Chapter 1
ONE
It had been years since I’d been to a Las Vegas Gladiators game.
Some of my earliest memories were watching the games on television with my family.
One of my best memories was traveling from Reno to Vegas to watch them play.
My stepdad had taken me as a reward for good grades or perfect attendance or something.
He’d bought me my first jersey at the stadium.
I’d worn it every game day after that, all the way until I outgrew it.
Long after the player whose name was on the back had been traded away to another team in another conference.
I’d dreamt of the day when the Gladiators would make it to the Championship game. I drew pictures of how I’d paint my face and which of my toys I’d sell in order to buy tickets.
Then I grew up.
I grew up, and I left Nevada. I moved across the country to go to college.
Unfortunately, it landed me in Foxes territory.
I tried. They weren’t direct rivals of the Gladiators, and I thought it’d be nice to be able to root for another local team, but I could not find the passion for anyone but my Gladiators.
In the ten years since I’d moved, the Gladiators and the Foxes had played each other three times.
The first time, I’d been a broke student playing college football.
The second and third times had been in Vegas.
It meant seeing my team had not been in the cards for me.
Not until today, when the Foxes and Gladiators had been paired up for the Wild Card game in the playoffs.
I bought tickets the moment they were announced, maxing out one of my credit cards to pay for a hotel room along with tickets in one of the worst sections of the stadium.
It didn’t matter. I was going to see them.
It took just over three hours to drive from King’s Bay, South Carolina up to Fayetteville.
The hotel I’d booked was within walking distance to the stadium, and the moment I checked in, I knew without a doubt that I was deep in Foxes territory.
Every person behind the front desk wore deep red and gold, and more than a few shot me less than friendly looks at the sight of my dark green jersey.
Most of the people mingling around the lobby were also wearing Foxes colors.
I’d hoped that the hotel would have a few more Gladiators fans, what with it being playoffs and everything.
I was hoping more people would have traveled from Nevada.
I dropped my overnight bag in my hotel room and walked to the stadium.
By the time I arrived, tailgating was in full swing.
Luckily, I’d already talked to a few Gladiator fans online who were planning on being at the game, which meant that I knew where some of my people would be for tailgating.
There was a lot of playful heat tossed my way, and I’ll admit that I gave it back.
I was also brimming with the certainty that all these Foxes fans would be eating their words in a few hours when the game started.
The Foxes might have been good, but they had nothing on the Gladiators.
Okay, sure, we’d barely made it into the playoffs by the skin of our teeth, and they were the second ranked team in the UC, but our schedule had been a lot harder than theirs.
Everyone knew the UC North was a cake division.
Once I found the tailgate I was looking for, the day shifted.
There were Gladiator fans everywhere. I was surrounded by a sea of green and silver.
Drinks were flowing freely, and the food?
God, I missed tailgate food. Sure, I got some of it when I went to college games in King’s Bay.
That was the local team I could support, having played for them in college, and I’d heard rumors that at least one of the current Royals was being looked at by the Gladiators for the next draft class.
(But then, wasn’t that a rumor every year?)
The energy from the tailgate stayed with me all the way until the gates opened and everyone started to flood into the stadium.
The guys I’d talked to online weren’t anywhere near my section, so I had to separate from them.
Luckily, the tailgate let me meet a few other fans, including a woman who would be in the same section that I was.
We traveled up to the nosebleeds together, shouting greetings to fellow Gladiator fans that we passed and ignoring the razzing coming from the Foxes fans.
We were easily outnumbered three-to-one.
We separated once we reached our section.
She was in the front row, and I was closer to the back.
Once she found her seat, she turned around and waved at me.
I grinned and focused my attention on the people around me.
I spotted a few more green jerseys, as well as a few silver away variants.
I’d never liked them, as they looked like they’d been made with duct tape, but to each their own.
Honestly, I’d thought there’d be more green in my section, people who had waited until last minute to buy whatever tickets weren’t already taken up by season pass holders. I was wrong.
At least the person sitting on my right was one of the more chill Fox fans.
It was a woman with dark hair who wished me good luck and went back to paying attention to the man sitting beside her.
I focused my attention on the field, on the players warming up.
They looked so small from my seat, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t care that I couldn’t make out jersey numbers or anything like that.
I cared that I was there, watching my favorite team, for the first time in over a decade.
“Well, this is a terrible omen,” a voice muttered as I was jostled.
My head whipped to my left. There was a man taking his seat, decked head-to-toe in Foxes’ colors.
He had on a Foxes’ hat, a jersey, red pants, gold sneakers, face paint, the whole nine yards.
There wasn’t a doubt about what team he was rooting for, and honestly, I admired it.
It reminded me of my childhood fantasies, of what I’d be wearing if I ever got to watch a game like this live.
Maybe I should’ve given my inner child what he wanted and went all out like this guy.
Except he was talking about terrible omens, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell he meant.
Nothing happening on the field could be considered a bad omen, not for either team.
At least not that I could see, and unless this guy had superhuman sight, there was no way he’d be able to see something I didn’t from where we were.
“What is?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
“Being stuck sitting next to a member of the losing team,” he shot back.
Oh fuck. He was one of those fans. The kind that took the game too seriously and acted like they’d never had their heads removed from their asses.
I smiled a strained smile and shifted in my seat.
I was not going to engage. I was here to enjoy my game, and he was going to be the one eating his words later anyway.
I had faith in my Gladiators, and I wasn’t going to let this guy sour any of it.
It just wasn’t going to happen.
“I mean a really bad omen. Any way you’d consider changing seats?”
“No,” I told him bluntly. “If you think the Foxes will lose because of where you’re sitting, you’ve either got an incredibly high opinion of yourself or an incredibly low opinion of your team.”
So much for not engaging, but at least it shut him up.
He turned his attention to the person beside him, and I could hear the grating sound of his voice as he started replaying all the Foxes greatest hits for the season.
Which, okay, there were a lot of them. Anyone who followed the ALF knew that the Foxes had a great run that season.
Statistically. I still stood by the fact that they were not a better team than the Gladiators and had only done so well because they were in an easy division and had an easier schedule.
He’d be eating his words later, I reminded myself again.
Unfortunately, the game started well for him.
And he had to make it known at every possible moment. When the opening drive resulted in a member of the Foxes defense not only intercepting the ball but scoring off the interception, he started chirping at me. “Your QB knows he’s supposed to throw to his team, right?”
“Lucky play,” I grumbled. I wasn’t going to let him get to me. It was just one play. One really bad play, admittedly, but I wasn’t going to let my faith in my team waver just because some asshole decided to get mouthy after a play that went well for his team.
I had to remind myself of this when he started loudly singing the Foxes’ fight song when their first drive ended in another touchdown.
The Gladiators were down fourteen, and we weren’t even ten minutes into the game.
But, on the other hand, we weren’t even ten minutes into the first quarter.
There was plenty of time to turn it around, and the Gladiators’ season had been full of surprise comebacks.
All year they’d start down and come back on top.
I bit my tongue to keep from telling the man this.
The next three drives ended in punts, but the Gladiators got the ball back right before the two-minute warning. I watched as my team expertly moved the ball down the field and into the end zone just as the buzzer for the first quarter sounded.
“They got lucky!” the man beside me shouted, but I ignored him. Again.
By the time the first half ended, the teams were tied at fourteen, and I was getting tired of the man’s constant stream of shit talk.
When the Foxes were on a good run, he was insufferable.
When the Gladiators scored, he was even worse.
I thought maybe I’d get a break at halftime.
Most people used that time to go to the bathroom and maybe get a beer or something.
Not Mr. Chirpy.
He stayed in his seat, and his mouth kept running.
I lasted two minutes before I got up and moved.
I walked down to the girl I’d talked to at the tailgate.
She’d been having a great experience during the game.
One of the people next to her was a Gladiators fan that had flown up from Florida, and they’d spent the game talking about their favorite moments.
The person on her other side was a Foxes fan, but one of the fun ones that we’d encountered.
Kind of like the woman I was sitting by.
It seemed like I was the only one that got the amazing luck of sitting next to one of the bad fans.
And I still had a half left to go.
I returned to my seat as the game started back up, and it seemed like halftime recharged the man’s mouth.
He kept up a running stream of commentary as the game continued.
Every time something good happened for his team, he sang that fight song.
Off key. Right in my face. When something good happened to the Gladiators, he acted like the world was ending and started shit talking.
“Can you give it a fucking rest?” I finally snapped when he began crowing after our kicker missed a fifty-two-yard field goal attempt.
“Can’t take the heat?” he shot back.
“Maybe if it was actual heat. It’s lukewarm. Like your team.”
“We’re not the ones that just missed a field goal.”
“No, you’re just the one down ten.”
“We’ll get it back. Are you looking forward to crying the whole way back to Nevada?”
I wanted to correct him—both on his pronunciation of Nevada and the fact that I no longer lived there—but honestly?
It wasn’t his business. He was just sore because the Gladiators were proving what I already knew: we were the superior team.
By the time the third quarter ended, we were up twenty-eight to seventeen.
We’d gotten two more touchdowns, and they’d only managed a field goal, so suck on that.
The fourth quarter got more heated. His mouth kept running, especially when the Foxes got another touchdown. Their defense kept the Gladiators locked down, and with two minutes left, they had the ball.
My heart was racing, and I started chewing my nails.
It was a bad habit I thought I’d managed to get under control.
Guess not. “Oh, you’re nervous, because you already know how this is going to end,” the guy teased.
There was a nasty tone to his voice that made me want to shove a football down his throat.
“That your team is going to choke?” I countered. Because I’d long since given up on not sinking down to this man’s level. There was only so much I could take. I was only human, and nearly three hours of constantly being heckled was enough to get on anyone’s nerves.
“That my team is going to go onto the next round and win it—”
His words were cut off as his quarterback threw the ball. Straight into the hands of Montgomery Baird, a third year Safety for the Gladiators and one of my favorite players.
I jumped to my feet and started screaming as Baird began running down the field.
I could feel the tension rising across the stadium. The Gladiator fans were screaming in excitement, and the Foxes fans were screaming for their offense to tackle him, stop him, anything to keep him from finding the end zone.
And their screams were in vain.
Baird scored six, and our kicker got the extra point.
I took back every bad thing I’d said about him all season.
He was clearly the best kicker in the entire American League of Football.
There might have been time left on the clock, but the game was over.
Our quarterback knelt out the clock, and I got to enjoy the fact that the dumbass next to me was stuck eating his words.
I couldn’t even hear whatever he was saying over the sound of my cheers and screams of delight. We were moving onto the next round of the playoffs, and he was dealing with the fact that his team’s season was over.
And to make everything better, I was never going to have to see him again. I guess I really was a bad omen for him, and I couldn’t be any happier about it.