Sandra Brown - Play Dirty

They were lying quietly, fondling and kissing idly, as satiated lovers do, when she looked at him sadly and pulled away. And he’d had to let her go. There was so much he wanted to say, but he was forbidden to. He wanted to tell her that, for the first time in his whole, misbegotten life, he was in love. He loved, period. He loved her.

“God help me,” he whispered now to the walls of his hospital room, “I did from the start.”

He must have slept. A slight shift of air roused him. He opened his eyes. Coach was standing just inside the door. He said, “Were you asleep?”

“Just resting my eyes.”

He hesitated, then walked to the side of the bed and looked Griff over, his gaze settling on his bandaged shoulder. “How is it?”

“I’ll live. Hurts like hell.”

“They don’t have any pain medication in this hospital?”

“I’m getting it.” He raised his hand with the IV port. “It still hurts.”

“Any permanent damage?”

“The surgeon says there shouldn’t be. If I do my physical therapy.”

“Yeah, well, I wish him luck. You always shirked on that.”

“She.”

“Huh?”

“The orthopedic surgeon is a she.”

“Oh.” Coach looked around the room, took note of the TV suspended from the ceiling, the wide window. “Nice room.”

“Can’t complain.”

“Food okay?”

“All I’ve had is beef broth and lime Jell-O.”

“You hungry?”

“Not really.”

Having run out of small talk, they were quiet for a time. Then Griff said, “Thank you for not calling the cops on me the other night.”

“I did.”

Griff looked at him with surprise.

“Despite Ellie’s yammering, I put in a call. But not to Rodarte. After being passed around to several detectives, I finally landed one who sounded like he had some sense. I told him what was what, where you were headed, and that the situation had all the makings for becoming dangerous, possibly lethal to somebody. He got in touch with the police department in Itasca and mobilized them immediately.”

“So you believed me.”

“I believed her.”

“Laura.”

“I believed every word out of her mouth. You, I still know to be a liar.”

“I was not lying! I did not-”

“Hell, I know you didn’t kill Foster Speakman or that Bandy lowlife. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then give me a hint.”

“You lied about that game against Washington.”

Griff’s heart skipped a beat or two. He hadn’t seen that coming. He stared at Coach for a moment, then averted his head and mumbled, “What are you talking about?”

“You know goddamn well what I’m talking about.” His face red with anger, Coach bent over him until Griff was forced to look him in the eye. “That pass to Whitethorn. That game-throwing pass that got you sent to prison.” Coach jabbed the edge of the hospital bed with his index finger. “I know the truth, Griff, but I want to hear you say it, and then I want to know why.”

“Say what? Why what?”

Coach fumed. “I’ve looked at the video of that play till I’m cross-eyed. From every possible angle. In slow motion and fast forward. Time after time after time. A thousand times.”

“So has everybody and his grandmother.”

“But everybody and his grandmother don’t know the game like I do. And not everybody knows you like I do. Nobody taught you and coached you like I did. Griff.” His voice had turned husky, and if Griff hadn’t known better, he would have thought he saw tears starting to form in the older man’s eyes. “You couldn’t have thrown a better, more accurate pass. You practically walked the football to the two-yard line and laid it in Whitethorn’s hands. You put it right between the numbers on his jersey.”

He straightened and turned away for a moment, and when he came back around, he said simply, “He didn’t catch it.”

Griff remained silent.

Coach said, “Whitethorn didn’t catch it, but not because you threw a bad pass. He simply dropped the damn ball.”

Griff, feeling the pressure of his own emotions, nodded. “He dropped the damn ball.”

Breath streamed out of Coach’s mouth, sounding like a plug had been pulled on an inflatable toy. It even seemed to Griff that he deflated. “So why in God’s name did you lie about throwing that game? Why did you admit to a crime you didn’t commit?”

“Because I was guilty. I was guilty as hell. I had every intention of screwing up and losing that game for my own profit. For two million dollars, I was gonna see to it that we lost. But…”

He broke off, unable to continue for several moments. When he did, his voice was gravelly. “But when it came right down to it, I couldn’t do it. I wanted to win that game. I had to.” His hand formed a fist as though trying to grasp the unattainable. “The only hope I had of saving myself was to win that game.”

He lay back and closed his eyes, placing himself there on the field. He heard the roar of the crowd, smelled the sweaty jerseys of his teammates as they huddled, felt the tension compressed into a stadium of seventy thousand screaming spectators.

“We’re down by four. A field goal won’t do. The clock is running out. No time-outs remaining. It’s the worst-case scenario, and if that isn’t enough, the Super Bowl is riding on this game. We’ve got time for one more play.

“To cash in from Vista, all I really had to do was let the clock run out, and Washington would have had it. But, coming out of that last huddle, I thought, Fuck those Vista bastards. Fuck their dollars. They may break both my legs, but I’m going to win this championship.

“It all came down to that one play, Coach. One pass. One choice that would make me better than the sludge I’d come from. What I did on that play would define my character. My life, actually.”

After a moment, he opened his eyes and laughed at the irony. “Then Whitethorn dropped the pass. He dropped it!” He scrubbed his face with his hand as though to rub out the memory of seeing his receiver lying on his back in the end zone, his hands empty as the game clock ticked down to double zeros.

“But it really didn’t matter. I had sold my soul to the devil anyway. After the loss, I figured I might just as well get paid for it. So when Bandy showed up with my cash, I took it.

“Sometimes I think that maybe the shrink at Big Spring was right, that maybe I wanted to get caught. Anyway, after I was busted, people assumed I’d thrown a pass that was impossible to catch. Whitethorn let them think it. And I let them think it. I was guilty of everything else. I had lied, gambled, cheated, broken the law, pissed on the rules and ethics of professional sports.” He smiled wryly. “But I didn’t throw that game.”

Coach dragged his fists across his damp eyes. “I’ve waited a long time to hear you say it.”

“It feels good to say it. Because the worst part of it, the very worst thing of the whole experience, prison, everything, was knowing how badly I had shamed you and Ellie.”

Coach cleared his throat and said gruffly, “We lived through it.”

He said it in an offhand manner, as though this moment didn’t have any significance. It did, though, and it was huge. Griff hadn’t begged his forgiveness, and Coach hadn’t granted it. Not in so many words. But that was the understanding that passed between them without it getting sloppy and sentimental. He was in Coach’s favor once again. He had his pardon. Maybe even-dare he think it?-his love.

“It would mean a lot to Ellie if you came around more often, let her cook you a meal, fuss over you some, sneak you money she thinks I don’t know about.”

Griff smiled. “I will. I promise. If I’m not in jail.”