over a bottle of wine, but never brought the subject up again after Sophie said she didn’t wish to discuss it. Other than that, no one had brought it up to her since she’d laid down the law all those years ago, fresh from her silly attempt to seduce the poor man, to force him to remember her that ended in a quick, dirty, and wholly amazing fuck right here in this very room.

  “No, I shouldn’t. Now go get us some coffee, make yourself useful.”

  “I have uses, trust me.” Jack wagged his eyebrows at her.

  She scoffed as he sauntered out. Then spent a few minutes taking deep breaths, contemplating how she’d dreaded this day, only to have it take a drastic, life-changing new twist. One that did not entirely displease her, thanks to Jack and his unexpected announcement and offer. Maybe Brody’s exit from her life would be a good thing after all. A chill gripped her spine.

  She might justify it that way for the rest of her conscious life, but she would never, ever believe it. The time they had spent together, learning each other’s weaknesses and strengths and using them in ways that satisfied them both, would never be fully gone from her memory. She would love him until the day she died.

  Jack dropped her fresh coffee off and said he’d be back for the meeting. The next time she emerged from the pile of work, finalizing the trades they had planned for the year, nearly another hour had passed. There were a total of five transfers, including Brody’s. She still believed Brody was making a huge mistake going to a second tier team in the bigger league, and not just for her own selfish reasons.

  They had managed to fend off offers for Parker, Nicco, Kago, and several others and were welcoming a new cast of hopefully calmer characters. Including a Scottish kid named Declan at forward. And some blueblood, former male model—stripper if the rumors were to be believed—named Jace, on defense. Good thing, since their defensive line had gotten a little porous and with the new goalkeeper…She stopped, smiling at her own thoughts. Hard to believe not six years ago she’d known as much about soccer as she had about…well, being a single parent.

  But she held a full measure of fear over Amber’s determination. All of this had been her doing, getting him the hell away from Sophie and their son. At that realization, her head snapped up. She grabbed her phone as she walked to the window, noting that the field was now empty. Where the hell had Sam gotten to? At times like these, she truly doubted her sanity, thinking she should mother anything, anyone, especially a boy with his amount of raw energy.

  “Shit,” she muttered, getting to her feet, still fuzzy and half-distracted by all the information she’d been processing. “Sam?” she called out to the outer ring of cubicles.

  He sometimes hung out there, watching the many televisions tuned to some soccer game or another. She glanced at her phone, saw a text from Metin saying they’d gone out to the grass field adjacent to the stadium and gotten thoroughly filthy kicking the ball around, but he should be on his way up in the elevator now with some of the girls from the marketing department. Making a mental note to remind her Turkish coach not to call the women, girls, lest he risk a lawsuit, although many of them were exactly that—girls angling for WAG status, she started down the hall.

  The marketing suite of offices, with its mini soccer field, boxes of swag, and constant air of playroom, always proved tempting. She wandered down there, pondering how the head of that department would take to having her as his boss. Not well, likely. She’d probably end up replacing him within months. He was dead weight.

  Distracted, she came around the corner and saw them, hand-in-hand—her son and his father, so breathtakingly perfect she gasped and stumbled back out of their line of sight. She closed her eyes, willing it gone, willing him gone and out of her heart forever. But she had to face this. He’d come up there to sign his release contract. He wanted to move on. She had to let him.

  Squaring her shoulders, she called Sam’s name and came back around the corner as if she had not already seen them. Her knees shook as she yanked Sam away from Brody. The boy’s face dissolved into imminent tantrum. Jack put a hand on her shoulder, and they all stood there, frozen in a bizarre tableau of lies.

  Brody’s touch on her arm shocked her, literally sending a jolt up her spine. His lips on her fingers had the opposite effect, as if he had poured warm water across her nerves. She wanted to melt into him, like she used to. Soothe and be soothed in the way they had discovered by accident when they tried to play or mess around with bonds and floggers.

  Her child’s voice jolted her back to reality. “Mommy?” he asked, his face dark and unhappy at the vision of his mother so obviously distraught, and of this man, a stranger, kissing her hand.

  She pulled away, not angry, just resigned. “Come on.” She turned away from him, once and for all, Sam’s hand grasped in hers. “Let’s get this shit done.”

  Chapter Ten

  The contract signed, the deed accomplished, Brody took a long, deep breath. He would no longer be a Black Jack, a BJ, one of The Gentlemen, as their marketing department tried to spin them. He glanced down at the fists he had clenched in his lap. Then he caught Sam’s stare over his coloring book. Something here seemed strange, wrong, off-center.

  His head pounded with the sort of pain he had never experienced. Like someone or something had his temples in a metal vise and someone else took to pounding the back of his head with a sledgehammer. He leaned over his knees, his breathing ragged. A weird sort of panic had him in its clutches.

  “You okay?” A small hand landed on his. He jerked his head up to meet Sam’s eyes. “Mister? Do you need some medicine?”

  “No,” he whispered, reaching out to touch the boy’s cheek. Sam let him do it before jumping away at the sharp intake of breath from behind Sophie’s desk. “I’m fine, Sam. Thank you. I should…go.” He stood.

  Everything in him screamed stay, but he had obligations. A fiancée, a new job in Boston, back-up goalie for more money than here, less chance of getting injured. And not a whole hell of a lot of promises about playing time. He’d told Amber that would not fly. She’d given him one of her patented leave it to me and shut up looks, then ignored him until he had to give some sort of approval for yet another aspect of the god-awful wedding.

  “Wait, don’t…I mean…” Sam glanced wildly at his mother, who seemed, frozen in her seat. To his amazement, the boy wrapped himself around Brody’s lower legs. Heart in his throat, face burning with knowledge and fury, Brody glared at Sophie over the desk, wanting to ask, but terrified of the answer.

  Setting her lips in a thin line, she gave an almost imperceptible nod. A tear slid down her face. Brody gripped Sam’s arms and peeled him off. The room narrowed again, to him and the boy, who merely stared back at him, his face a scary mirror into a past Brody wanted but could not remember. He tried to speak, but his throat closed up. Letting the kid go, he stumbled out of the office, his skin ice cold and his face burning hot, the image of Sam’s deep gaze and familiar features branded into his psyche.

  ****

  He faced the following set of twenty-four-hour periods in a daze. The movers came the day before the wedding and had him packed up in no time. He wandered through his condo, touching all the huge cardboard boxes, sipping a single malt scotch his teammates had given him during an impromptu bachelor party the night before. There had been strippers, a live band, booze, food, the works. He’d sat apart from it all, demurring when offered lap dances, no longer caring about anything, much less interested in celebrating.

  His mind spun, and his head hurt daily. He slept maybe three hours a night, turning him into a zombie by day. All he could picture when he closed his eyes was Sophie—her face, her body, her voice. He somehow tasted her, heard her, sensed her skin
nearly twenty-four-seven. When not day or night dreaming about making love to her, about fucking around with her…then visions of Sam invaded his brain.

  He leaned against a box, gripping the glass. Tugging his phone from his pocket, he thumbed through contacts he found her. Legal Lady. He’d programmed it in after that one hot hook-up. He stared at the set of numbers, wondering what he might say that would make sense.

  “Hey, um, this is Brody. Did we have a kid together and you never told me? Oh, and by the way, when did that happen because the last memories I have are from about the time you invited me in to your office and let me fuck you, you know, on your desk? Did I knock you up then, or what?”

  Good god, Vaughn, get real. That is not your kid. You barely know the woman other than that once and only in her role as head of the team’s legal department.

  And of course, as if summoned, she appeared, naked, smiling, sashaying over to him. Her lips moved and formed words he couldn’t hear or process. He only saw, sweeping his gaze up her lush body. His dick hardened, pissing him off. When his phone buzzed with an actual call, he dropped it, startled out of his near-wet daydream.

  The screen indicated that it was, of all people on the planet, Nicolas Garza, the Spaniard who anchored the team and had been so very concerned with Brody’s well-being for the last few years. If he didn’t know the guy already had a steady boyfriend, he’d guess Nicco had the hots for him. He and Parker, their teammate and Nicco’s lover, had spearheaded the bachelor party, and both would be standing with him as groomsmen at the wedding.

  “Yeah?” he grunted into the phone.

  “Hey, uh, you around?”

  “I’m around my condo, if that’s what you mean.” He tried to stretch out his shoulder, which had started aching more and more lately for no obvious reason.

  “That’s what I meant. I’m downstairs. You got a minute?”

  He pushed back from the cardboard stack, surprised. “Sure. I’ll buzz you up.”

  He let his teammate in. “Pull up a box,” he said, pointing at his distinct lack of furniture. Nicco just stood, glancing around, his dark-skinned face full of anxiety. “Well, what is it? I have to meet Amber in an hour, rehearsal or something. I don’t know anymore.” He propped himself against the wall, his head setting up that odd cacophony of pain, echoes of memory, and a sort of dizzy, off-kilter sensation he’d been experiencing a lot lately.

  “Listen, Vaughn, I think you need to know something.” Nicco glanced down at the floor. Brody waited. “You had a concussion. A bad one, and it was my fault. You sort of went downhill from there. You didn’t play, then Nate got hurt at that nightclub…so you did—play that is, before you should have.”

  Brody’s vision did a strange blur-out thing then, as he processed his teammate’s words. “I don’t…r-r-emember,” he stuttered.

  Nicco held up a hand. “Just wait, listen to me a minute. I know they told us not to do this to you, that you had to move on, that you probably wouldn’t ever fully recall your life before…the surgery.”

  Brody started pacing, dragging fingers through his hair, running them over the quarter-sized scar near the crown of his head, the one he never asked about, somehow believing it contained a key to a box he should keep firmly locked. “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “You have to,” Nicco said, his voice low and firm. “You…and Sophie were together. You were, I mean, we all sort of figured that…shit.”

  Brody pulled away. “You are crazy. Bat shit, fucking nuts,” he croaked out.

  Nicco pulled something from his inside jacket pocket, looked at it a minute, then handed it over. Brody stared at Nicco’s phone screen a full thirty seconds before his brain registered what he saw. His gut roiled with nausea at the scary déjà vu of seeing at a photo of himself—or some kind of younger, fresher version of the man he met in the mirror every morning. He wore a tuxedo, and had his arm around…. He dropped the phone on top of a moving box. “What happened to me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

  “Concussion, traumatic brain injury, again, partly my fault. You ended up in some kind of scary surgery. The docs opened up your skull, and in the process of saving your life, gave your memories a solid scramble. They can’t explain it really. Which is why I’m here now. Because you have to know this before you just bolt, marry that…marry Amber, and leave the team, leave your home.”

  Brody gulped. Sophie—so beautiful in her deep blue dress, smiling for cameras, tucked into his side exactly as he had dreamed. “I’m gonna puke.”

  He raced for the bathroom, but his body would not cooperate. His eyes watered, and his chest heaved. He remembered her, heard her words, and saw her mouth move as she spoke them: Your call, stud, but something tells me the closer the better. As if she were there, right then, talking to him. He saw her, tasted her, sensed her body enveloping him.

  More words he now remembered: I have something to tell you, flashed in front of his mind. Then, nothing, blackness, a hole he didn’t even try to dig out of, so focused he’d been on playing, working out, and fucking…and then…Amber.

  “Hey, Brody, listen.” Nicco lingered in the bathroom doorway. Their voices echoed in the empty rooms, bounced around his newly aching head. He wanted to scream or to climb up on the balcony and make that final swan dive to drive it all out of his head. Violent tremors gripped his body. His face was hot and wet with tears. Why was this happening? Who was he? Why wouldn’t he remember?

  “That boy, Sam…Sophie’s…son,” he whispered.

  “Yours. And so help me, if you tell her I told you I will slice off that giant piece of meat between your legs and serve it to you with fava beans and a nice Chianti,” Nicco said, his face split in a grin that seemed so strange and out of place at that moment, Brody laughed. It hurt his chest, but he couldn’t stop.

  “What you do with this information is up to you.” Nicco helped him to his feet. “I’m not here to talk you out of marriage or leaving or anything. But I owe this to you. I swear, I’m so goddamned sorry. Because I consider you more than a teammate, you know?” He stuck out a hand. Brody shook it. “You’re a good friend. And you truly got the shit end of this deal.”

  Brody blinked rapidly, unable to process. He remained still, staring out the window for a long time after Nicco left, without seeing anything, over the suburban landscape view from his condo.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sophie observed the man across from her, listened to him make small talk, and acknowledged she really should be more polite. She should act like she wanted to be on this date. Smiling weakly, she sipped her wine and attempted to recall what he’d said, if he’d asked her a question or something to prompt the expectant expression on his face. Susan had fixed her up with him, an emergency room doctor, or something similarly exciting. Handsome, charming, all the things she should want, the guy bored her to tears. Her brain spun and would not let her rest. Coming into her life on the heels of the Brody separation, the poor guy at the table really didn’t have a chance.

  “Um, sorry,” she said, reaching for her buzzing phone, figuring Sam had some kind of question for her, trying to distract her in his little boy way from the fact that she wasn’t at home, with him on a Friday night.

  A strange number, without a contact attached, lit the screen. She shoved it back in her purse, letting it go to voicemail. The man continued talking, she continued sipping, picking at her salad and ignoring the fact that not only did her son turn four the next day, Brody would be getting married. She tried not to glance at her phone and wished she were home with Sam, eating popcorn and watching a movie. She had no energy for this dating thing anymore.

  The man dropped her at home, walked her to her door. “Hey,” he tilted her chin up, surprising her, “thanks. I know this was a blind date set up. So…” He raised an eyebrow as if questioning her.

  She thought for a half second that a nice hard fuck was exactly what she needed right then. But it seemed too much trouble to engineer, even with a guy as handsome
and fabulous as the one pressing a soft good-night kiss to her cheek.

  Ducking inside, she shut the door and put her forehead on its cool surface. The quiet house calmed her. Sam’s cat wound around her ankles. The fridge buzzed, the dryer dinged. All the normal sounds, she thought. No big deal. Calm down

  She poured a glass of water looking out over her dark front lawn as she drank it. She’d alerted Lance to her new reality. He’d been understanding, and they were drawing up contracts to alter their ownership arrangement. Part of her really did not want to let it go. She was Katrina, and that persona had provided her with the impetus to recover not only emotionally but financially from the ruin Frank had left with her.

  Her phone buzzed again. She pulled it out of her bag, noting the same mystery number. Figuring it might be some random disaster heralded by a media call, she answered. “Harrison,” she snapped, yawning and leaning in the kitchen doorway.

  “Hey, um, it’s Brody.” His warm, honeyed accent coiled in her consciousness, circled around and settled in a familiar, warm crevice.

  “What can I do for you?” She tried to keep it businesslike.

  “You in there? I mean, is that you at the kitchen window?” he asked. She turned and peered out, not seeing anything, until his motorcycle headlights flashed.

  “Yeah. What do you want?” She walked to the door and stepped onto the porch, shutting the door behind her. She would not let him in her house. No way.

  He wandered up, dressed in suit pants and a dress shirt unbuttoned at the neck. He stayed back from her, loose-limbed, hands in his pockets, a small smile playing over his lips. She frowned at him as she dropped into a chair, gesturing for him to join her.

  “I just wanted to say thanks,” he said as he perched on the edge of a chair like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. As if he might bolt off the porch and down the sidewalk in a heartbeat.