Hail Mary (Red Zone Rivals, #4)

by Kandi Steiner

To the girls who love tattoos, video games, fucking shit up, and hot, cocky, infuriating playboys. This one’s for you.

Leo Hernandez. Anyone who went to my high school knew who Leo was. Every girl knew his messy hair, his crooked smile, his lean, muscular body, his golden skin and infectious laugh. Every boy knew his speed and agility, the ease with which he excelled on the football field and off it, too. He was a star athlete with a dad who used to play in the NFL. He was popular. He was funny. He was rich.

He was the kind of boy who could smile at you and make you feel like the only girl in the world. Little did I know he was also the boy who would ruin my life.

It was combining two things I loved — octopus, the coolest animal on the planet, and stigma, which was the ancient Greek term for tattoo. Hearing Leo Hernandez say that username, hearing him ask me to play with him? Another awakening.

If there was a girl at my school who played video games? I’d be all over that.” “You have no idea what I look like.” “So?”

But as Mary Silver, I was a loser. “You can just call me Stig.”

Unknown: Sweet dreams, Stig.

Leo: I’m really glad I met you.

“Hey, Stig?” “Yeah?” “Draw me something.” “What do you want me to draw?” “Anything,” he answered quickly. “Show me a part of who you are.” “Why?” A pause. “Because I like you.” My eyes widened, heart hammering so loud I couldn’t hear myself when I responded with a weak, “Okay.” “Okay,” he said.

Leo: You’re right, school sucks. I miss summer days with you.

Me: Call me tonight and we can pretend summer never ends.

“Yeah, right. The way they see me at my school, I’m just the class clown, you know? The jock who makes people laugh and has girls lining up at his locker.” I swallowed. “A whole line, huh?” “Don’t be jealous, Stig,” he said, humor etched in his voice. “None of them compare to you.” “Oh, fuck off.” “I’m serious! They don’t.”

“Look, I don’t know what the hell this is supposed to be, but I don’t want it.” His eyes locked on mine. And what I saw reflected in them tore me to shreds. He knew. He knew it was me. It was written in every feature — the pity in his eyes, his furrowed brows, his rigid stance and heaving chest. And right then and there, I recognized the truth.

He knew it was me, and he didn’t like what he saw. “You have no idea what I look like.” “So?” How stupid I was for believing he meant that.

“You’re a liar, and a jerk, and I hope one day someone hurts you as bad as you just hurt me.”

I decided right then and there that nothing and no one would ever hurt me again.

Play like hell. Rub it in every defender’s face when they can’t stop me. And remind anyone who asks that I’m the best there’s ever been. It didn’t matter if it was true or not. When you said something enough, you started to believe it. And when you believed it, you became it. Those were my father’s words, and I held them like a creed.

it. It was an abyss created by a girl years ago, an endless hole left in the very center of who I was after the one and only person I’d ever felt a genuine connection to in my life ghosted me. And I didn’t even know her name.

Thoughts of that summer always made me squirm. I couldn’t even remember who I was back then, and yet I knew that the realest I’d ever been with anyone, at any point in my life, was that summer. With a stranger I met playing video games online.

I could beat myself up for an eternity wondering what went wrong, what I did, what happened. I could dive headfirst into anxiety that something bad had happened to her, that she had been kidnapped or sent to a boarding school by her parents or, the worst possibility, that she was dead. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her.

I knew the way she laughed when she was exhausted from staying up all night with me. I knew she never backed down from any challenge. I knew she was unapologetically and fearlessly herself, no matter what her parents or friends or anyone else thought. I knew she was funny, and adorable, and cool as hell. She played video games, for fuck’s sake.

And I knew she knew me, at the most vulnerable and honest level, and she liked me. She cared about me. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe she never did. Maybe she wasn’t a kid like me at all. Maybe she was some weird creep living in her parents’ basement at the age o...

Even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t true. But sometimes it made me feel better to pretend that was the case, because the alternative was that she ...

every time she walked through our front door, I ached with the need to touch her. I couldn’t help it. Esa gata se vé riquísima. The girl was fine.

Leo fucking Hernandez — North Boston University’s star running back, most unobtainable bachelor, and number one on my people I would murder if I could get away with it list.

I used to think I loved him. But that was before I hated him.

Braden put a hand on my shoulder, stopping me. I looked up to find his soft blue eyes under bent brows, and I couldn’t explain how or why, but just that one look made me release a slow, easy exhale. “Hey,” he said, squeezing where he held me. “Don’t let these clowns get under your skin. Their humor off the field is almost as bad as their game on the field.” That earned him a snort from both the guys. “We want to help,” he said loudly enough to drown them out, and at that, he stood and pinned his roommates with a glare. “And if setting some ground rules will make you feel more comfortable, we’re all ears. Right, guys?” Kyle’s cocky grin faltered a bit, and he nodded. “Of course. He’s right, Mary — we don’t want to make this any more difficult for you than it already is.”

I relaxed a bit, and then all eyes were on Leo, who was watching me with an unreadable expression. It was almost like… studying me. Like he just realized I looked familiar, but he couldn’t place why.

A notification popped up assigning me my new teammate, and I was scrolling through the Legends deciding which one I wanted to play with next when I saw the username. It made my stomach drop, my eyes scanning it beginning to end. Octosquid68. The breath that had hitched in my throat slowly deflated, my heart still racing even as I stared at the name and realized it wasn’t what I thought. I didn’t know why I even thought it would be. I hadn’t seen that name on my screen in years.

Checking on our new roommate sounded like more fun, anyway.

Still, I’d hung out with her enough to know she was always dolled up — dresses, boots, tattoos on display, and makeup like a movie star. Not like Julia Roberts movie star, but like Olivia Wilde. A little dark, a little edgy. Always hot as hell.

“Does it look like I can’t handle unloading a cooler?” I bit back the urge to tell her I didn’t think there was much of anything she couldn’t handle.

I paused, something familiar about her voice striking me like a lightning bolt to the gut. It had happened earlier that day, too, and I couldn’t explain it.

But Mary Silver didn’t give me anything other than slightly heated indifference. It was sick how much I liked it.

“I feel like I know you.” She arched a brow. “Trust me — you know absolutely nothing about me.” “No, I mean like I feel like we’ve met before.”

“Have we?” She finally looked away from the stairs and directly at me. I swore I shrank a few inches.

“Don’t you think you’d remember if we had?” The corner of my mouth kicked up at that. “Fair point. No way I’d forget meeting someone with such large…” My eyes trailed the length of her, appreciating the ample curves of her bust, her hips, her thighs. When I met her gaze again, she had an eyebrow quirked with a warning in her glare. “Tattoos,” I finished.

“I really would like to see them all, you know,” I said, leaning against the bottom railing as she climbed. “Go to bed, Leo.” “Come on, tell me about them. Just one.” “In your dreams.”

“Yes, actually, among other things. Want me to detail them?” She paused, turning on her heel to look down at me. “You’re insufferable.” “I’ve been called worse.”

“I’m too tired to deal with you,” she said, turning to climb the last few stairs. “Need someone to tuck you in?” “Goodnight,” she called when she dipped out of view, and I stood there at the bottom smiling even after I heard her door click closed.

Leo’s eyes landed on me, pinning me to where I stood. It was then that I noticed a few chain necklaces around his neck — a cross, a plain gold chain, and was that a saint? I almost snorted at that.

“I think pussy is the most powerful thing in the world.”

If they knew that of those twenty-seven girls in that article, I’d only slept with four of them? They’d be much less interested.

But something soft about me that I wouldn’t admit to anyone other than my mother was that I needed to feel a connection to a woman before I wanted to fuck her.

I needed to feel something. I couldn’t lay a stranger down and look into her eyes in a moment so intimate, in a situation where I felt so vulnerable, and not know a single thing about her or feel like she didn’t know me. I couldn’t fuck a girl and then immediately put my clothes on and leave, or ask her to do the same. I needed to relate to her, be intrigued by her, be comforted by her. And for that, I blamed the first girl who ever made me feel that way.

I didn’t even know her name. That was what bothered me most all these years later. It made me sick that she ghosted me. It coiled my guts to think that something might have happened to her. It made me furious that I didn’t push harder to meet in person, to put a face to the girl who had permanent residence in my head and my heart. But not knowing her name? That meant I didn’t have a prayer of ever finding her.

“Where are you off to?” I asked. “I’m sorry, are you my daddy now?” “In every single one of my dreams.”

She flattened her lips. “You look like hell, by the way.” “And you look like a snack,” I shot back.

“What do you think?” I challenged. She tilted her head a bit to the side, and again, I felt myself want to fidget under the weight of her gaze. The longer it lingered, the more I felt like she was stripping me down without my permission. “I think you’ve gotten really good at playing the part.”

And her words replayed in my mind for the rest of the night.