Imaginary Lines (33 page)

It wasn’t anything silly, like that my fear of heights had magically been cured. No, my feet still tingled like crazy, the sparks wrapping all up my calves. But I wasn’t ignoring them. I wasn’t trying to smother them. I was
reveling.
“I did it!”

“Hey there.” Humor laced his voice, and warmth enveloped me as his arms went around my shoulders. “Careful.”

I twisted around to see him. “Abe! I’m flying. We’re
flying
.” Wonder filled my voice, my entire being. “This is amazing!”

“It’s—”

But I didn’t wait for him to finish that sentence. Instead, I turned and curled my hands in his lapels and pulled him forward, kissing him for all my worth.

For half a heartbeat, Abe was surprised, but then he curved one hand behind my back and bent me slightly, deepening the kiss until we weren’t just breathless from height and air. Not only my feet tingled, but my whole body, and now it felt good and right. I pulled back slightly and rubbed his cold red nose with mine. “Abraham. I love you.”

“And I love you.”

I beamed at him. He was right. Everything else was little and small here amongst the clouds and wind, where the only thing that mattered was him and me, me and him, and how much we loved each other.

Chapter Twenty-Six

But after New Year’s, we had to return home and face reality.

If I’d thought America’s collective consciousness would have forgotten us over the holidays, I’d been mistaken. If anything, the interest had festered as people talked it over with family members, spreading the story like a disease across the country as travelers gossiped and moved and spawned new stories of how awful I was.

Worst, football fever had hit its high point. The playoffs had arrived; the AFC Wildcard Round would be held this Saturday. The Leopards would be playing against the Patriots in the Divisional Round in a week. Not Abe, of course, since he was done for the season. But it would definitely keep him in the spotlight.

And if the Leopards made it to the Super Bowl in the first week of February, he and my story were unlikely to leave that hot glow of attention anytime in the coming months.

More networks had picked up my story, and enough people were asking questions that in the second week of January, as the world iced over and snow filled the city, the commissioner of the National Football League called a press conference.

* * *

That night, snow fell. The lack of wind meant it drifted down peacefully, large, cartwheelings shards of ice that blanketed the world. Everything seemed whitened—the sky, the ground, the air. A pervasive silence filled the city, calming to my ears. It was the sound of peace.

It reigned everywhere except inside me.

I expected to be locked out of the press conference, but to my surprise Tanya said no one was being blocked. Interest of transparency and all that, I supposed.

Nervous energy flowed through me as we stepped into the hall. I’d downed two coffees, which had been a bad idea, and now I was so wired that my mind wouldn’t stop spinning. I kept my body perfectly controlled, though, scared that if I relaxed even the slightest bit I’d be unable to restrain myself.

I wished Abe could be next to me, but he couldn’t, of course. He’d be up on stage, given that he was one of the key players in the whole thing, and currently one of the most visible Leopards. Instead, I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the guys, and their support did wonders to calm my breathing.

The lights flickered. A level voice came on through the loudspeakers: “The conference will be starting in two minutes.”

The journalists’ burble of conversation continued straight up until the two-minute mark, and then vanished in a splash of silence.

Gregory Philip strode out on stage, followed by Coach Paglio and the Leopards’ general manager.

And Abraham.

That cut straight through me. I’d known he wouldn’t be able to make any public stand with me, but it hurt to see him visibly on Philip’s side. I was sure he’d been pressured, though, that he’d been forced to preserve his career, but it still hurt.

While I saw him right away, he didn’t find me until a murmur circulated the room, and the people closest to me stepped away as everyone else pushed closer for a better look. Abe had only to follow the direction of the stir, and then his gaze connected with mine.

Philip stepped up to the microphone.

His speech was short and sweet. It lay out in no uncertain terms that the Leopards and Loft Athletics would be going forward with their training facility, and that there was no truth to any of the statements put forward in the article by one Tamar Rosenfeld. They were, of course, conducting an interior investigation into all athletic gear, but so far nothing negative had been found.

“And I believe that is all we have to say.” Gregory Philip stepped back, smiling that smooth and oily smile of his.

Behind him, Abraham raised his head, solemn and unmoving. “That is not all.”

Every player—like every team, every season—has a narrative. Abe’s centered on his amiability. Everyone liked Abe. Easygoing Ave. Good-natured Abe. Never one to get riled up or crash a car or flip a reporter off. Never all over the whole kill-your-enemies-before-they-take-your-women pregame diatribe. He was levelheaded. Well-adjusted. Likeable.

That made people underestimate him.

The attention of the room shifted, fluttering like a startled bird and resettling on Abraham. It was impossible to gainsay, even though the commissioner clearly wanted to. The lights could have plunged us into darkness and chaotic noise could have drowned out his words, but the press still would have followed Abe to find out what his uncensored words were.

I would have followed Abe anywhere, anyways, and I could only hope now that he would not do the same for me.

He stepped closer to the microphone. There was no doubt in his posture, no uncertainty in what he was about to say, and no possibility that the truth of his words would be doubted by those who heard them. His rich and steady voice rolled through the room. “I stand by Tamar Rosenfeld.”

Shock rippled through the room like an earthquake’s aftershocks—an unexpected, off-balancing rumble. Philip turned and stared at Abe. I could see it in the owner’s face. He expected Abe to bend. To stop. Because he was easygoing Abe. Good-natured Abe. He didn’t rock the boat.

Except they had gotten it all wrong, just like I had. Abe was no reed, no obstacle that could be pushed aside or avoided. He was the river itself, flexible, moveable, and ultimately able to carve paths through stone.

“What’s that?” Gregory Philip said.

Abraham smiled. His smile said he was a river. That you could try to deter him or reroute him, but if it took a thousand years he would still carve the path he wanted, through stone if necessary. “She reported the truth when people preferred not to hear it; she has stood by her convictions when people slurred her. We may not be happy with the results and ramifications of the truth, but that does not mean we can pretend it doesn’t exist. She has done what we have asked for in the press; she reported on the shortcuts taken by corporations for monetary gain, which is illegal and immoral. We seem to expect, sometimes, that the press will just ignore some of the choices we make when we don’t think they’re particularly harmful, but we don’t get to pick and choose what they cover for our own benefit.

“I stand by her, and I am proud of her, and I am disappointed in myself for not speaking up sooner.”

He stepped off the platform and down the steps. The crowd parted before him like helpless magnets pushed away. His path was clear and direct, and only I didn’t move, as it led straight to me.

His hand wrapped around mine as he reached my side. “Come on, let’s go.”

And now the startled path widened enough for both of us, and we walked out of the conference room and into the city lights.

We’d walked for at least three minutes through the falling snow before I spoke. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I did. But more importantly, I wanted to.” He stopped walking and pinned me with that intense, brilliant gaze. “I love you, Tamar. I want you to be happy, I want you with me, and I want
us.
Everything else can come and go. Would I be sad to see football go? Yes. But it’s not the most important thing.”

High and mixed emotions shot through me. “I don’t deserve you.”

He stared. “You don’t deserve me?
I
don’t deserve
you
.” He took my face in his hands. “Tamar, you are the most incredible, amazing person I have ever met. You are brilliant, you are funny, you are wonderful. It is my privilege and my pleasure to be allowed to love you.”

I couldn’t stop grinning, but there were tears of happiness in the corners of my eyes too. “Now you’re just being silly.”

He hauled me toward him and our lips met in a searing blaze of need and desire.

I had no idea how we reached his apartment without being arrested for public indecency, but soon we had slammed the door behind us. I melted under his touch, utterly powerless to resist him. My coat fell away, puddling on the floor as Abe drew me closer. His heat blazed away the last of the cold until I was warm as a furnace. Our hands moved over each other with the familiarity of bone-deep knowledge and heart-whole desire. I pressed my lips against his, trying to convey everything in me, and he answered with a groan. It made my body shake, that sound of his undoing.

Clothes fell away as we made our way to the bed. We fell into it as though onto a cloud. Every breath I took shook me.

His hand curved around my breast as his mouth went to the other. I arched into him. We tumbled across the bed, until he was on his back, and I was sprawled above him. We were laughing and shaking. I framed his face and kissed my way from his ear to his jaw before finally reaching his mouth.

He flipped me over and devoured me with tongue and tooth until I was lost and mindless, a limp, pliant body devoted only to his touch. He kissed me with fierce sweetness, with blazing loyalty. “I love you.”

I moaned, and then returned his kiss with fire. “And I you.”

His fingers, firm and steady, played down my side, and then slipped into my warmth, teasing me as I twisted beneath him, until I was hot and ready and dying for him. I nipped at his ear, and then trailed one hand between us, down the hard planes of his stomach and lower still, my palm moving with daring sureness. He rewarded me with a deep, shuddering groan, and pinned me to the bed. With one thrust, he buried himself deep inside me. A sharp noise of pleasure burst out, and I could feel his smile against my shoulder.

He withdrew and then slid back in, slow at first, and then increasing in speed and force. It drove me mad with desire, and I rocked against him, helpless and wanton, meeting each thrust with my own, until I was wild with want and empty of thought. We were hot and fast, light lightning, a storm after a dry spell. We were the roaring ocean, the brightness of the moon, the inexplorable tide that tied them together. I let out a cry and clung to him, and he to me, and we were lost together.

Lost and found.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Work the next day was interesting.

When I stepped into the office, everyone started cheering. Design, marketing, finance, people whom I didn’t even speak to on a weekly basis. Jin and Mduduzi had noisemakers. Even Tanya leaned against the wall, arms crossed but a smile on her face.

“That was something,” Carlos said as I made my way to my seat amongst a sea of congratulatory cheers and pats on the back. “‘I stand with Tamar.’ I hope he proposed.”

I turned red. “Now you’re being ridiculous. But yes, it was sweet.”

Everyone groaned at that understatement, and grinning, I dropped into my chair.

The tide of public opinion ran swift and strong. It turned against the League on the hairpin of the interview, and was reinforced as the woodwork fell away to reveal other figures. The doctor I had spoken to publicly stepped forward to confirm our findings. A respected businessman, running for city council on the promise of better health care, worked it into his speech. Rachael Hamilton, whose name I’d refused to give in my original article, now stepped up alongside her boyfriend. And after they backed me publicly, the players flocked to my side en masse.

And the masses fell under the repeated sound bite of Abraham saying, “I stand by her and I am proud of her.”

And it was not so long before the League called a second press conference.

“Of course we take these allegations very seriously.” The commissioner of the NFL paused and looked around the room, so that we could all admire the gravity he’d etched into his expression. He did not seem pleased to be here, in our cold, snowy city, handling a PR mess that would lose people millions in the fallout. “Our first priority has always been the welfare of our players. We’ll not only be conducting our own investigations into the safety of the helmets and athletic gear used by our players, we’ve hired outside investigators.” He cleared his throat. “And the Leopards will no longer be going forward with the training facility as sponsored by Loft Athletics.”

* * *

Tanya called me into her office at the end of January. She was blunt and to the point, and since I had been expecting it, I was able to constrain some of my unhappiness. “You can’t report on the Leopards anymore, you know.”

I stared out the window at the endless sky, winter blue and bright. Far above, puffs of white lay in easy formations, while all the buildings that interfered were touched with the cold, unforgiving sharpness of morning sun. “I know.”

She shifted behind me, and Tanya rarely shifted. “You’re too close.”

My lips curved. In bed with the team, in fact.

But I still didn’t want to say goodbye. I loved this team, these players. I loved how they laughed with me and protected me and how they’d started to now call me “RB” for Rosenberg, which shouldn’t have made me laugh, but did anyways.

It would be a lot of work, learning a new team’s habits, getting them to trust me. I would have to overcome the fact that I was the reporter who had broken the silence, and that I was involved with a member of a different New York team. It wouldn’t be easy. It wouldn’t be quick.