Once Upon A Half-Time 1(13)

Whistles blew, trainers burst onto the field, and I reevaluated the life choices which brought me to this moment. It had taken a long time for karma to find me after running away from home at sixteen, but here it was. Fate was one chunky come-uppance.

“Elle?” Louisa was the team’s only female trainer, and she understood most of the difficulties women faced on the team. Usually. This was not one of those moments. She handed me a towel the size of a dishcloth. “Are you…ew.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a lot of…”

I didn’t want to look at myself, but I felt it on me. Tried not to smell it either.

“Wow.” Louisa and the linebackers stared at me. “You should…go clean up.”

“Yeah...”

The team didn’t have enough water bottles on the field to fix this. Jumping in a tub full of hand-sanitizer wouldn’t fix this.

“Why don’t you…go take a shower?” Louisa couldn’t even look at me. “I don’t think anyone’s in the locker room.”

And it wouldn’t matter if they were.

Nothing could be worse than quivering in the sick of a three-hundred-pound linebacker and his foolhardy choice to eat eight hard-boiled eggs for breakfast on one of the hottest days of the year.

I hobbled off the field, ignoring the squish that followed me. It wasn’t the grass. Something soggy mushed in my shoe, but keeling over dead was preferable to fishing out whatever trespassed around my tootsies. The squeal of a baby stopped me.

Leah Carson bounced her son, Sammy, on her hip as she took a phone call. Sam gave me a devilish grin, inherited from his father.

She lowered her phone, too busy to look up. “Hey, Elle, do you have those pictures of Lachlan? We were going to give them to the Sports Nation producers for his interview today…” Her words choked. She stared in horror, her mouth gaping as she backed away. “What…what happened?”

“We had a little incident on the field,” I said.

“Is anyone left alive?”

“It was touch and go for a while. I gotta…shower.” I faked a smile. “Hi, Sammy.”

Even the baby kept his distance. Leah let me pass as Sammy attempted one of his daddy’s quarterback sneaks out of her arms.

“We can…” She grimaced. “Meet up for the pictures later.”

Yeah. Lachlan’s pictures. Leah’s PR firm could spin the hell out of a handsome, first-round draft choice signed to a championship team. That was easy. But I didn’t want to think what would happen if I gave her the other photographs, the ones so burned into my skull the league would subpoena my head for evidence. Leah was good, but even she couldn’t silence that potential scandal.

Despite the eye-candy that filled the locker room, both the toweled and non-toweled varieties, I usually avoided the space. Muscles were nice. The occasional peek even better. But fifty-three alpha-male, testosterone-fueled, sweaty men did not make for a great picture.

Or smell.

Though I wasn’t exactly a bouquet of spring flowers myself.

Thankfully, I was alone. The only other silver lining? A change of clothes in my office.

I stripped off the shirt and shorts and plopped the soggy mess into the garbage can.

Soap. I needed a cauldron of it. And shampoo. Hopefully conditioner.

I didn’t have any toiletries…but Lachlan had plenty. My turn to haze the rookie, but at least when I stole his stuff, I wouldn’t refill it with mustard or hot sauce. I grabbed the soaps and took a step further into the locker room than I had ever gone.

Until today, the showers were a No-Elle land—especially when it was my butt that was bare.

I clutched a towel and crossed the tiled floor, past the first two dozen shower heads and behind the partial wall that offered another row of showers. Good enough to hide in. I hunkered down, turned on the water, and used half of Lachlan’s soap to lather up.

Dumb move.

Scent was a strong memory, and I had a lot to remember from my weekend with Lachlan. His spicy, regal tease was just as potent out of the bottle as it was blended with his skin.

I should have stolen Jack’s stuff.

Within seconds, I immersed myself with Lachlan. The bubbles were a poor substitute for his hands, mouth, and other parts of him that I’d fantasized about ever since that incredible weekend.

So not the thoughts to have naked in the middle of the Rivets’ locker room.

Especially as the second shampooing dripped soap into my eyes just as the doors opened.

Uh-oh. Someone banged through the lockers.

I wasn’t alone or nearly sanitized enough.

I rinsed the soap off, but my hair transformed into one big tangle of suds. I spun and hid against the wall. The damn shampoo stung my eyes. I couldn’t see which player headed straight for the showers.