Page 53 of Playing for Love

As the sounds of traffic seeped in, she sat up and I did too. With one arm still around her, I reached to the nightstand to check my phone.

Damn it to fucking hell. It was seven o’clock. I was usually at the stadium by now.

“I’ve kept you in bed too long. I’m sorry,” she said. I jumped up and gathered my clothes. She sat up and then then rose, following me. My heart raced with something like panic as I tried to remember the last time I’d been late. Never.

“Let me get you a cup of coffee to go.”

“No time. I was supposed to be there by now.”

“I thought practice didn’t start until eight?”

“I’ll be lucky to be there by eight fifteen.”

“That’s not too bad.”

I stopped pulling on a sock and looked at her. “You don’t understand. It is bad. Getting in early to practice every day is the most important thing in my world.”

“I guess you live in a different world than I do.”

She was right. Her world in the emergency room was one of life and death. She’d turned aside the pretty, petty world of beauty and modeling and chosen the gritty, unforgiving emergency room world. She’d chosen to work on the edge of life and death. I must seem like a superficial asshole to her by comparison, treating football as the most important thing in life.

As I pulled on my pants, I had no time to dwell on it. No matter how stupid it might seem to her, football was my reality and I had no business apologizing for it even if I had the time or inclination.

Rushing through the kitchen to the back door, I glanced at the stainless-steel wall clock. Shit. I was going to be at least an hour late for practice with rush hour traffic.

She followed, dressed in her shirt and shorts, hair mussed, smelling of sex and sweat and my blood almost heated up all over again. I shoved down the spurt of desire and, with her looking at me with her pleading dark eyes, I stopped.

“I have to go. You’re welcome to stay and make yourself coffee. Let yourself out whenever.” She nodded. I leaned down and brushed my lips against hers, not allowing a real kiss, knowing it would only derail me if I did.

“Goodbye, Gabe,” she said, looking forlorn as I closed the door behind me, leaving her standing there in my kitchen all disheveled and gorgeous as hell.

After years of arriving early every day, today I wouldn’t even be on time. Fuck. Coach was going to need an explanation.

And I didn’t have one. At least not a good one. Not even a bad one, when it came down to it.

I raced into the stadium and when I got to the dressing room, most of the guys were dressed and heading for the field or already out there. Fuck. I suited up at record-breaking speed and went to the sidelines, looking around for Coach until I found him. He was standing with my backup, tablet in hand going over whatever he had on the screen with him. Taking a calming breath, I hustled over and joined him. They both looked up and I gave my backup a sideways nod telling him to get lost. He did.

“Where were you?” Coach’s clipped words almost made me wince, but I kept cool.

I hesitated, then came clean. No sense lying. I was done with lying, especially to myself.

“I was . . . with a romantic interest.” I didn’t want Coach to think I was with a random woman, a one-night stand, but there was no way in hell I would share Mia’s name.

He stared at me, game face unreadable, then nodded. “Don’t let it happen again. Don’t lose your focus.”

I let out a breath. “Yes, sir.” As if I were in the military and it was a matter of life and death. It was only a damn game, remember? Blasphemous thoughts two days ago. Now I wasn’t so sure.

But it was my damn job. Football was what I was good at, what I was good for. I was excellent, in fact. So I dredged up all the self-talk, all the things I told myself that gave meaning to my football life, to putting so much of me into the game, and spun it around in my head.

I loved the game. Loved the camaraderie. That was no bullshit. Shoving the helmet onto my head, I headed onto the field. Taking a lot of crap from every man out there about being late for once in my life, I laughed it off. From my periphery, I could see Hunter staring at me, no hint of humor on his face. No way I wanted to talk to him about it, to answer to him. My head, and not to mention my gut, was too unsettled. What I needed to do was put it all aside.

“Hut!” I clapped my hands and dispersed the huddle. We took our places on the line to run the drill. This was a predictable, safe world, one I knew intimately.

One I had control over.

* * *

Officially,every game counted the same, every win was important. In reality, Sunday night games were special. We were in the national spotlight, the crowds were loud, the excitement palpable, and we had all day long to work ourselves into a riotous frenzy, psyched to beat the shit out of the other team as if we were going to war. In short, by the time the game whistle blew at a normal Sunday night game, to a man, we’d lost all perspective. And I was the leader, the main perpetrator of the win or die mentality, pumping up the team crazier than a locker full of steroids.