by Erin Hayes
I just hoped that someday he’d come back to me.
“Oh,” I said, stepping back. “I have something to show you. Come with me. I think it’ll make us all feel better.”
I BROUGHT THE TWO OF them to Noel’s office where he had been busy clacking away on his ergonomic keyboard, hunched over the screen. He looked up as we came in and blinked. “Hey,” he hailed, and I couldn’t help but compare him to the size of the two football players at my side.
Andre gave me a suspicious glance, but I gestured for them to sit.
“Have you guys met Noel Pennington?” I asked.
Both Clancy and Andre shook their heads, and they both had that same, strange expression on their face. It took me a moment to realize that they were thinking I wanted Noel to be my third guy.
The thought of it almost made me laugh out loud. Noel and I were friends. Nothing more. And that wasn’t even putting him in the friend zone.
The guys shook hands and exchanged pleasantries before they sat down in the rolling office chairs.
“So,” I said, leaning on Noel’s desk. “Noel is a programming friend that I’ve known since college. Brilliant in twelve different programming languages.”
“Stop, you’re making me blush,” Noel said, and it was true. I grinned at him.
“And,” I continued, “I brought him to Birmingham to help me repurpose an old virtual reality app that I had back at my startup. One that I think can help the team. But I wanted you guys to beta test it.”
I realized that as soon as I said “beta test” that I had lost Clancy and Andre. Sure, they may have been characters in that year’s football game for the PlayStation 4, but they really had no idea how software development worked.
This was going to be interesting.
It was kind of nice to have skills they didn’t, for once, after weeks and weeks of struggling to learn how to speak football.
Andre shook his head. “It’s all Greek to me.”
“It’s not Greek,” Noel said, innocently, and I had to laugh.
“It just means that I want you to try out the app.” I waved my hand dismissively. “See what you think of it. Incorporate any feedback that you have to make it better for the rest of the team.”
“So like guinea pigs?” Clancy asked dubiously. “You’re not going to fry our brains or anything.” I gave him a seriously? look and he shrugged. “Well, just in case you were thinking it,” he added.
“Nope,” Noel said. He rolled back from his keyboard and unplugged two Android phones from his machine. They were the models from a year ago, but they were cheaper to buy used. I didn’t want to subject anyone’s phone to this application until I knew it wouldn’t erase their data.
Because that could happen.
“So this will run the application,” Noel said as he turned on the screen. He thumbed through a few different screens before nodding confidently to himself. “There we are.”
I could see the looks of confusion that Clancy and Andre had as Noel took out a sheet of cardboard that he and I had spent an afternoon using X-acto knives and glue to create little viewfinders from to seat the phones. It had felt like old times back then, where Noel and I were working on projects for our computer science classes.
Noel inserted the phone and slipped a strip of elastic around the end. He held up the contraption. “There you go. Your virtual reality headset.”
Andre frowned at it. “You’re kidding me. I thought this would be some sort of high-tech thing.”
Noel shrugged. “It is high-tech. But that doesn’t mean that some glue and some cardboard won’t do the trick. Try it out.”
Clancy reached for it before Andre could, and I helped him to fit it to his face, where the phone screen sat a few inches in front of his eyes. His head was almost too big for the elastic band, but we made it fit, and finally, he sat back.
“Whoa. This is...weird.”
Noel barked some laughter as he fit the other phone in a cardboard fitting. “Well, it is kind of weird, I guess.” He held it out for Andre. “Here you go.”
Andre raised an eyebrow before grabbing it. Again, I helped him to fit the device to his face. Luckily, Noel and I had done a good job of constructing the headsets, and they both fit well enough to try it out.
Proof of concept, I reminded myself.
“Whoa,” Andre said. He reached out into space, as if he was trying to reach for something that his phone screen was showing him. “What is this?”
“So,” I said, crossing my arms. “This is a program that is designed to help you remember football plays. Noel and I have been programming it with the plays that Carrie has been showing us, and we’ve been running the software through analytics to create AI of the other teams.”
“What does that mean?” Clancy said.
“It means that this is a video game designed to teach you your plays,” Noel said. “And to help you with the other teams in the league.”
“Basically,” I said, “it’s meant to immerse you in the plays so that you remember it.”
“Cool,” Clancy said.
“So what do we do next?” Andre asked. “I’m just standing here.”
Noel and I exchanged glances. This was a part of the prototype, the part where we had the biggest questions. The user experience. We had been debating whether or not it would be best for these football players to physically act out these plays or to use an auxiliary controller to move their player from the safety of their seats.
This was the closest to the program that we had originally created for the military.
“Well, if you and Clancy stand up,” I said, taking the both of them by their elbows. Andre, blinded by the headset, jumped at my touch, and Noel snickered. “You have to move.”
“Like walk forward?” Clancy asked, taking a step. “Oh. Cool.”
“What?” Andre asked, turning his head to Clancy’s voice.
“I moved.”
“And if you hit the button at the top,” I said, directing Andre’s hands to the phone, “you can cycle through the different plays and try them out.”
I helped Clancy to do it as well.
“I see,” Andre said, giving a surprised laugh. “This is cool.” He took a tentative step forward and looked around. “It feels kind of like we’re on the field.”
“Kind of,” Clancy agreed. “But why do these football players look like soldiers?”
I let out a short guffaw. “That's because it's a proof of concept. If it works, we can update it with football players." Because he and I were programmers, not 3D artists, Noel and I had changed the textures of the soldier characters to match the colors of the other teams’ uniforms to create some semblance of a football team. But, otherwise, they were wearing fatigues, boots, and Army helmets.
Beneath his VR headset, Andre’s sensual lips curved up into a smile. “So is it possible to face off with some Nazis?”
Noel laughed. “I can arrange that.”
"Hey, Clancy," Andre said blindly reaching out for his teammate. "Let's go tackle some Nazis."
Over the next two hours—with a lot of bumping into each other from the guys—we had tweaked and worked on the VR program until it was in a presentable state for Carrie. With her approval, we could bring it out to all the players on the team.
Which made the crushing disappointment from the military canceling our contract years ago go away.
Helping out my guys in this way made everything worth it.
Chapter 16
For the next few weeks, the team played really well together—especially after we started training them with the VR.
Even Rodney.
But he wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Not ever.
Still, Coach Carrie was wonderful. The team started winning regularly. We signed on several more sponsors—including Baseline VR, a virtual reality company that not only gave all the players brand-new, non-cardboard virtual reality headsets, but also started working with me and Noel to develop a version of
our app that could be used in video games. In the meantime, our guys kept using it to improve how they matched up against other teams.
It worked, too.
And everything seemed to be going beautifully, both on and off the field.
I was sad to have lost Rodney’s attention, but between the two of them, Clancy and Andre kept me plenty busy.
In fact, I would have said everything was as close to perfect as it could be. And it kind of was.
I should have been more careful.
Because then one of the sports reporters assigned to the Hammers accidentally walked in on the team one afternoon using their non-cardboard VR headsets.
The next day, the story was all over the news. The reporter even managed to get a picture and a couple of quotes from two of the players.
This time, it was my turn to call Sydney up from PR to discuss how the story had gotten out when I had made it absolutely clear that this was the kind of advantage that the Hammers needed to keep to themselves.
The players who had given quotes were defensive. “I assumed since the reporter was there, she had your permission,” Colby Jones said.
“Sorry,” Terrence Gregor said. “I’m just so used to answering whatever questions reporters have I didn’t think about it.”
I sent them away, still irritated, but convinced that really, they hadn’t done too much harm.
After all, the application was nothing any of the other teams could get their hands on. I wasn’t going to give it to anybody else, and Baseline VR was willing to pour all lot of money into it, so they weren’t about to tell, either. If Noel kept his mouth shut about it, we would both be rich. And I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t about to jeopardize that.
So in the end, I blew it off as an unfortunate accident.
Sure, now the other teams in the league knew that we were using virtual reality to train our players. They could even try to copy the plan. But as long as they didn’t have our program, their results would never be as good as ours.
But I should have known that would not be the end of the problems.
THE NEXT SIGN OF TROUBLE I had was a report that someone had tried to hack into our network. Since I’d taken over the Hammers, I had upgraded our security, both physically and in cyberspace. But that didn’t keep hackers from trying to get in periodically.
I didn’t think anything of it at first. It wasn’t the first time we’d had cybersecurity issues. Still, I called our team’s IT guy up to my office to see where we stood. It had been too long since I checked in with them, anyway. Uncle Dusty hadn’t been too careful with security, so I’d upgraded and then left the IT guys to themselves. I’d been way too busy dealing with football.
But as he described the security breach to me, I grew more and more nervous.
“This doesn’t sound like random hackers. This seems targeted,” I observed.
“I think so, too. That’s why you should probably know.”
“Thank you—I appreciate you telling me.”
Even if it did make my stomach hurt.
The attacks continued over the next couple of days, but our increased security repelled them, and they seemed to disappear.
Whoever it was had given up, I thought. I stopped worrying about it and started paying attention to the games my guys were winning.
Until late one night after practice.
Andre and Clancy and I had all gone out to dinner after practice with Ashley and Noel to celebrate our recent string of wins. I hated how circumspect my boyfriends and I had to be in public, but we were getting used to it.
We’d all had a couple of drinks and were walking back to the parking garage where our cars were parked, when I suddenly remembered that I had left my laptop up in my office.
“Leave it until tomorrow,” Ashley said, shaking her head at me. “You’re turning into a workaholic.”
I’d been a workaholic as long as she knew me. That must have been the wine talking. “No. I have a really bad feeling about that.”
“I can go get it,” Clancy offered.
“That’s super sweet,” I said, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. “But I can do it. Just don’t everybody leave without me, okay? I don’t want to walk out to my car alone.”
“We wouldn’t leave you here alone,” Andre assured me.
I took off at a jog toward the building and made my way to the elevator.
When I got to my office, the door was standing wide open.
My steps slowed, and I stared around me warily. Sliding up against the wall, I tiptoed to the edge of the doorway and peeked in.
No one was in there, but my office was a wreck. Things had been thrown around and dropped to the ground.
My laptop was gone. And so was whoever had done this.
But I knew in my gut where they had gone.
I should’ve called security. It would’ve been the smart thing to do.
But I wasn’t feeling smart. I was feeling pissed off.
I spun around and marched back to the elevator, jabbing the buttons for the correct floor when I got on.
Our IT department wasn’t as big as it should’ve been for a national team, but the space seemed emptier at night, when everyone was gone.
And I found him. Somehow, I had known exactly where he would be. Sitting at a desk far away from prying eyes, surrounded by computers and peering down at my laptop, looking exactly like he belonged there.
Jacob.
Looking just like he had when we dated, before we got going on the startup, before he tried to ruin my life, and long before he’d shown up with some plan to interject himself in my new, improved football world.
For just a second—a fraction of a second—my heart fluttered at the sight of him.
And then it dropped to my stomach like a bird shot out of the sky.
He was engrossed in what he was working on and didn’t even notice me.
“Guess you figured out you couldn’t get to it through the outside networks?” I asked, letting my voice echo across the empty space.
Jacob snorted and glanced up at me. “Smart girl. I don’t believe you would have thought to keep that much security on it if I hadn’t taught you.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Jacob. You know as well as I do, I studied programming in college, too. This was always my program, and I wasn’t going to let anyone else get their hands on it. Especially not you.”
He growled and stood up. He still had my laptop on the desk in front of him. “Yeah, you’ve changed your security measures since the last time I needed to get into them.”
I blinked. “Since the last time?”
He laughed with a cruel snicker. “How do you think I finally gone all our investors to vote against you? They liked you, not me.” He paused. “Until I got in and started screwing up all your proposals to them.”
My stomach, still cradling my fallen heart, squeezed in anger. “You did what?” I gasped.
“You’re not smart enough to run a company like this.” He waved one arm around. “And you sure as fuck aren’t smart enough to come up with the idea to use our VR program for your football players.” He sneered on the last words.
I took a step closer to him, furious at his words. “First of all, it was always my VR program. I came up with it, Noel and I developed it, and I kept it after you ruined my fucking life.”
Jacob shrugged and went back to letting his fingers fly over the keyboard. “And as soon as I get hold of it, it’ll be mine. Again.”
I took another step closer, incandescent rage practically glowing from my fingertips. Jacob didn’t even bother to look up. I was that little of a threat to him.
Somehow that made me even angrier, and I knocked the laptop off the desk. It went flying, and as if by instinct, he stood up and backhanded me across the face.
The blow knocked my head back, but I didn’t feel it for a few seconds. Everything went numb before it started stinging.
My eye was streaming by the time I l
ooked back at Jacob. “Don’t you fucking touch me,” I snarled.
He laughed, took a step forward, and shoved me so that I stumbled back against one of the desks. “I can’t believe you came to Alabama and still haven’t figured out that you’re not even good enough for this shithole.” He scooped the laptop up from the floor. “You owe me this program.”
He had lost his mind. Whatever had driven him to come here and do this, he clearly believed that he deserved to take everything from me. I touched my cheek, stunned at the realization that he really had hit me.
Well, the son of a bitch wasn’t going to get away with it. I pulled out my phone to call the police.
Jacob saw me and slapped the phone out of my hand. It flew down onto the floor and landed screen-up.
“No phones,” Jacob muttered. “Sit down and shut up. I’m almost done here.”
I did as he said, but I wasn’t about to do what he told me to. When he turned his back, I picked up the desk phone and set the receiver down on the desk, then quickly slid the chair I was in between it and Jacob.
“So how are you planning to get into the system?” I asked him, hoping to distract him.
I knew it would work—Jacob always did like to talk about himself and his ideas, his projects. He started talking, explaining to me all the steps he’d taken to get to my property. As he spoke, I turned my chair a little to the side, and hit the button to call security. I just hoped they’d get here before he did something even more insane.
And that was when I heard Andre’s voice.
It was echoing through my phone. It had called him when it bounced on the floor, apparently.
I didn’t know if Jacob would hurt me again before he left, but I couldn’t take the risk. I jumped up and dove for the phone, talking into the speaker rapidly even as Jacob moved up behind me.
“I’m in IT,” I called out, followed by a loud oof as Jacob’s Italian loafer met with my stomach. I scrambled to my knees and curled around on myself, protecting my face and stomach as Jacob kept kicking.
I hoped it would be enough for Andre to understand. A few seconds later, I heard the door open.
