Second and Five: A Contemporary Reverse Harem (A Team of Her Own Book 2)

by Erin Hayes

  Score one for Madison.

  Coach Mack raised an eyebrow, although his smile didn’t falter. “I would have thought you felt right at home with the trash.”

  Okay, that was a burn. An impressive one, actually.

  “I don’t like what you’ve done with my team,” Coach Mack continued.

  “Your team?” I asked. “Your team?”

  “They were my team for far longer than you even knew they existed,” Mack sneered. “I worked hard to bring those boys along.”

  “And they’ve actually won some games this year. They could go to the playoffs.” I shook my head in disbelief that he was saying this to me. “And you have the gall to say that to me?”

  He waggled his finger at me in warning. “You have the gall to say that you’re good for the team?”

  I gestured around the stadium, incredulous. “I mean, look around, Mack.”

  “At what cost, though?”

  I scoffed and shook my head. “Whatever happened to you to make you such an ornery man,” I said, “I’m sorry. I truly am.”

  Mack sneered. “We’ll see who’s sorry after this.”

  “Is that a threat?” I asked, finally voicing my thoughts to him.

  He shrugged. “Is it?” He laughed at my shocked expression.

  And with that, he left me with a bag of shit in my hands. For a moment, I considered throwing it after him and landing splat in the back of his balding head.

  But no. I wouldn’t do that. He could fling shit with his words, but I wasn’t going to fling literal shit at him. It wouldn’t make me feel much better.

  “The Hammers will beat him,” I murmured to myself. “They will beat him.”

  I tossed the doggy bag into the trashcan before I made any rash decisions and headed back to the field where Noel was tapping away at his phone.

  “Hey,” he said without looking up. “Analysts are optimistic about our chances.” When I didn’t say anything, he looked up and frowned. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said as I sat down. “I just want this game to be over.”

  Luckily, I didn’t have to wait that long until the teams started running out on the field, gearing up for the second half.

  The sports officials went through the motions of starting the second half, and the Hammers had possession of the ball, and I blinked as the Hammers kicker executed a short kick. It looked wrong, almost like a mistake, and I gasped in horror.

  “Onside kick,” Noel assured me. “Look!” He pointed as one of the Hammers picked up the ball and ran with it to the thirty-yard line. Like it was a well-planned and well-executed play.

  I screamed and cheered, glad that my team still had possession. Carrie met my gaze and grinned, proud of herself, and I knew that she had made the appropriate call with that play.

  We’d show Coach Mack. I had faith.

  IF THE FIRST HALF WAS long, the second half felt so damn long. Nail-biting, even, because the Yellowhammers and the Armadillos kept trading possession and points. By the time we were down to the final two minutes, the Hammers were, yet again, down by five points with a score of 28-23.

  Only five points, though. A touchdown would put the Hammers ahead by a point. And with two minutes to go, that would put us in a good spot to win the whole game.

  “I can’t take it,” I muttered. “This is going to shorten my life by ten years.”

  “I regret not getting more Hammers during halftime,” Noel said. He was watching Ashley as she worked with the players on our side of the field. I wondered what he was thinking.

  “Hey,” I said, nudging him with my shoulder. “If the Hammers win, I’ll set you up on two dates with Ashley.”

  He laughed. “Would Ashley be okay with that?”

  I gave him a sly smile. “She wanted me to set her up with some guys.” Granted, those were Yellowhammers that she wanted me to set her up with, but I thought she would be fine with this.

  I hadn’t realized until I became a sports fan that I was superstitious. And if another date between Noel and Ashley would push us over the edge, then dammit, I was going to set them up.

  Another minute ticked by, achingly slow, almost to the point where I wanted to cover up my eyes. No points. No tipping the odds in our favor. If we didn’t do something soon, we were going to lose.

  We still did far better than last year, I reminded myself. Even if we didn’t make it to the playoffs, I was still proud of how everyone did. The Yellowhammers did themselves proud, there was no denying it.

  But, dammit, I really wanted them to win.

  “First and ten,” Noel said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Hammers have possession.”

  Good. Maybe this was our chance to score again. The team spoke with each other and Carrie about the next play, and I wanted to give them as much time as possible to figure it out. I chanced a glance across the field to see Coach Mack glaring at me.

  If he was unhappy, then we were definitely in a good spot. I almost snickered in delight.

  The Hammers broke the circle and lined up. Andre gave me a little wave as he took position.

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I whispered. I even crossed my fingers.

  I held my breath as I watched the Hammers’ center snap the ball to Andre. He faked a throw, even surprising me, and then threw it and...

  “Fuck,” I muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Interception. One of the Armadillos caught the ball and started running with it. I could hear the groan of half the fans in the stadium while the other half went wild. He ran ten yards. Twenty yards...

  And, finally, a Yellowhammer defensive lineman tackled him.

  I rubbed my hands over my face, unable to handle it. “Shit.”

  “They didn’t score,” Noel told me. “We’re still in it.”

  I could see that Andre was beating himself up over the interception. Rodney ran over to him and grabbed his facemask, yelling words at him that I couldn’t hear. All I could see was Rodney shaking his head and Andre drooping his shoulders as he got off the field.

  I wanted to go to him, but Carrie pulled him aside and talked to him.

  Not the best time for a girlfriend to comfort one of her boyfriends.

  I glanced up at the clock. Forty-five seconds. Shit.

  Noel clasped his hands like he was praying. Hell, I was praying too. This was too much.

  The teams lined up again, for the first down for the Armadillos. Shit. I could just imagine so many different ways that the Yellowhammers could lose at this point. We were so close. So close.

  The Armadillos snapped the ball, and the quarterback caught it. And then...

  I got to my feet, screaming as Clancy tackled the quarterback, and the ball rolled away. A fumble! Holy shit, the Armadillos fumbled!

  The Hammers took the ball and ran with it, covering the distance that the Dillos had run when they intercepted the ball. All the way down to the twenty-yard line before the player was tackled by an Armadillo. I screamed my head off. Screamed and screamed to get rid of the tension that had been building this entire time.

  We were down to twenty seconds. Twenty seconds and twenty yards lay between us and winning.

  “You can do it, guys,” I whispered. “You can do it.”

  Carrie spoke with her team, commanding them with a single glance.

  “She scares me,” Noel admitted.

  “That’s exactly why I hired her,” I said, grinning.

  Movement across the field drew my eye over to the Armadillos. The head coach was speaking with his team, but I saw that Coach Mack was speaking with a big man, and they kept looking surreptitiously over at the Yellowhammers while doing so. Like they were planning something.

  “Hey,” I said to Noel, nodding over to Coach Mack. “They’re up to something.”

  That feeling in the pit of my stomach was back.

  Noel shrugged. “Let them. We’ll win anyway.”

  I swallowed back the lump in my th
roat as the Yellowhammers clapped to break their huddle. They lined up, including all three of my guys. Like this was meant to be. Andre and Rodney completely ignored each other as they jogged to their positions, making me think that something had happened between them again.

  I looked up at the clock. “C’mon, guys,” I whispered.

  The center snapped the ball to Andre. The two teams clashed on the field in a flurry of yellow and blue, and for a panicked moment, I thought that Andre was tackled. But he reappeared, faking throws. Then I saw Rodney getting a clear spot. As a running back, he shouldn’t have been there, but there he was. Like it was its own play.

  Holy shit.

  Andre threw the ball to him, a perfect spiral. The Armadillos tried intercepting it, tried to stop it, but it flew over their hands and right into Rodney’s waiting arms. The running back caught the ball and started running, streaking the rest of the twenty yards to the end zone as the clock ticked down to zero.

  Touchdown and the end of the game.

  The Hammers won, 29-28.

  I rose to my feet to cheer, but then I saw the big player that Mack had spoken with just before this play running toward Andre. After he had let go of the ball. After the quarterback should have been safe. And not only that, but the player was running head first, almost like a bull. His helmet was aimed directly at Andre’s waist.

  Andre noticed the player running toward him, and he did the only thing he could do. He turned away from the player, trying to protect himself.

  And the Armadillo player struck him in the hip. What happened next was something that was physically impossible, because Andre’s right leg bent at an unnatural angle right in the hip area. Loose. Boneless. His leg was flung out in this weird angle, and I could almost hear the crack of bone.

  Bile rose in the back of my throat.

  The player finished his tackle, landing on top of Andre.

  Pandemonium broke out, split between joy that we had won the game and concern over Andre. The Armadillo player pushed himself off Andre as the referee blew his whistle, flagging the illegal tackle.

  But Andre didn’t get up.

  I barely heard Noel yell at me as I got to my feet and ran across the field to Andre. The game was over. We had won.

  But all I cared about right now was Andre. Clancy and Carrie joined my side, as Rodney yelled at the player that had tackled Andre, nearly getting into a fist fight over it. The referee yelled, too, and Coach Mack got into it.

  I knew it. I knew that something bad was going to happen, and I didn’t do anything about it.

  “Hey, babe,” I said, trying to be brave through my tears. “Wake up, Andre. We won.”

  But he was unconscious. And the medics came out onto the field to take care of him. Clancy helped me get to my feet, and he was saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear him.

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, I’m worried about Andre.”

  He looked almost dead there. And the way his leg had bent...

  I swallowed, nearly feeling sick at the thought.

  The medics signaled to each other, and I nearly gasped as an ambulance came out onto the field. An ambulance.

  That only served to make me push against Clancy harder. Because they were taking Andre away to the hospital. Without me. Unless I was there.

  “Let her go with him,” Carrie declared, her raspy voice raising above the din in my ears. “She’s team owner, after all.”

  I pushed past Clancy to Andre’s side as they loaded him onto the back of the ambulance. “I’m going to ride with him,” I told the EMT. The man blinked in surprise, before nodding. “Fine, fine.”

  And as the door shut us in, I could see Coach Mack smirking at me through the rear window. Like he was fucking proud of himself.

  I’d never been in an ambulance before. Never needed to. So I tried staying to the sides while the two EMTs took care of Andre and attached wires and everything to him.

  “Please be okay,” I whispered.

  Because unless he was okay, nothing would be fine.

  Chapter 19

  Andre’s eyes slowly opened, and when they met mine, they were fuzzy. Pained.

  “Madison.”

  His voice broke my heart.

  We were in the Trauma Center at Birmingham Memorial Hospital, our little section curtained off to give us a little bit of privacy.

  I grasped his hand and kissed his knuckles, wishing there were so many other ways I could tell him that I was here with him.

  Instead, he was hurting. And I was just standing by, unable to do anything but give him a worthless smile. But smile I did.

  “Hey, sweetie,” I whispered. I smoothed back the hair from his forehead. His skin was cold and clammy to the touch, probably a side effect of him going into shock. “How do you feel?”

  “Like shit,” he muttered. He passed a hand over his eyes. “What happened?”

  I sucked in a deep breath, debating on how much to tell him at this point. I kept replaying that moment over and over in my mind, at how ragged he looked as he fell to the ground.

  No one should ever look as boneless as that.

  He noticed. “Just tell me.” His voice wavered. He knew. Even waking up and in pain, he knew.

  I cleared my throat. “You have a broken hip.”

  Andre blinked at me for a moment before laughing, a harsh rattling sound. “I broke my hip? But my grandmother broke her hip and she was in her seventies.”

  I nodded. “But your grandmother didn’t play professional football.”

  “My grandmother was still a motherfuckin’ badass, though. She could have played.” Andre’s words were slurred. Probably from the pain medication they were giving him. Good.

  As if reading my thoughts, he grimaced and tried shifting his weight. “Don’t do that,” I barked, pushing down on his shoulder, and he immediately listened. Must be hurting him really bad then.

  He groaned and blinked up at the ceiling, deep, heaving breaths wracking his body. He opened his mouth once as if to say something, thought better of it, and closed it.

  Finally, he settled on small talk. Or as small as talk can get when you’re on morphine and you missed the biggest game of your life. “How was the rest of the game? We were down by five points when...it...happened.”

  I kissed his forehead. “We won. You threw a touchdown”

  He stilled, and for a second, I wondered if he heard me through his opiate-induced haze. Then his lip trembled. “We won?” His voice came out as a whisper, a prayer. “We’re going to the playoffs?”

  I nodded. “Because you led the team. You did it, Andre.”

  “No, Madison.” His eyes got teary, and I realized with a shock that this was the first time I’d ever seen him cry. Andre had always been an unwavering pillar of strength for both me and the entire team. He could laugh and show emotion and be the best guy all around.

  But I’d never seen him cry before.

  It only drove home everything that had happened. This was the moment that he had been working toward his entire life, something he had been training for, had been holding out hope for. And now, he had a potentially career-ending injury right when everything was looking up for him and the team. And even us.

  He wouldn’t be able to play in the playoffs. Even if they were to do surgery or put him in a cast right away, there would be no way he could play by the first playoff game. Or even for the finals.

  If we even got that far without our starting quarterback and captain.

  I squeezed his hand. “It’s going to be all right.” My own words sounded hollow even to myself. It wasn’t a promise that I could keep for him. No, I’d make sure that everything would be as all right as it could be. I wouldn’t give up on him, even if he had to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

  Shit, I hoped this wouldn’t come to that.

  He squeezed back in response but didn’t say anything else as the curtain opened to reveal Clancy and Rodney, who looked like they had showered
and run out of the locker room as fast as possible to get to the hospital, and a very flustered Carrie. She smelled strongly of cigarettes, which told me how she’d spent her drive over here.

  What should have been a joyous occasion was now somber in tone. And I hated that this was stolen from everyone.

  Clancy offered Andre a smile. “How are you feeling, Champ?”

  Andre let out a low laugh. “I’ve been better. I heard that we’re going to the playoffs?”

  “By the skin of our teeth,” Carrie muttered. “We’re in because the rest of the league was shit this year.”

  “Well, I’ll take it,” Clancy fired back, crossing his arms. His cheeks burned red, and it wasn’t from a sunburn.

  As the two of them traded verbal barbs, I watched Rodney, who still hadn’t said a word. In fact, he looked as shell-shocked as Andre did when he woke up. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, but he didn’t say anything. A part of me expected that. Another part of me was angry that he couldn’t say anything nice to Andre, even when the quarterback was laid up in bed.

  The curtain parted again, and the doctor stepped in, a clipboard in hand. “Andre Williamson.” He glanced at all of us, as if surprised that we were here. “May I have a word with you, in private?” I could hear the warning in his voice, that this wasn’t just going to be some friendly chit-chat of him asking about the weather or how the game went.

  No, this was going to be serious.

  I licked my lips. “I’d like to stay here.”

  “Madison—” Andre started, but the doctor raised an eyebrow, his apology already in his expression.

  “Sorry, ma’am, but unless he says so, no one but family can be with him. HIPAA laws.”

  “I need to hear this alone,” Andre said.

  Shit, shit, shit. I was his boss, his manager, his girlfriend, but nothing more in the eyes of the law. If I were his wife, then I could stay here. But then where would that leave Clancy?

  “Fuck,” I muttered, as the implications of my relationship with Andre and Clancy finally hit me. And hell if there weren’t my own tears falling from my eyes right now. I’d done so well keeping it in, and now...