The Big Hit Read online

  Boom.

  That's the sound from the football field when Knox Lynch takes down the offense. He’s big and strong, the best defensive end in the league. Tough. Scary. Dumb. At least, that’s all that most people seem to see of him. Except…

  BOOM.

  That’s also the sound Daisy McKenzie’s heart makes when it beats hard against her ribs when she’s anxious and worried. She’s doing great now—she’s moved beyond her past and is focused on her future, taking steps that lead her to independence and happiness, like getting her degree and working as an art conservator. Yes, she’s doing great. Except…

  BOOM.

  That’s the sound of two lives colliding when Daisy and Knox meet. And the sound of both of their hearts, when they start to beat for each other.

  THE BIG HIT

  Jamie Bennett

  Copyright © 2019 by Jamie Bennett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in a book review. Please contact the author at [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Book cover by Angela Haddon Book Cover Design

  Part One: Spring

  Chapter 1

  “Let’s welcome to the show the biggest guest I think we’ve ever had—in terms of size.” The audience laughed. “Here he is, the United Football Confederation’s Woodsmen star defensive end, Knox Lynch!”

  The giant of a man walked onto the stage from behind the red curtain as the audience clapped and cheered. For someone so tall, so broad, he walked very carefully. Controlled, like a cat. His dark hair hung thick and straight over his shoulders, partially obscuring his high cheekbones and the corners of his eyes, those crazily-colored eyes. Knox settled himself in the chair, and you could hear it creak under his weight. He dwarfed it. He also dwarfed the desk of the late-night host seated next to him, and the late-night host himself. Marcus Tagarela seemed almost child-sized next to his guest.

  “Hello, Knox!” the host greeted him. “I feel like I should call you Mr. Lynch,” he added with a smile, and the audience laughed.

  Knox Lynch didn’t answer, or even acknowledge that he had heard the words. Instead, he looked at a point off into the distance.

  “We’re glad to have you here!” continued Marcus Tagarela, flashing another bright-white smile at his guest. “You don’t do a lot of interviews!” Pause, no response. “Do you?”

  “No.” Knox said the one word, and then just sat still. Like, incredibly still. He didn’t move a muscle in his body or his face.

  Tagarela laughed. It sounded a little forced. “Well, let’s talk football. It looks like your team is involved in some interesting trades now, in the off-season. The Woodsmen have a great chance of making the playoffs next year, right?”

  There was a long pause, a very long pause. “Maybe,” Knox said. He barely even moved his lips.

  “That would be great!” The host looked down at the cards in his hand. You could see his Adam’s apple jump around. “How is it to play with Davis Blake?”

  “He’s a good quarterback.” His voice was deep and gravelly.

  “Lucky thing for the Woodsmen!” the TV host agreed.

  The giant now turned his head and stared at Marcus Tagarela. It didn’t seem like he blinked.

  “So the playoffs…” Marcus’ voice was higher than before. He leaned back in his chair, away from his guest. He nodded several times, and bent his notecards back and forth. Back and forth.

  Knox kept staring at him. The host kept meeting his eyes, then jerking his own gaze away. He seemed to shrivel, shrink down in his chair. Neither of them spoke. A clock appeared at the bottom of the screen, counting off the seconds of silence. Seven, eight, nine…

  “Let’s go to commercial,” Marcus said, and as the camera panned out, he was wiping his forehead. There had been 11 seconds of silence. Knox Lynch still hadn’t moved, and the video ended.

  “That’s fucking hilarious!” one of the girls watching it howled. She slapped the library table with her hand, making the laptop screen rattle. They were supposed to be quiet in here. “Play it again.”

  “Oh my God, I love the clock. Who added that? It’s too funny,” the other woman agreed. She tapped the glass to restart the video.

  I walked quickly away from their table and over to my book cart before they saw me hovering behind them, also watching the screen. I had already seen it—everyone in northern Michigan had already seen it, I was sure, and probably most of the football fans in the United States. It was funny to most people, how freaked out the host had gotten, how his hands had shaken holding his notecards as the big, scary guy stared him down. How Knox Lynch had sat there in silence, how the audience had fallen silent, and the band, until you probably could have heard a pin drop in the TV studio.

  But it wasn’t funny to me. It made me feel sorry for the comedian who hosted the show, because he had been made to look like an idiot who couldn’t do his job of asking stupid questions and making people laugh.

  It made me feel sorrier for Knox Lynch, who was now making the internet rounds as an even bigger idiot. A dumb football player who could barely string together a sentence and who had scared the crud out of the funny TV host just by staring at him. I heard the video play again behind me, “Let’s welcome to the show the biggest guest I think we’ve ever had—in terms of size…”

  I walked through the study tables, slowly pushing my cart and picking up abandoned books as I went along, making things neat and tidy. Maybe it was odd that I liked to work here so much, with how I felt about silence. But the library at Emelia Schaub College wasn’t scarily silent like some places could be, or oppressively humiliating, like the Knox Lynch interview. The library was just quiet and calm, and I loved everything about it. I loved the books and their musty aroma as the pages rustled, I loved the colored shafts of light from the stained-glass windows high on the wall above the West Stacks. In the winter, the library was a cozy cave, and in the summer, a cool refuge. I pushed the cart and it gently squeaked, squeaked, squeaked along in front of me. I even loved the squeaky cart.

  “Hi. Excuse me, hello.” One of the women who had been watching the video on the laptop of the terrible interview held out a thick volume to me. “I don’t need this one anymore.” She still spoke too loudly for the library.

  I looked briefly at the title of her book before I put it on my cart: Marsupial Mating in the Cenozoic Era. I glanced up at the woman.

  “I wasn’t really reading it,” she explained. “I don’t care about kangaroos humping. There was a cute guy who was shelving where I got it.”

  I knew who she meant, because only one cute guy worked in the library. “That’s Solomon.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Cool name! What else do you know about him?”

  “He’s married. To another man.”

  “Ah, fuck. Married, maybe, but not gay also. Even I can’t deal with that double whammy. Oh well.” She looked around the library, dark eyes flicking from spot to spot. She reminded me of a beautiful little squirrel, with those bright eyes, her tawny hair, her quick movements and speech. I meant, if squirrels talked. “Where would you go? To meet someone here?” she asked. “Like, on campus.”

  “Me?” Oh, she was hiding acorns under the wrong tree with that question. “I don’t…”

  “You have a boyfriend, right? I did too, until last month. He wasn’t into the distance dating thing.” She sighed.
“It’s hard when your girlfriend is two hundred miles away and can’t blow you on an as-needed basis.”

  I nodded. “I guess it would be.”

  The squirrel girl laughed. “I didn’t like him too much, anyway.” She held up her pinky finger and made a face at it. “He was, you know? I need big.”

  I could feel my mouth hanging open.

  “I’m Tatum,” she told me, and stuck out her little hand.

  “Um, nice to meet you. I’m Daisy. Daisy McKenzie.”

  Tatum looked at me, eyes narrowed. “Did you ever think of modeling? You’re beautiful and you’re so damn tall.”

  I wasn’t following this conversation very well. “I’m not beautiful or that tall.”

  “You are beautiful and compared to me, you’re a giant. Compared to me, a dog is tall. What’s your name again?”

  “Daisy.”

  Tatum nodded as if she had already known and switched topics again. “This library is a cute boy dead-zone, except for the married guy. Where’d you meet your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have one,” I told her.

  “No?” Her eyebrows raised. “I thought you said you did.”

  I just shook my head.

  “Here,” she announced. She plucked her phone out of her back pocket. “I have a group text with the girls from my yoga class. I get credit for it.”

  The class, or the texts? I wasn’t following her.

  She seemed to be waiting. “Daisy, what’s your number?” she prompted.

  “Oh!” I gave it to her. “Why are you putting me on this text?”

  “These girls always know the places to go,” she explained. “I’m over the tiny pecker, right? When are you done here?”

  “Um, six?” I was so lost, still.

  “Perfect! I have my Digital Media class, gotta run. See you then.” She scurried off, her little legs moving fast.

  “What?” I said, in a pretty loud whisper that made Solomon, the other library assistant, stick up his head from behind the circulation desk. It certainly seemed like I had agreed to something, maybe to meet up with her, or to go out? I wasn’t exactly sure.

  I mouthed “sorry” to Solomon and went back to pushing my cart. I passed the Bound Periodicals Room, some study cubicles, and went deep into Reference in the West Stacks. Squeak, squeak. My feet in my tennis shoes barely made any sound on the old wood floor. I shelved at DC-DO, then F, and then made my way further into the stacks where the bright lights of the main study area dimmed. I rolled past the aisle between H-HN and HN-HS and stopped. Huh? I pulled the cart backwards, and now instead of its pleasant squeak, it made an angry squeal at me, unused to traveling in that direction. I peered between the shelves, thinking I must have imagined what I’d thought I had seen.

  There was someone standing completely still there, at the back near the wall. He looked at me from weird, light eyes.

  Shifter! my mind shrieked, and simultaneously, my mouth made a terrible yelping sound. I took two quick steps back, and as I did, he came forward some, so that he was directly beneath the ceiling fixture. Just a man, after all. His dark hair swung around his face: not fur, just hair.

  And that was what I got for reading all those dumb books all the time. “Sorry,” I gasped at him, because we weren’t supposed to scream at and run from library patrons. “You startled me. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded at me and stepped back, out of the light. He faded into the darkness between the books, but I could still see his eyes watching me.

  What in the ever-living hell? I pushed the cart forward quickly now, so that the squeaks shot out rapid fire, and I shelved as fast as I could, my mind racing. It couldn’t have been…no. I was just off-kilter from my strange conversation with that girl, Tatum. It couldn’t have been…no way. I almost managed to talk myself out of believing in what I had thought I’d seen, but I still looked down the aisle when I went back past HN-HS. Just in case.

  No, he wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere in Reference, as far as I could tell, and I peered around the oversized books, into the Special Collections room, and in Government Documents, too, as I pushed the cart back to the circulation desk. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t anywhere, and by now I was almost completely sure that I had imagined him. Probably because I had watched that darn video of the interview so many times.

  Because it was extremely hard to believe that Knox Lynch, the starting defensive end for our Woodsmen, had been standing, hiding, in the reference stacks. I just couldn’t have been right about that.

  ∞

  “Bye, Solomon,” I said. “See you tomorrow.” My co-worker wasn’t much for chitchat, so he only waved. If he had been a talker, I might have relayed what I thought I had seen—who I thought I had seen standing in the library that afternoon.

  But no. No way, that hadn’t been Knox Lynch back there. Because first, why? Why would a famous football player be lurking around the Emelia Schaub College reference books—what in the heck would he have been doing there? And second, if Knox Lynch really had been in the library, I wouldn’t have been the only one to have seen him. And if anyone had spotted him coming through the front door, there would have been a near-riot among the library patrons and employees.

  Because the Woodsmen football team was an obsession around here, and the players were bigger than any celebrity out of Hollywood. My brother’s wife had worked at the big, local aquatic center as a swim coach, and one time, the former Woodsmen long snapper had come to go to the pool with his kids. Just the guy who threw the ball between his legs so that someone else could kick it, not the quarterback, or a flashy wide receiver, or a running back with tons of touchdowns, or the star defensive end, Knox Lynch. The other people at the pool had gotten so crazy that the staff had to clear out the room so that the poor long snapper and his kids could swim alone, and still fans had stood at the door, smashing their faces against the little pane of safety glass and trying to take pictures through it.

  We didn’t have any other professional sports, except the ones in Detroit. Maybe Emelia Schaub College had a ski team, I thought, but that was it, and they weren’t exactly drawing a big crowd to their races. We had the Woodsmen, and people drove from everywhere to see their games, to watch the Woodsmen Dames cheerleading team, to laugh at the antics of Nutty the Chipmunk and Hank the Hunter, the team mascots. If Knox had been in the library of our small college, word would have gotten out.

  I shook my head. If I hadn’t actually seen Knox back there, then I had hallucinated a 300-pound man, which was pretty scary thing. I didn’t have a ton of confidence in my mental state, despite all the work I’d done. I felt my heart beat harder and immediately started the breathing exercises I did to calm myself down. It was habit now, instinctive.

  “Daisy!” The little squirrel girl, Tatum, rushed toward me across the dark, slushy parking lot. “Ready?”

  “Um…”

  “Great! Do you want to follow me? Or we can take my car.”

  I stared at her. “I don’t know where you want me to go,” I said slowly. Now I felt like I must have missed part of our conversation earlier. Had I blacked out as well as imagining a football player? My heart beat hard again as worries about my mental health bubbled into my mind, unbidden.

  Tatum stared back at me. “We made plans, right? We’re going out! Did you want to home first? Where do you live?”

  “About an hour from here.”

  “Then come on!” She shivered as a cold wind swept around us. “Come with me so we can talk. My dad’s car.”

  I followed her without thinking, avoiding puddles that were rapidly re-freezing. “Tatum? Where are you planning to go?”

  “I’ve been writing back and forth with the yoga girls, and they say Ginger’s is the best today. What do you think?”

  I had no idea which bar would be the ‘best.’ I had never been to Ginger’s Tavern but I had driven by a few times, wondering a little what was going on inside. Probably it wouldn’t be as crowded on a Monday night, quieter. Maybe
this would be fun—I could go out, like any other college woman. I warmed to the idea a lot.

  Tatum kept throwing out names of bars and clubs, restaurants and also people I didn’t know but she seemed to think that I would. “Charlie’s the Theta president, right? He was talking about something there on Saturday.”

  “What’s the theta?”

  “The frat!” she said. “I heard it’s the best house on campus. I was a tri-Pi. You know, Pi Pi Pi. You probably heard our sorority song before.” She broke out singing, something about bonds of friendship. “You know that one, right? No? Here we go!” She stopped at a big red car, shiny and clean despite all the winter salt still on the wet roads. “Ready?” And the door flipped up like a spaceship for me to enter. Tatum scurried around to the driver’s side and hopped in.

  I put my head around the opening, hoping that I wouldn’t be decapitated by the door suspended above me. “Um, Tatum? I know where Ginger’s is, on Ash, right? I’ll meet you there. I’m parked over in the employee lot.”

  She tilted her head. “Ok. See you soon.” The doors swung down and she pulled out of the parking lot so fast that her car seemed to leave a red streak in the dusky air behind it. As I walked to my car, I took out my phone and did some recon on Ginger’s Tavern, looking at pictures of the outside and inside, familiarizing myself. That always helped when I went to new places. I followed Tatum a lot more slowly than she had gone. I drove the very nice car my brother had bought for me, safe and sturdy because when he had first given it to me, I hadn’t had a lot of driving experience. I had gotten my license when I turned 16, but then not driven for a few years and he was nervous about me on the roads. In fact, Dylan would have bought me a tank, he worried so much about me, but his wife had convinced him that I’d do better in something with wheels instead of treads.