Redemption

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Authors: Jessica Ashe
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want it,” she said. She handed me the pen she’d kept from before and asked me to sign on her back by the upper right shoulder. “You get one too, Michelle. That shirt will be worth a fortune once he’s signed it.”
    “Oliver needs to get a move on,” Michelle said.
    “Nonsense,” I replied. I resisted the temptation to ask if Michelle wanted me to sign on a breast and went to write my name on her shoulder in the same place I’d done it for Maisie. I rested my hand on her back and felt the heat from her body. She was burning up under that shirt, but was too stubborn to take it off. 
    I could smell a hint of citrus in her hair, and desperately wanted to run my fingers through it. As the pen touched her shoulder, I noticed a slight, almost imperceptible, shiver run up her spine. Was that a reaction to my touch? I’d wanted to get a reaction from her, but a cold shiver wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for.
    I finished signing Michelle’s shirt and handed the pen back to Maisie. “Have fun ladies.”
    One thing I’d never lacked on the pitch was motivation. Ever since my return to the game after the 2007 final, I’d needed to prove myself to everyone: my teammates, the fans, and myself. Now I had an added incentive. 
    Two people who meant the world to me would be sitting in the crowd. No matter what happened, today I would be giving it everything I had.

Watching Oliver play rugby was even more terrifying than watching Maisie play. None of the girls Maisie played against came close to the size of the forwards charging down Oliver at every opportunity. 
    The pace of the game stayed fast and intense throughout the entire eighty minutes, so Oliver never held on to the ball for longer than two seconds at a time. He would receive a pass and then either pass it sideways to a teammate or kick it down the field. Either way, he got charged down by someone who weighed well over two hundred pounds. 
    Tackles were a constant occurrence, but to me at least, the ones involving Oliver tended to have a little more crunch. Every time he hit the floor, there were a few nerve-wracking seconds where I didn’t think he would get up again. He always did, but that didn’t stop me being just as scared the next time he went down.
    This sport was utterly brutal. I knew that on paper it was safer than football. Maisie had explained to me hundreds of times that the helmets they wore in football actually made the game more dangerous because it encouraged head-to-head collisions which were strictly prohibited in rugby. That made some kind of sense, but I still wished Oliver were down there in some sort of padding instead of being completely exposed. 
    Mind you, having Oliver’s legs on show offered some advantages. My god, those legs had an unnatural and unhealthy impact on me. Just looking at his thighs made my own legs weak, not to mention what happened between them if I lost myself to a daydream. Oliver’s team valued his legs for how they kicked the ball, but they had a completely different kind of value to me.
    The dirtier his legs got as the game wore on, the more I wished I were in the changing room after the game to help clean them up. I crossed my own legs in my seat to try and control my lust, but it did little good. My short skirt left me feeling exposed, and that just fueled the desire inside.
    I should have worn pants, but it was a hot day, and a short skirt would help keep me cool without needing to take my top off. That was the plan anyway, but then Oliver had insisted I wear a rugby jersey so now I was sweltering under two layers. 
    I’d deflected Oliver’s suggestion that I take my top off by pretending that he was trying to undress me, but he’d noticed how odd my comment was. At some point he’d also notice that I always wore something to cover my arm, but I planned to keep making excuses as long as possible. 
    I didn’t want him to see the burn on my arm. He didn’t know about that. No one knew about it other

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