Page 27 of Arrogant Rucking Player

MASON

The back of the restaurant was quiet. No cars sat in the lot, and the door was unlocked. Two things that roiled my blood on different levels. I kept Nyla behind me where she pressed to my back. Her fingernails dug into my skin, not that I cared or felt the pain. I figured the asshole would either be in the office she’d told me was upstairs, one of the few pieces of information I got out of her on the way across town before she shut down on me completely, or he’d be in the bar, drinking himself into a stupor, or worse.

That this was where Stuart chose to bring Brady terrified me. It had all the makings of a really shitty situation that could turn on us at any point. Iwrapped my hand around Nyla’s, checking each darkened booth decorated with western and cowboy paraphernalia as we walked quietly through the restaurant, but long before we reached the bar, I knew it was empty.

The smallest sound from the mezzanine where we’d hosted the team Christmas party drew my attention back to the stairs and the level above. A second sound froze me, a shift in the flooring over our heads. It could have been the older building settling, or?—

“Stuart, get off me! Help”

My heart shattered fresh on the spot.

“I told you to call me Dad!” Something glass broke on the floor above us, the sound shattering the silence at our level.

I barely moved before Nyla sprinted forward. Her black hair whipped past me as I cursed myself for putting sandshoes on her feet for the briefest second. Then I was after her, my feet pounding the boards, all thought of remaining stealthy out the window. I hit the stairs when she was already at the top and powered after her, only to collide with her back a moment later.

“Stuart, you can’t have Brady tonight. It’s not your night,” she said in a completely reasonablevoice, walking in a wide circle around the man rather than directly at him, like I hadn’t just run into her and nearly knocked her clean over. “Brady, why don’t you come over here?”

Brady, bless him, crouched low and did exactly what his mother asked, scampering around Stuart’s uncoordinated swing. The kid skidded on glistening liquid that spread across the floor amidst sharp glass shards—the carnage we’d heard below that looked like the remnants of a spirits bottle. The boy crashed into his mother who hugged him, swiped her hands across his face, and sent him straight back to me without looking.

Now that’s trust.

I prayed I could keep safe what she’d just gifted to me.

“You okay, bud?” I knelt, holding out my arms.

Brady nodded and slammed into my shoulder with all the energy of an overstimulated, hyperactive kid awake after midnight for all the wrong reasons. I folded my arms around his lean frame. My heart clenched down hard as I watched Nyla approach Stuart. The other man stumbled about in a circle and tripped over his own feet to land heavily on the floor. I knew there was nothing I could do to help her right now. This was her battle, as long as shewanted to fight it. All I could do was support her and protect the most precious thing in her world.

She crouched in front of Stuart, her hair pooling on the floor around them both, speaking softly as blue and red lights lit up the glassed front of the restaurant. I leaned back against the wall near the stairwell, the echoes of the night I flirted hard with the woman opposite me back when she was dressed in a reindeer costume overlaid with the vision of her now in plain jeans and a black long sleeved tee I’d pulled out of some drawer and thrown over her head in a moment of need.

Brady clung to me as I settled on the floor to wait.

“Are they going to take my dad away?” he asked without a single stutter.

I looked straight in his face and promised silently that I’d never lie to him. “Yeah, mate. They will. I have no idea what happened after that, but we can figure that out together, however long your mum says it’s okay for me to stick around, alright?”

“She better say you can be around forever.” Brady settled beside me and held out his hand. “You got a phone? I know a great game to download.”

I snorted and fished out my phone from my jeans. “Sure. But if you get me into trouble, you’re upfor stair runs with me when Coach tells me I’ve done the wrong thing. Deal?”

“You mean I can train with you?” Brady's eyes glowed.

Okay, so not my finest moment. I cleared my throat as bootsteps thundered up the stairs I prayed would hold up for one more night. The closer I looked at the restaurant that Nyla used to work in, the more holes and issues I saw in it, and the happier I was that she’d have nothing to do with the place after tonight.

I braced a hand above Brady’s head to protect him from the oncoming cops in case they didn’t spot him, glancing over to let the first person up the stairs know we were there, and then down at the kid attempting to hack into my phone for all he was worth.

“Alright, bud. What’s this game and how much trouble am I gonna be in with your mum?”

His brilliant smile told me all the things I didn’t want to know as Leon, Hansen and my teammates surrounded us, forming an honour guard that stood between us and the rest of the world.

I just had to wait until Nyla was done so our protective bubble could include her too.

A week after Stuart was removed from Nyla’s, she was offered a job at Hansen’s restaurant as he suddenly desired an extra chef and a new front of house manager. Both Nyla and Chaz accepted the work, and they integrated into Hansen’s team seamlessly.

Brady spent the week getting me into trouble on various fronts and found it hilarious when Nyla caught ‘us’ out doing the wrong thing. We’d had a few chats but I still seemed to be a big brother figure to him more than anything else. I could live with that, provided I didn’t piss Nyla off too much. Because today was kinda big.

Big, in the way of the charity match where I currently had another local team running directly at me. We were three points down in the fourth quarter with less than two minutes left on the clock. The other team were happy to dilly-dally their way along the field and waste time to run their time out, but I was keen to end this game on a high note. We didn't even need a converted try to put this sucker to bed. Just a ball over the line would do it.

I watched the ball play, but a flicker of red and black—my colours—caught my attention in myperipherals. Brady waved a giant hand drawn pennant of a Ninja stabbing a sloth that I suspected was meant to depict the Sanford Sentinels beating the other team. Nyla held her hands up in awhat can you domovement. I huffed a laugh, and caught the yell aimed at me along with movement coming my way in time to turn my attention back to the game and not earn myself a falcon in the face.

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