Page 111 of Hell Bent
“A first-class one?” he asked. “And a decent hotel? It’s going to take you a good seven or eight hours minimum to get there, and it’s the divisional playoffs. It won’t be cheap.”
“I’ll eat your food deliveries,” I said. “I’ll wear your jewelry, and I’ll thank you for all of it. But I won’t let you buy my plane tickets. Why should you? I have a good job, I’mnot six feet tall, and I don’t need to sit in a slightly wider seat and eat airplane food for four times the money. I’m not herebecause you pay for things. I’m here foryou,and I’ll be in Pittsburgh for you, too. So will Ben. He doesn’t want to live in the lap of luxury while his mom’s dying.”
“So he wants to suffer in an Economy seat,” Sebastian said. “I doubt it. All right, if you won’t go First, you won’t. But I’m getting the hotel rooms.” He held up a hand when I would have said something. “The team has a block of them, and before you ask, they have a block of game tickets, too. Those things are mine.”
Which was why I was sitting between Ben and Harlan’s wife Jennifer right now on the coldest plastic seats in the world, wearing my work boots and a puffer jacket under my insulated foul-weather gear, because those were the warmest clothes I owned. Unfortunately, that high-vis gear was the same bright yellow as the towels the Steelers fans waved over their heads, because the Steelers wore black and gold. I hadn’t even been able to figure out the dirty looks until Jennifer explained it. Well, somebody has to bring down the class level of the wives-and-girlfriends section, right, so nobody else feels bad? So I sat there and clapped my gloved hands while that Arctic wind swirled cold, dry pellets of snow in eddies around us, and tried not to worry.
Football players could handle losing in the playoffs, right?
43
WIN OR LOSE
Alix
What had happened, exactly, to make me worry? Well, with less than four minutes left in the game, the score was 3 to 3. Which sounds fine, except when your team is on its own 3-yard line because they’ve been penalized on the last play.
And no, I hadn’t suddenly become a football genius. Like I said, I was sitting beside Jennifer and she was explaining it to me while Harlan’s sister Annabelle sat beyond her and held Nick, who was wearing so much snowsuit that he looked like a miniature Abominable Snowman. Jennifer’s daughter Dyma was here from her college classes in Colorado, too, and sitting beside Ben, who’d been stunned into silence by her extreme cuteness. That girl had somedimples,plus bright blue eyes and a whole lot of personality. Right now, she was saying, “Come on. Comeon.You can do it,” as if they could hear her. Since Owen, her fiancé, had played the whole game like a stolid, unstoppable machine, maybe they could. Nothing much was working out there in the swirling wind and icy snow except the defense and the offensive line, butaccording to Dyma, the line was why the scoreline wasn’t worse. Consider the source, though.
Owen snapped the ball to the quarterback, who was so close behind him that it was more of a handoff. In the time it took the QB to take two steps back and cock his arm, Harlan was already fifteen yards up the field. The QB turned, and …
And the extra-big Steelers player who’d been stopped all game long came through like he was busting through the line in Red Rover, grabbed the QB from behind, and pulled him down. Like I’d jinxed the offensive line just with thethought.
“Oh, shoot,” I said as most of the crowd rose to their feet, roared, and twirled those towels over their heads like there’d be a prize for it. “At least it was only second down.”
Wait. The big screen was flashing with images of fireworks, and the score had changed, too. Now it said 5 to 3. “Safety,” Jennifer said, her hands clasped at her mouth. “Sacked in the end zone. Oh, no. I can’t evenwatch.Give me Nick, Annabelle. I need something to snuggle.”
“Don’t they get another, um, chance?” I asked. “More downs?” The teams were changing out there, though, men running off, men running on.
“No,” Jennifer said, hefting her son into her lap. “Unfortunately.”
Nick said, “Daddy ran very fast,” and pointed, and Jennifer said, “Yes he did. Isn’t Daddy strong?” and told me, “They have to kick off to the Steelers all the way from the 20. I sure wish they hadn’t changed the onside kick rules this season.”
“The what?” I asked. Oh. Sebastian was out there, which meant he’d be kicking off. The Devils had just lost their best chance to win, then.
I knew it wasn’t the end of the world. It just felt really, really bad.
Jennifer made a hand gesture and said, “I don’t actuallyunderstand it,” and Dyma leaned around Ben and said, “Only the team that’s behind can do an onside kick now, and only in the fourth quarter, and they have toannounceit, which is the stupidest thing in the world. How’s a trick play supposed to work if the other team knows they’re doing it?”
“Umm …” I’d barely even understood the regular kickoff deal, and had only bothered to because Sebastian was the one doing it.
Dyma said, “It’s when you kick the ball really short so your team has a chance to recover it. Of course, so does the other team, which is why it’s a desperation move. It has to go at least ten yards before you can touch it, and obviously, if the other teamknowsyou’re going to kick it like that, there’s almost no point.”
The long snapper was ready to snap the ball, the other guy was ready to hold it, and everything looked normal. That is, until Sebastian kicked. With the side of his foot, as always, but the ball sort of … squirted. Not straight ahead, but out to the side, on a diagonal. And bounced.
They were trying it anyway.
Sebastian
It was exactly like soccer. Like a bad kick in soccer, sure, with that awkward bounce to it, but I’d made a damn good living for a decade making the ball go exactly where I kicked it, for ninety minutes at a time. I took a breath, centered myself, hit the ball exactly the way I’d wanted to, and followed it to where I knew it would go.
I didn’t think. I just moved. The ball bounced erratically, once, twice, three times, and I was there all the way. To the bounce at the 40, the bounce at the 43. Players around me in white shirts and black, but I was only following that ball. Ittook its third bounce off a Steelers thigh and came up into my arms, and I thought,That’s ten yards,hugged it tight to my body, and fell on it as everybody else fell on me.
I was on the ground, buried under a pile of bodies. Hands all around me, grabbing, twisting, and I held on with my hands and my forearms and myelbowsand thought,Not today, assholes. Not today.Until the whistle blew, hands were pulling me to my feet and thumping me on the back, and Kelsan Simmons was shouting, “Damn, man.Damn.You did it!” Because these were my guys. Special teams. And if we had anything to say about it, we were going to win this game.
Alix
This time, I didn’t need anyone to explain. I saw who had the ball, because I’d never looked away from him, and I was on my feet, jumping, screaming, hugging Jennifer and Nick, hugging Ben.
