Page 113 of Shame the Devil
Jennifer had wanted to ask, “So Mark isn’t it?” But she’d known the answer, or maybe she’d thought,I need to have a talk with her about that later, when the time was right.Except that “later” had been too late.
Which part matters more? she wanted to ask her mom now. The sweet and dirty, or the steady? How about if hefeelssteady, but he tells you heisn’tsteady? Maya Angelou had said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” and Harlan hadtold her who he was. Loud and clear.
And yet here she was, wearing her pale-green dress again, because it was one of the only pretty things she had that still fit, and because Harlan had taken her across the long bridge to Thirty-three South. They were sitting outside on a stone terrace strung with fairy lights, watching the setting sun turn the lake, nearly glass-calm in the stillness, to glowing turquoise as the mountains reflected the pale pink of the sky. Harlan was drinking Tennessee whiskey, and she was sipping a spiced pina colada mocktail after a dinner of steelhead trout cooked to flaky perfection, roasted asparagus that she’d all but inhaled, and an absolutely sinful warm bourbon-soaked bread pudding with whipped cream that she’d shared with him. Dipping the spoon into all that rich, creamy goodness, licking it slowly clean, and watching him watch her do it. The smile in his eyes. The breadth of his shoulders in the white button-down shirt. The scruff of beard that would give you so much delicious friction as he kissed his way down your body, letting you know that he was a man, and he was here to stay. His hard hands that could touch you so gently.
Dyma was right. No alcohol, and no drugs. Just a slow, delicious, cool swim after a long, hard, hot day, and the memory of Harlan’s eyes when he’d looked at her in her bikini. Not to mention the way he’d kissed her back in the lobby before that swim. His big hand behind her head, cradling it. He made her feel wanted. He made her feel beautiful. And that was such a dangerous way to feel.
Tonight, they’d talked about Dyma, and they’d talked about Annabelle. Now, they sat, lazy in the deepening twilight, as the server lit the candles and the colors deepened around them, and she said, “Tell me about football. You said you’d been working for twenty-five years. Is that really how it is? That much pressure?”
He didn’t brush her off, and he didn’t make a joke. He got quiet instead and said, “Yes. And no.” When she didn’t say anything, just waited, he went on. “It’s pressure, but every job has pressure. With football, you’re more aware of the pressure, that’s all, and you could say that the consequences are more immediate. Although I guess if you’re a surgeon or something, or a pilot, the consequences of screwing up are pretty immediate, too. So, yeah, football’s always pressure to perform, but it’s good. It’s always been good, for me. Besides the money and all that. Having the team, for one thing. Teammates. Coaches.”
“When it was bad at home,” she guessed. “That thing you said about your coach at the Super Bowl party.”
“Coach Gunderson. He taught me how to be a man, I guess. How to own up when you screwed up. That there were no excuses, but you didn’t have to marinate in your mistakes, either, not if you learned from them and did better. My dad was big on punishment.” His face twisted. “I guess you’ve figured that out. Coach didn’t do blame. You owned up, you fixed it, and you moved on. He had this word he used. Excellence. You were always going for excellence. You might not be able to achieve perfect every time, he’d say, but you could always be excellent.” He took a sip of his bourbon. “Which is true in anything you do, right? That’s the secret of any great high-school coach, though. He’s not just building football players. He’s building men.”
“He did a great job building you.” She’d resisted touching him all evening. Now, she reached out and touched his hand. The lightest brush of fingertips, but he turned that big, scarred, sure hand over and took hers, running his thumb over her knuckles like he wanted to memorize them. Like they mattered.
His hands could pluck a spinning missile of a ball out of the air like it was a butterfly. They could shove off a charging defender, and they could tackle, too, when they had to. She’d watched him do it on TV. She’d watched obsessively, in fact. Everything she could find online, in the weeks and months since that last day on the tarmac in Wild Horse, as if she could sense the essence of him from that shadowy form in a helmet and shoulder pads, playing a game she’d never cared about with the kind of skill that made it look easy.
But now, his hands were gentle.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve tried to be excellent in football. Seems to me, now, that I could’ve run away sometimes from being excellent at life.”
“Hey.” Her voice was soft in the gathering dark. “Nobody gets it right all the time. I sure don’t.”
He smiled, and that smile transformed his face like it did every time. Not charming, though, not now. This smile was sweet, and it was all for her. “I don’t know. I’d say you’re pretty excellent.”
“I don’t take chances,” she said. “Since I met you, that’s what I’ve been realizing. Going to North Dakota with you that first time? That was crazy, for me. I’ve never done anything that impulsive before, not since …” She stopped, then went on. “I’ve been sort of … shut down, I realize. Thinking I was safer that way. But how safe is it never to try? How safe is it never to take a risk?” She laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “Never mind. You don’t know the answer. You always try, and you always risk. Three teams. Three towns.”
“Maybe you need balance between those things,” he said. “That’s the other thing I know from football. Wide receiver’s sort of a … star position. You do the spectacular stuff, the flashy stuff. But you know, you’re just one guy out of fifty-three. You’re not the guy who wins the game. Nobody’s the guy who wins the game, not even the quarterback, though don’t tell Blake I said so. All you can do is to prepare as hard as you can every single week, and every offseason, too, and try never to have a bad game. Even if you drop a pass. Which, if you saw my last playoff game …” He saluted her with his glass. “You know I did.”
“Which was overthrown,” she said. “And should’ve had pass interference called, besides.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, “now you’re just being nice.” His eyes were crinkling with his smile, but she could tell that the memory of not catching that ball would have him catching a hundred more in practice. A thousand more.
“You can’t control everything,” she said. “You can only control your preparation. You can’t control what happens once you’re out there.”
“Now, see,” he said, “that’s what we call football wisdom. I’m guessing you’re a little bit like that, too. That you don’t go into anything unprepared.”
“Other than the occasional sexual encounter,” she said, but it didn’t feel angry, even at herself.
His hand tightened on hers. Just a little, but she felt it. “Sometimes, something just hits you. The thunderbolt, Italians call it.”
“Colpo di fulmine.”When he looked surprised, she said, “My dad’s Italian. The thunderbolt? That was my parents. It didn’t stick, but it sure burned hard while it lasted.”
“Ah,” he said. “Another reason you’re cautious.”
“One of them.” She wasn’t going to say this. It was stupid. It was too raw.
Of course, she did say it. “I want to … sink into this,” she told him. “My body wants it so much. The way you touch me. The way you kiss me. The way youlookat me. It makes me weak, and I want it. But I need to know if it’s just a thunderbolt, or if it’s …”
“Rain,” he said. “The kind a farmer wants. The kind that soaks the ground and makes things grow. You’re wondering if I can do that. If I even know how.”
“Yes. And maybe if I can, too.”
His smile hurt her heart. “I know you can. Me, though? I don’t know. I know I want you with me. I want to take care of you. I want to see this baby. So I think we should date.”
Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. “Uh … date?”
