by Sosie Frost
He wouldn’t have to worry about it.
I wouldn’t fuck with him anymore, the one man on the team who had yet to give up on me. I wouldn’t have a chance once the team cut me.
Regular season started in a week, and when it did?
I doubted I’d be an Ironfield Rivet.
21
Elle
I waited alone in Coach Thompson’s office.
My camera rested in my lap. Was it possible it felt heavier? A couple hundred stolen pictures might have a given it a little extra heft. Or maybe that was my conscience weighing me down.
Peter and the coach made me wait. It was probably some psychological game, but it let me pick through my fraying thoughts.
I clutched my messenger bag, but, like a kid who had to touch the stove to make sure it was hot, I poured over the contents once more.
Not that I didn’t believe it, and not that I hadn’t expected it, but the note from my father was just as cruel, cold, and calculated as ever.
His law office was in Atwood. I’d made an appointment. Wanted to see him. Thought that maybe since I had accidentally started a family, it might have been nice to visit my old one.
Wrongo.
The receptionist presented me with a manila envelope. Inside was my marriage license—a formal little thing for such a haphazard mistake. White stock paper. Scrawling calligraphy.
A post-it from my dad stuck on top.
Elle—as long as this marriage is valid, you are not welcomed in my home. Tristian Marina
He hadn’t even signed the note as Dad.
I expected nothing else, but it still hurt. And that was fine. It was the final lesson I needed.
The man who signed that note wasn’t my family, but I had a real one now. My own little world—a growing baby in my tummy and a man who would love him without any conditions.
The door opened.
Moment of truth.
Peter and Coach Thompson took their seats, staying silent as if they expected me to break. I wasn’t intimidated. I didn’t do right by myself, but I sure as hell did whatever it took to protect Lachlan.
Coach Thompson spoke first. “Do you have the pictures?”
This wasn’t some CIA operation. I tossed an SD card onto the desk.
“Excellent.” Peter nodded. “Good job, Elle. How were the shots?”
The images were clean, but I felt dirty. “I did as much as I could without drawing suspicion.”
“Did anyone see you?” Coach Thompson asked.
“No.”
He loaded the card into his laptop and opened the files. I’d snapped various images of line-ups, formations, and installations. I held my breath until he nodded.
“This will work.” Coach Thompson quickly scrolled through the rest of the files. “I can use this.”
I shouldered my bag “Can I go? I have a lot of work to do before the season starts.”
Peter spoke after a long moment, his words soft. “Go home, Elle.”
That would only make the team more suspicious of my absence. “I don’t need time off.”
“It’s not time off,” he said. “Your services are no longer necessary.”
The bag dropped. “Excuse me?”
“I’m sorry, Elle. You’re fired.”
No.
The silence sliced through me. I stared, dropping the fake confidence and attitude.
Coach Thompson reveled in my shock. “No one is sorrier than me to see you go.”
“I doubt that.” My words turned sour. “You still have my nudes.”
“No substitute for the real thing.”
This wasn’t happening. My stomach twisted, roiling with morning sickness, rage, and a quick and quiet fear. If they were firing me…what would they do to Lachlan?
“I did everything you asked,” I said. “I got the pictures. I traveled. I agreed to do this. Why the hell would you fire me?”
Coach Thompson usually spit and yelled on the field. The softness in his voice unnerved me. “The Rivets are a family, Elle. If you’re not one hundred percent committed to this team…”
“I am committed to the team. To the players. To them men out there breaking their own bodies every day to get better and work harder and earn another championship.” I quieted. “Someone has to protect them from you.”
He wasn’t threatened. “So what will you do? Release the pictures now? And what would happen to Lachlan? I have every reason to let him go, Elle. Did he tell you he got into a fight with Jack Carson? Nearly broke my hundred-million-dollar quarterback’s nose?”
I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t imagine Lachlan in a fight—especially not with Jack. Theirs was a bromance made in heaven.
Peter turned on a television in the corner. He pointed to the time and date stamp. The least the traitor could have done was look at me while he twisted the knife.
“This is a recording from our security system, showing you, at the stadium, saving Lachlan Reed from a speeding car,” he said. “You were in the facility. You had a key to my office. You stole the SD card, and we need you to admit it.”
“You’re going to accuse me of theft so you can fire me?” I asked.
Coach Thompson nodded. “We have a zero tolerance policy regarding theft of any team equipment or intellectual property. Give me your badge. Security will escort you out.”
I slammed the ID card into the desk. “I don’t need security. After four loyal years, I think I can find my own way out.”
“We can’t have you nipping off with anything else, can we, Elle?”
Peter attempted to guide me from the office. I didn’t let him touch me.
The security guards, Bryant and Roger, had no idea why they escorted me to my car, but undoubtedly Coach Thompson wanted the team to see them with me.
That humiliation stung. Worse than the blackmail, worse than the entire team catching me naked in the shower.
I never thought I’d be escorted away, tail between my legs, forced from the one place that always felt like home. Fortunately, most of the guys were on the fields.
Lachlan didn’t seem them haul me away.
And I’d be forever grateful for that.
But this wasn’t over. No way.
I couldn’t let them win now, not when Lachlan’s position was in such jeopardy.
There had to be a way for me to still protect everyone, including the man I loved.
The shame and frustration and rage twisted inside me. I made it home, but I couldn’t get any farther than the bathroom. The morning sickness purged some of the betrayal from me, but I let myself cry. Just for a few minutes. Just until the cool tile soothed my fevered skin and I could devise some sort of plan to save the Rivets from themselves.
Which was super hard to do from the bathroom floor.
By early evening, I’d managed to shuffle to the kitchen for a handful of grapes. Some stayed down, but so did I. I made a little nest in the bathroom and rested in my own self-pity.
Lachlan banged on my door. I’d expected him, but I wasn’t risking the few grapes I’d managed to eat. I texted him to come inside.
It looked worse than it was. I curled up on the fuzzy bath mat, cradling my head on the waterproof pillow I kept in the tub. Grapes were everywhere, mostly smooshed between the pages of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book I’d bought. I cradled my camera like I’d been taking some weird, avant garde pregnancy project, and I was still working to fit that other slipper on my foot. It took me half an hour to get the first one on, but damn it, I was trying.
Lachlan stared at me, arms outstretched. “What the fuck happened? Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”
“My morning sickness decided to throw a party that lasted all day.” I licked my lips. “I’m thirsty?”
He panicked, but just enough to make my life a little harder.
Lachlan leapt into the tub and grabbed the shower sprayer that had been my best investment before accidentally marrying him. He turned on the shower
. Like a surprised puppy, Lachlan yelped when the cold water sprayed him right in the groin. After a confused moment, he adjusted the setting on the sprayer, aimed the water into the tub, and offered it to me like I’d sip from a water fountain.
Or we could be adults.
I pointed to the bottle of water on my sink—the one not currently flooding my bathroom like a hurricane’s storm surge.
“Oh.” Lachlan handed it to me. He turned off the shower and removed his shirt, wringing out the wetness.
I shook my head. “Okay, when I go into labor? You aren’t allowed to do anything. I’ll drive us to the hospital, and you do the stupid breathing exercises.”
Lachlan settled beside me on the floor. “Deal. I’ll find a way to entertain myself.”
“No, you will sit quietly in the corner. If I let you anywhere close to my cervix, the baby will bungee jump outta me with the umbilical cord.”
“Nah.” He snickered. “My boy is gonna surf out on the placenta.”
“You’re gross.”
He wrapped his arm over me. “You wanna tell me what happened today, Red?”
No. Not yet. “We haven’t even joked about amniotic fluid or cluster feedings or meconium yet.”
“What the hell is meconium?”
“It’s the newborn poop, some sort of tar-like black stuff that’s made of leftover uterine cells—”
“No, no, no.” Lachlan covered his ears. “We’re not talking uteruses right now.”
“Uteri.”
“Yeah. We’re talking about you and I.”
“No. Uteri. That’s the plural of uterus.”
Usually I could spin him around a couple times, show a little skin, and I’d distract him away from a topic. Not today.
He shook his head. “Put the dictionary down, Webster. You better tell me what happened at practice today.”
I hedged the question. “You got into a fight with Jack Carson.”
“Nice try. That was yesterday. Today’s crisis was all about you.”
I swallowed. Hard. “I can’t really talk about it.”
“You got fired?”
“Yeah.”
“For theft?”
God, it sounded even worse coming from him. “Is that what they’re saying?”
“No one is buying it.” Lachlan stared at me. “I know you, Elle. You’re the cutest damn hoarder I’ve ever met, but you’re not a thief.”
The truth unsettled my stomach. I prepared for the great grape purge of the afternoon. It wasn’t going to be pretty.
“I can’t…tell you,” I said.
“Imagine that.”
I frowned. “What’s that supposed mean?”
“It means you’ve been lying to me for a long time.” Lachlan’s accusation should have been more of a surprise, but I didn’t have the energy or strength to refute it. “Where were you two days ago? Why were you in Atwood?”
Because I thought I was saving both of our asses. “I went for the team.”
“Tell me the truth.”
“I am. Can you please let it go?”
“That’s not how this works.”
Lachlan paced a bathroom too tiny for his bulky frame, especially with the sea-shell wind chime I hung from the ceiling. He battered through it, flinching as the clink-clink-clink warned him before he lost an eye to a sand dollar.
“You’ve been lying to me every day since training camp began,” he said.
“That’s not true.”
“You’re the woman who saved me from the car.”
Did the good Samaritan get in this much trouble when he helped someone on the side of the road?
I looked away. “You remember?”
“No, but there’s only so many black women with legs to their chin and red streaks in their hair popping up at practices.” He shrugged at me. “Hand me a pipe and call me Sherlock, Red. I think I cracked the fucking case. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it…wasn’t important.”
“You saved my ass from turning into roadkill. If the roles were reversed, I’d have lorded that over you every damn day for the rest of your life. You’d owe me big. Blowjob Tuesday. Steak and potatoes Wednesday. Spanking Saturday. So why did you keep it a secret?”
“It wasn’t intentional. There’s just some things I haven’t shared with anyone.”
“I know that feeling,” Lachlan said. “Difference is, I’ve confessed everything to you. I’ve told you about Bast. About hiding him. How terrible it felt. Why I was working so goddamned hard.”
“I know.”
“I trusted you, Elle. Why won’t you trust me?”
“I do.”
“That’s a shitty way of showing it. You didn’t tell me about the baby. You won’t even say why they canned your ass today. What am I supposed to think?”
I slowly stood, hoping my stomach could tolerate the altitude change. “I’m sorry.”
“We shouldn’t have any secrets. We’re a team, Elle. Jesus, you’re pregnant with my baby.”
“And that’s exactly why I’m trying to be careful. Why I had to do all of this.”
“All of what? What’s going on?”
This was getting out-of-control. I needed air. Space. A minute to think. At some point in the afternoon I had concocted a relatively reasonable story to explain it all, but the morning sickness stole it as well as my confidence. I escaped from the bathroom, but I didn’t make it very far.
Lachlan forced me to face him again. “You saved my life, and you didn’t tell me it was you. You got fired today for a bullshit reason, and you won’t even defend yourself. Something is wrong. What is it? Why did they lie? What do have on you?”
Fuck it. I couldn’t handle the sharpness in his voice, the hurt from all the secrets and lies. Every second that passed broke my heart, but I couldn’t let it steal his away from me.
“Lachlan, they weren’t lying. I did steal something.”
His eyes narrowed, the sea-foam churning dark. Stormy. “You wouldn’t.”
“I did. I had to. I tried to handle this myself, but I don’t think I can protect all us anymore.”
“Stop.” He cupped my cheeks. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“If I tell you what happened, they’ll cut you.”
“What?”
I twisted away, searching through my desk drawer for the hidden cubby. The SD card rested on top. I showed him the card before stuffing it into my laptop.
“Coach Thompson has been working with Peter to spy on the other teams in the league. Last season, they photographed our rivals’ practices and walk-throughs so they could anticipate what to use in the game plans. They cheated.”
He stared as I scrolled through photo after photo of offenses, defenses, and formations. His face paled, and he sunk onto the couch.
“Jesus Christ. This is from last season?”
“It’s why the Rivets won the championship.”
“No.” His voice hardened. “The guys wouldn’t. Jack wouldn’t do this—”
“It wasn’t Jack. The players don’t know. Coach Thompson controlled the information. He was the one who analyzed the photos and developed a game plan to counter the other team’s installations.” I shrugged. “To the league and media, Coach Thompson looked like he had amazing instincts. They called him an offensive genius for a reason.”
“And you knew?”
“I’ve been trying to find a way to subvert it. I couldn’t let it keep happening. The team is innocent, but if anyone found out, the league would probably suspend our entire season. I had to be careful.”
“You should have come forward. No one would have blamed you.”
I took a shaky breath. “Lachlan, if I had said anything, they would have cut you.”
“Fuck me.” Lachlan sucked in a harsh breath. “How could you not tell me?”
For the same reason I didn’t tell him about the nudes or the pictures they had of the other players. I couldn’t let him get ups
et, not when I was already on the verge of panic.
“I wasn’t implicating you in this,” I said. “When they said they wanted me to take some pictures—”
He rocketed off the couch. “You didn’t!”
“Lachlan—”
“Fuck, that’s why you went to Atwood?”
I looked away before his disappointed, bewildered, saddened stare burned into my memory. The baby didn’t leave a lot of room for guilt in my belly, and I wasn’t about to throw up any more regrets.
I switched the SD cards. “I gave them some of the pictures today. Then they fired me.”
“Jesus.”
“But I didn’t give them all the images.” It was the last bit of hope I had. “I kept the ones that showed the bulk of the plays the Monarchs will run on Sunday.”
I ejected the card only to place it in his palm. He refused to look at it.
“Why are you giving me this?” he asked.
I lowered my gaze. “Those are the pictures of the defense. Every blitz they’ll try to run. Every formation they’ve created.”
“Why are you giving me this?”
“I want you to have it.”
“Why!”
“Because they’re going to cut you, Lachlan! You have to show them that you’ve improved. You can’t afford a bad opening season game. If you play well on Sunday, another team will pick you up. You’ll get another chance. Another home somewhere.”
Lachlan pitched the card away. His words struck me, hard.
“I don’t want another home. I want this one.”
“You don’t have a choice. You aren’t playing well.”
“What the fuck do you know about how I’m playing?”
He wouldn’t want to hear it, but I didn’t let him walk away from me. “Because I can see it. I’m there every day at practice too.”
“You have no idea what you see.”
“I know when you’re struggling.”
“You think I can’t handle it?”
“I think you need help, and you aren’t asking for it.”
“And this will help?”
I hadn’t wanted to fight. “That’s not what I’m saying…”
“You’ve given up on me.”
“Never.”
“You think I fucked up.” His words spit with an anger I didn’t recognize. Something vile and dark that would poison a man like Lachlan. “I don’t need your help. I never needed help. This is football. This is my life. This is what I was built for, the only thing I know how to do.”
