Roughing the Kicker Read online

  It took effort for Ryder to not bust up Reese’s fun that night. He tried telling himself it wasn’t him she was glancing at every minute or so. It wasn’t Ryder who kept her turning down offers to dance. When Mike Jefferson lowered his hand over her ass, Ryder stood, ready to take a few steps away from his Chevy, ready to clock the asshole for touching her. But Reese didn’t need the back up. She pushed Mike’s hand away and walked toward the fire, spotting Ryder as he hurried to sit back down on his tailgate, hoping she hadn’t noticed the way he almost took a leap across the yard to topple Jefferson. She approached, smile wide, sweet, looking nervous.

  “Come dance with me,” she demanded, not waiting for a no before she pulled Ryder out onto the patch of bare grass that served as the dance floor. “Been waiting on you all night.”

  “For what?” He knew. No need for her to answer, but Ryder liked the way she rolled her eyes at him. She’d done that often enough since her sophomore year and Ryder seemed to like it more and more, the older they got. They’d been flirting toward this night for well over six months. Since spring training. Tonight, wearing that dress, smiling at him the way she was, seemed like a test he wasn’t going to pass. He liked the way she felt pressed close against him, her thick, dark hair brushing along his neck.

  “Stop being estupido,” she told him, slowing when he turned them so she could get her arms around his neck. She stood so close Ryder could make out the small dots of sweat blooming across her nose. “You know I wore this dress for you.”

  He was surprised at her confession and how easily it slid from her tongue. He held his breath, staring down at her, wondering what she wanted from him, hoping it resembled something close to what he wanted.

  “Me? Why do I get such a treat?”

  Reese touched his face then, fingers soft, gentle, a contrast to the athlete he’d seen every day on the field. Against him, there weren’t any grunts of effort and energetic movements that looked like work and struggle. Right there in Ryder’s arms, he held a Reese he’d never met, one that had quickly become someone he wanted all to himself.

  He’d lied to Gia. There had never been any real rivalry. There had never been anything but appreciation, despite her being a little irritating. Then there had been so much more.

  The elevator chimed for the fifth floor, and Ryder shook his head, pushing back that sweet, long-dead sensation worked up by the memory. That kid was gone. She didn’t exist anymore, and the guy he’d been, the one taken aback by her boldness and beauty, took a hell of a lot more to impress than soft skin and a pretty dress.

  To his left, Ryder heard the chirp of an alarm disengaging and glanced across the parking garage, slipping behind a concrete pillar when he spotted Reese heading for her Challenger. She stretched, opening her trunk and tossing her bag inside it, peeling off her jersey, and tugging the elastic from her hair. Something old and forgotten stirred in his gut, something that reminded him of the past and things he wanted and would never have again.

  Reese was beautiful, still. But there were a thousand beautiful women he could have. Greer was one, but there were others. Reese wasn’t the only woman that could make Ryder forget the past.

  Liar, he reminded himself, replacing the memory of their first dance with one of their last fight. It had only been an hour before they’d made it to that waiting room that Ryder had been inside Reese. She’d tasted sweet, and he’d had her spread wide and open on his dorm room bed. He’d held her still against his mouth, his hands cupping her ass, his tongue so deep inside that sweet, wet pussy. Then, he’d flipped her over, desperate to be inside her, and taken Reese from behind, gripping that round, firm ass, his arm around her waist as he fucked her. The phone call had interrupted them—his mother’s panicked voice, his father screaming at someone in the background.

  They’d dressed and hurried to the hospital. Ryder sat with his family and Reese, waiting for news, holding her hand as the surgeons worked on his sister. He could still feel her on his dick, still smelled of her perfume. There was still the faintest scent of sweat and sex lingering on his skin. And then the doctors came, and the news that followed, and the disclosure that Reese had kept a secret, shattered his life in seconds.

  Fucking liar.

  You couldn’t wrap that loss behind a first dance memory. It didn’t work. In Ryder’s mind, Reese was still responsible, or at least culpable, for his sister’s death.

  6

  Reese

  College was euphoric. It had not been a time of confusion and uncertainty. For Reese, it had been about hope and challenge and the endless horizon. She’d dreamt dreams that were boundless and certain to her eighteen-year-old self. She’d dreamt them with Rhiannon as they lay laughing on a patchwork quilt, the stars glinting overhead on her parents’ rooftop deck.

  “When we’re thirty,” Rhiannon had promised, “we’ll live next door to each other. You’ll be the first lady kicker in the NFL, and you’ll do that for a while, but then you’ll retire so you can get married…” She’d cleared her throat when Reese shook her head and quickly amended. “Or, you’ll just have lots of sex with whoever you want, though, God, hopefully not my gross brother, and I’ll live vicariously through your exploits, watching out of my kitchen window as I sip coffee in the morning with my kids or my husband and you kick some Greek god out of your house at six a.m.”

  “Why won’t you be doing the same? With the Greek and other kinds of gods?”

  “Because,” she’d said through a sigh. Reese had known the answer before Rhiannon spoke it. “I’ll be married to Luke. He’s all the Greek god I’ll ever need.”

  Luke Ford had been it for Rhiannon, but he had also been the end.

  In Reese’s dreams, Rhiannon was still a kid—eyes light and wide, always, like she didn’t want to miss a thing that moved around her. She had fire and spirit and so much passion for living. Reese admired her. Most times, she wanted to be Rhiannon. Every day since the last time Reese saw her, she dreamt of her. She kept a small picture of the two of them on her bedside table and one on the mantel in the front room. It was from junior year. A carnival in Raleigh, the summer Reese had finally managed to catch Ryder’s attention.

  “Just because my brother follows you around like a puppy now,” Rhiannon had told Reese as they swung on the Ferris wheel, looking down on Luke and Ryder waiting for the girls, “doesn’t mean you can forget me.”

  “Never,” she’d told Rhiannon. “Eres mi hermana…you’re my sister.”

  The ride had ended, and Rhiannon pulled Reese away from the guys, and they’d spent fifteen minutes in a photobooth making faces at each other as the camera snapped.

  You’re my sister.

  When sisters made promises, they got kept. No matter who wanted the truth.

  “I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”

  Sweat pooled around Reese’s neck and down her back like melting wax. The dreams came frequently, but not so much that she could not distract herself from their occurring. Today, however, they wouldn’t be ignored. Neither would the memory of Rhiannon’s death.

  “That’s not possible.” It had been the only thing Ryder had been able to say when the doctors explained. “She’d never. She wasn’t…” Then realization must have struck him—the reality that his kid sister hadn’t been a kid for a long time.

  “Ry,” Reese had tried, and the look he’d given her, that raw, angry look changed everything. He didn’t see the woman he loved, the woman he’d just been inside of. Just then, Ryder seemed to see only the girl who’d kept the truth of his sister’s pregnancy from him.

  “You knew. You fucking knew?”

  She had. Reese had known for weeks and never mentioned it.

  Sister secrets got kept, but Reese’s secret with her best friend got Rhiannon killed.

  She couldn’t take the clog of memories as they clamored for space in her mind. A dam had been broken, each sight and scent, the sound of Ryder’s parents screaming and crying in their grief, were so clear to he
r, even as she left her bed and turned on the tap in her bathroom sink. Running cold water over her face didn’t eradicate the fury she’d spotted in Ryder’s eyes when the truth came out. It didn’t keep the memory of his father’s anger from leaking out right at Reese as well.

  “An ectopic pregnancy,” the doctors had explained. “We discovered it too late.”

  Reese stood up from the water, rubbing her face dry with a hand towel, scrubbing away the sleep from her eyes and the tears that had started to form. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, wondering if it was the excessive practice schedule or the lack of sleep coming up on the anniversary of Rhiannon’s death that made her look so haggard. There were bags under her eyes, and the lids were red-rimmed.

  Sister secrets, she thought, holding the towel over her face. It smelled of fabric softener and the exfoliant she used after washing her face. Some had spilled onto the marble counter the night before, and Reese had used the towel to wipe it dry. She’d forgotten because she’d been so exhausted from Ricks’ workout. Last night, she’d believed she wouldn’t be able to move in the morning. She’d planned to sleep in. She’d planned to take advantage of the free Sunday and go to the lake, take the day thinking about Rhiannon and the short, beautiful life she’d led.

  But the dream had come to her, fierce and biting.

  Rhiannon’s body in that casket. Ryder not speaking to her, pulling away from her when she first saw her best friend lying there lifeless.

  He’d left her.

  She stood there staring down at Rhiannon—silent and stiff, her body rounder at the waist, her skin pale, hair curled in waves over her shoulders, feeling like an outsider. Mrs. Glenn had dressed her in a simple cotton sundress and a baby blue cardigan. The soft colors made Rhiannon look so young. Innocent.

  Reese took her in, all of her, the sight of her lifeless body, the trimmed, bare nails and delicate silver ring on her pinky, the silver crucifix resting delicately on her chest, and Reese had wanted to wail and grieve and scream for the unfairness of it all.

  She couldn’t.

  She didn’t.

  Reese hadn’t waited for her parents or her brother to join her at the funeral. She left early, not wanting their comfort, convincing herself she didn’t need it. With no one next to her, holding her, supporting her, Reese stood there alone, arms tight around her waist, body shaking from the effort it took to keep from crying. She felt like she no longer belonged in the family who’d taken her in. Only their families knew about Ryder and Reese. No teammates. No other coaches.

  “No,” she sighed, seeing their faces as she stared into her bathroom mirror.

  Mutters flew around her as she left the church and Ryder pretended he’d never touched her. He pretended he never loved her at all. His parents were too overwhelmed, likely over-medicated to even notice her.

  Reese didn’t cry at the service or at the burial as she stood in the back of the crowd, watching Rhiannon’s parents huddle together, sobbing, their grief like a cloud around them no one could penetrate. Between their classmates and professors, her teammates, and Glenn family members, Reese watched Ryder. He kept himself still, no movement fracturing his smooth calm. No expression breaking over his face to give away how angry, how devastated he was.

  She’d spotted Luke Ford near the cars, hiding with his father by a row of large oaks. His face was bruised, his bottom lip swollen with a cut that matched the size of the bandage across Ryder’s knuckles. He cried, loud, mournful tears that spread out like smoke through the crowd. He loved Rhiannon. Reese had seen that clear enough in every laugh he pulled from her, in every long, quiet look he sent her way.

  Luke could have his tears, if not the comfort or forgiveness of the Glenn family. Reese would keep hers to herself. Like Ryder, she wouldn’t break. Not out in the open. Not when the crowd dispersed, and Reese’s family finally arrived, offering condolences to Ryder and his parents. It was only when Ryder and Reese stood across from each other at the coffin, both watching the flowers twitch and shake from the breeze around them, that either one finally gave in to their tears.

  “I’m…I’m so sorry,” she’d tried and the look he’d given her, that shocked, cool fury, scared her. “Ry…”

  “No.” It was the only word he spoke, but it came at her like an anvil pinning her to the ground.

  “She was scared.” Tears clogged her throat, made speaking clearly impossible. “She didn’t want…” One flash of his eyes, gaze searing and angry, and Reese didn’t finish her explanation.

  Ryder Glenn had loved her. He’d told her so many times. He’d shown her in long, sweet kisses that never went anywhere. She felt it in the gentle glide of his fingers moving through her hair as she rested her head in his lap, sprawled on the grass of the empty stadium. She’d heard it in every drawl of her name coming out in a happy sigh when he spoke that long, exaggerated syllable. No one could touch her the way he did, —could listen and hear and want her the way Ryder did—and not love her.

  “You never…told me. Not telling is the same as a lie. That’s what you are. A liar,” he’d told her, head down, tears covering his face. In his hand Ryder held the petals from a white rose, and they slipped between his clasped fingers. “You’re a disgusting liar.” Then Ryder walked away from her, those petals falling behind him on the ground as he left.

  Reese dropped the towel, turning the tap up higher and sticking her head under the water, hoping it would clear her head, hoping like hell the shock of frigid water did something to clear away the swell of guilt she’d spent ten years trying to be rid of.

  August in New Orleans was like something out of Dante’s worst nightmares. Reese was in an inferno. That’s what she told herself as she left her Challenger and ran toward the elevator in the stadium parking garage. The garage was dark and well ventilated, but Reese believed the heat from the one-hundred and two-degree temperature would melt her Nikes right off her feet before she made it inside the building.

  Reese didn’t care if she melted completely. The water hadn’t helped.

  It was August 15.

  Ten years since Rhiannon’s death.

  It had landed, and like clockwork, the memories and dreams consumed Reese. Rhiannon filled every free space in her mind. Her laugh. The goofy faces she’d make watching old Disney movies. The way her eyes softened when Luke called her beautiful. The way she’d smile and release a long, swoony sigh when she caught her parents kissing. How she rolled her eyes and made an exaggerated disgusted face anytime Ryder pulled Reese into his bedroom. Every detail filled up Reese’s mind, and with those memories came the guilt. It suffocated her. She needed release, a distraction, something that would take away the ache in her chest.

  She took advantage of the day and the empty gym, heading straight for the treadmill and jacking up the speed setting so she could run. Pink Floyd filled her ears. “Wish You Were Here” was the track she’d listen to over and over anytime Rhiannon’s memory came calling for attention. Reese would slip to older songs, then newer ones, until she had a playlist that brought her the right amount of emotion. She didn’t want to hide from her grief. She didn’t want to bury her guilt. She wanted it all toppling over, spilling into tears and sweat and exertion as she ran. It was a ritual she’d never been able to quit.

  Her Guilt Run. Her exorcism of emotion. It was what Reese needed on that Sunday morning: just the rhythm of her feet on the treadmill and the whine of David Gilmour’s guitar as he sang about missing someone he’d never get back.

  She could relate.

  The treadmill whirled, and the steady pace Reese kept became a comfort she didn’t want. She needed the pain. She needed the release it would bring.

  Reese’s body hummed. After just ten minutes and an incline of the treadmill’s surface, her heart raced, thundering loud enough that she heard it over the switching track on her phone. Floyd shifted into another sad song, something newer that brought more memories, more tokens of the past that she couldn’t ever lose.

>   “Joanne.” Lady Gaga. Another song about loss, this one specifically the loss of a bright, brilliant girl taken before her time. Taken without discrimination. Taken without reason. The lyrics worked like strikes of blades, the razor-sharp touch of memory and guilt and all the things Reese hoped she’d find in this place.

  Gaga went on, her voice like a powerful curse, racking up emotion, stirring it somewhere deep in Reese’s belly. Where had Rhiannon gone? Was she lost? Would she ever be found? How could she leave like that? How could you expect Reese to keep such a big secret? Did she know what that secret would cost them all?

  Feet pounding harder, surer now, the minutes dragging by, Reese moved her arms, her calves burning, her quads licked with fire as she moved.

  Rhiannon’s face came at her like a wave. The tear-streaked worry across her pale cheeks. The fear and humiliation she felt visible as she held the pregnancy test between her fingers.

  “What do I do?” she asked, shaking so hard the test fell to the cold tile on the bathroom floor. Reese and Rhiannon could only stare down at it, holding each other’s arms as they watched as though the small pink and white plastic would reach out and attack. “Reesie? What the hell am I gonna do?”

  Next to her, Reese felt the tremble in her best friend’s arms, and the grip around her bicep grew harder. Rhiannon loved life. She was a puppies and kittens, hearts and unicorns sort of girl. Too precious, too good for this world. Reese would never want her scared of anything. Least of all a baby.

  “Well,” she said, “if you want, you’ll have a baby. If you don’t…”

  “I do,” she interrupted, standing straight when a door sounded downstairs. A light went on inside her then. It had always been there, but now it was brighter. Now it made her sure— determined—and the worry and fear that had kept her shaking seconds before shifted into a resolve Reese knew wasn’t forced.