Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
For every girl that doesn’t treat him right, is another girl out there that’ll eat onion rings off his boner.
—Merrill to Magnolia
MAGNOLIA
The one good thing about having a different flight time meant that we got to take some people with us who weren’t originally going to be able to go due to work.
Those people being Lysander, Beau’s nephew, little “don’t call me Frankie,” and Beau’s mother.
Who was noticeably not there, thank God, was Seraphina.
Whether she took a different flight or was in jail, I didn’t know.
I didn’t want to ask, either. The less I reminded Beau of his sister, the better.
Plus, Boone looked like he was one second away from cold-blooded murder on his sister’s behalf.
Ida Bell was noticeably heartbroken.
His sister had returned to the hospital this morning per the request of Boone and Nettie.
Now, we were walking into the stadium with our team, and the pall still hung over us like a black cloud.
The team was talkative, but quite subdued. Not something you’d ever expect when you were walking into the championship game for the women’s professional soccer finals.
But there we were.
As usual, we were led into the visiting locker room by a woman that looked like they threw up Texas on her.
If I’d had to choose, I wouldn’t have chosen my old team to play in the championship game, but there we were anyway.
“You ready?”
I looked at Nettie who looked at me with excited eyes.
The excitement was contagious, and by the time we were walking into the stadium an hour later, we were our normal, happy team again.
Well, mostly.
But Nettie and I put on a good front for our team.
By the time we were all lining up to start the game, the national anthem playing full volume throughout the stadium, I was bouncing on my toes ready to play.
Nettie hip-checked me on the way to the fifty-yard line, and I fist-bumped my defense before heading back to the keeper and saying, “You ready?”
Kaylee nodded, her face a frown of worry. “Ready, Freddy.”
I grinned, Beau’s words coming out of her mouth making me smile stupidly at her.
She laughed at my expression. “You’re so far gone, my friend.”
“I am,” I agreed, looking up in the stands to find the man I was so far gone about.
I found him in the stands this time, Iris on her bottom beside him waving excitedly when she noticed me looking.
I waved back and looked back to Beau, who blew me a kiss that I caught and pressed to my heart. When he winked, I turned to focus on the game.
The whistle blew, and they immediately kicked it left and out, touching one of our players on the way, causing the team to come close enough for a throw-in that could possibly get them in a scoring opportunity.
My lips twitched when I saw Texas’s best thrower come up.
What it also did was leave their defense short because their best thrower also happened to be their center mid.
I whistled at Nettie, who looked at me with raised brows.
I gave her the signal and she knew to be ready to run for a through ball.
The ref blew the whistle to play, and my old teammate threw it in, exactly where I expected her to throw it. We’d done the same play a hundred times in the exact same scenario.
The ball came exactly where I was expecting it to, allowing me to get there before the midfielder could make her play. With one solid kick, I booted it out of the defense and straight to Nettie’s waiting feet.
She took one touch and shot it from the eighteen, before any of the defense was close enough to stop her.
The ball was a perfectly placed missile, landing in the top right corner of the goal, much to the goalie’s dismay.
I squealed, raising my hands above my head and hollering her last name. “Thatta girl, Windsor!”
We met halfway and slammed into a hug, our teammates surrounded us with excitement.
That was exactly what I wanted for the rest of the game.
Alas, my old team learned from their mistake and didn’t do that again.
They played high, forcing Nettie to stay farther back than she wanted to avoid the offside calls.
They double-teamed her, too.
But by double-teaming her, they also allowed our midfielder to run circles around them and distribute the ball anywhere it needed to go.
By the end of the first half, we were still one to zero, but we’d dominated the game.
As always, Coach Eddie—she was Coach Eddie to me when we were on the field and Eddie when we weren’t—gave the best pep talks. By the time that we were ready to go back in after halftime, we were in good spirits.
The other team came out with a vengeance, though, and hammered us with shots.
Unfortunately for them, all of them were too far out, and our great goalie was able to save every single one of them. The wind that was against us the first half was now on our side, making the shots they were trying to take utterly impossible to get in.
They kept trying, though, and started to play hard and rough—way rougher than they should have been—letting their irritation and frustration show.
Some roughness was expected, seeing as we were playing professional soccer. However, the amount of roughness they were demonstrating was reckless and thoughtless.
There was no worrying about the officials this game, though. It was too high-profile, and there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t watching this game with the scrutiny to lose jobs if they weren’t careful.
At one point, the center defender fouled Nettie in the box, giving her the opportunity for a penalty kick. A penalty kick that she missed.
However, the team was ready with the follow-up, and we were able to get it in with a header from our defensive midfielder.
My voice was hoarse as I met them mid-field.
When we set up for the next kick off, the time showed we had eleven minutes left to play.
One of the players muttered something to me that sounded suspiciously like “bitch” and I side-eyed her.
“I’m sorry, what?”
She turned her back on me, and I watched the ball as it once again sailed out and left.
I didn’t fall for the same trick this time, and neither did the rest of the defense.
No one touched the ball this time, allowing our midfield to advance the ball up the field with a throw-in that went well over thirty yards, thanks to the wind.
It fell perfectly at Nettie’s feet, and she ran it in so fast that no one was able to prepare.
Instead of shooting it herself, though, she crossed it to the other side, allowing our left wing to head it into the goal.
That was the moment that the other team started to play dangerously.
They were performing fouls that were close to injuring us, and not just stopping the play.
One such foul caused our left wing to go off the field with a knee injury that I prayed wasn’t anything too terrible.
In the last two minutes of the game, I was the one fouled in the box, having come up for a corner kick.
The breath left my lungs when I took an elbow to the throat.
I hit the ground hard, having trouble catching my breath for a second that caused me to panic slightly.
Nettie dropped down on her haunches and blew in my face.
I blinked, then took a deep breath that cleared the panic from my nerve endings.
“You okay?”
I nodded, holding out my hand.
I glared at my old teammate, who had just taken me out in such a dirty way.
“Was that necessary?” I grumbled.
She turned her back on me.
The ref put the ball on the penalty kick line, and Nettie shoved me toward it. “Me?”
The clock was counting down toward zero, having only eighteen seconds left on the clock. “Get to it.”
I stepped up to the goal and waited for the whistle.
The ref blew, and I faced my old goalie.
I’d taken thousands of penalty kicks off of her in my life. But the bad thing about knowing her tricks, she also knew mine.
This goal ultimately didn’t matter, but I didn’t like the dirty way in which they’d played the last twenty minutes.
I took the shot, and the ball went so far and high to the right that she had no hope of saving it.
The net swished as the ball sank into the back right corner, and the buzzer sounded, signaling the end of the game.
I was dog piled, and was laughing uncontrollably moments later.
“We did it!” Nettie cried.
“We did it,” I confirmed.
There were a lot of sweaty hugs passed around, and then there were all the interviews, followed by the ceremony awarding us our championship win.
Overall, the day went just as well as could be expected, considering.
When Beau finally met me with Iris holding on to his pant leg, I was more than ready to get to the locker room to change and then get out of the state.
No offense, because I loved Texas with my whole heart, but I felt like I was about to get jumped by my old teammates, they were glaring at me so hard.
“You did so good, Mama!”
God, I loved that she was talking so much.
I had the man at her side to thank for that.
“Thank you, Iris.” I hunched down. “Are you okay with a hug?”
She wrinkled her nose. “After you shower.”
I giggled. “I can do that.”
She kept hold of Beau’s pants as we wound our way through the crowd.
I was beside her the entire time, my gaze mostly on her, when I saw the arm that went around her waist.
I cried out in anger as I turned and reached for my girl.
I blinked when I came face-to-face with a cop who was holding my child to his chest.
“What the fuck?” I cried out. “What are you doing?”
The crowd around us went still at my yell.
Beau took a threatening step toward them as Iris started to scream bloody murder.
Everyone winced, and there was not a single person in that stadium who wasn’t watching now.
“We were informed this child was kidnapped from her father.”
“That child is my child,” I disagreed, reaching for her. “Give her to me right now.”
“Sorry.” Two other cops came to block my way. “Until we know for sure, and you can provide proper paperwork, that won’t be happening.”
Iris continued to yell.
“This is her child,” all of my teammates started to encircle the group of five cops. “Give her back!”
The trigger-happy one to Iris’s left put his hand on the butt of his firearm.
I tensed.
“She’s autistic,” I said. “You touching her is causing her distress. She hates when people touch her that she doesn’t know. And she even has trouble with me sometimes.”
I felt Beau’s hand clench on to my hip, and I had to force myself not to reach for her again.
“Officer,” Beau said quietly. “You’re scaring her. She’s terrified, look.”
The officer looked but didn’t seem to care.
“And I’m not sure what your partner there is hoping to accomplish by placing his hand on that gun, but if he decided to shoot, there are hundreds of innocent bystanders that are in the line of fire, even if he does hit what he’s aiming at.”
“Give her back!” The crowd closed in. “That’s her child!”
Hell, even my old team was joining in.
Vanessa, the goalie who’d been crying earlier, was holding up her phone. “Look. That’s her and Iris when Iris was eighteen months. This is for real her child.”
“We’ve been told that the child was kidnapped at birth.”
I snorted. “Absolutely not.”
But inside, I was panicking.
“We have her birth certificate,” Beau stated stiffly. “We can get you any proof that you need.”
“You can get it to us, but we’re still going to the hospital and getting a DNA test,” the cop declared.
Again, that panic decided to rise inside of me.
“She has one,” Beau said, sliding his phone into his pocket that I hadn’t been aware of until now. “It’s all been sent via email to your office. Now, give her back to us, right now.”
The officers shifted on their feet.
Iris clawed and scratched the man holding her, going right for his eyes.
Unfortunately for the officer, Iris had a spork in her hand from her snow cone that was dropped at some point during her getting yanked toward the man.
She raked it down the man’s face and carved out deep grooves across his face, and I know that she got his eye, too.
He all but threw her to the ground, and the entire crowd gasped.
Iris screamed in pain, and I looked at her tiny arm to see that it was not looking right.
I picked her up before any of the other officers could reach for her, pulling her protectively into my arms.
“That’s enough!” Beau bellowed, blocking the officers from getting through without violence. “We can follow you anywhere you want us to go.”
The officer who’d snatched my girl had his hand covering his eye.
And oh, my god. His eyeball was hanging out of the socket and blood was pouring down his face.
Holy fuck.
“Arrest them!” one of them said.
“For what, exactly?” Boone asked. “They haven’t done anything wrong.”
“That child is dangerous…”
“Oh, get the fuck out.”