FURY: A Rio Games Romance (18 page)

A
fter their tryst
in the pool, Logan and Solomon did their best to inconspicuously return to their rooms. Solomon’s Olympics had been over for quite some time; he had no more bed checks, no coaches to please, nothing but glorious days rooting for Logan and her team and attending whatever events caught his eye. And nights spent with Logan, making love and making plans. Plans for life after Rio, plans for Tokyo four years hence, and plans, although he hadn’t told her yet, for turning Logan Lowery into Logan Kano.

The two lovebirds parted ways a safe distance from the dorms in which the USWNT were housed, for fear of Logan being caught breaking curfew. She skipped up the stairs, hair still wet, to find Savannah sitting on her bed, playing the role of concerned mother. And when Logan told her the story of the pool, of envious best friend.

“Okay, I give up. Is that Markus dude still in Rio? I need a Fijian guy in my life, I think,” Savannah pondered.

“I think he left last week. And I think he banged half the beach volleyball players here. So use that information as you will. Hey, it’s late. Where are Alyssa and Tara?” Logan asked.

“No idea. Tara was texting with some guy and left for a rendezvous, I think. Alyssa tagged along. I thought they’d be back by now.”

Logan went to take a shower and then looked forward to a good, long sleep.

* * *

S
olomon bounced
up the stairs to his room. There were athletes congregating all over the Village, in courtyards and vacated rooms, and the pool was full. Love, or more likely lust, was in the air.

Solomon walked toward his room, producing his key, when he noticed something strange. The door across the hallway from him, a room that had been empty for a week, had a light on and strange sounds coming from it. At first he thought it was a makeshift love den, but putting an ear to the door, he heard sounds that weren’t at all what he expected. A man’s voice, deep and older than what he thought an athlete would sound like, with a thick accent, maybe German, was clearly agitated:

“I don’t care about her. Only you. You! I know you love me, don’t make me hurt her to prove it to you. It should be so easy for you. It’s meant to be. You know this in your heart.”

What sounded like crying followed. A girl. Crying, whimpering. And then a deeper female voice, pleading.

No, this wasn’t fun, it didn’t sound like sex or a party. Something real, and awful, was taking place behind the door. Solomon considered going in search of security, they’d been ubiquitous with the very real threat of terrorism, but the danger sounded too present, too much like it was building up to something terrible. He had to act. The man was speaking again, angrily.

Solomon stepped back and kicked the door with all his might, right by the handle. Wood splintered in every direction, and Solomon charged into the room. The man turned, shocked at the interruption, holding a pistol. Solomon was on him in an instant, slamming him to the ground and grabbing his collar from behind to apply an inescapable chokehold. The gun went off once in the man’s hand, harmlessly discharging into the wall, and then he was slumped over, unconscious. Solomon was trembling, the adrenaline rush too much to handle, and he breathed deeply through his nose to calm himself. It took several moments before he even registered the presence of anyone else in the room – two familiar faces.

Alyssa, sitting on the bed, hands bound behind her back and a crude gag in her mouth, and Tara kneeling on the floor next to the bed. Both women’s faces bore the stain of tears.

Solomon locked eyes with Tara, whose expression changed from fear to rage. She rose up and kicked her prone assailant – kicks fueled by the better part of twenty years spent playing soccer – repeatedly in the ribcage and legs and anywhere she could land a blow.

“Tara. Tara!” Solomon called to Logan’s teammate to get her to focus. “Help Alyssa. And go get security. He’s not going anywhere. I’ve got him. Kick the gun away so he can’t get near it. I promise, he’s not going anywhere, he’s no threat to you now.”

Tara staggered back and sat next to Alyssa, working to free her of her bonds. Security arrived shortly, drawn by the gunshot.

Once all the chaos was controlled, the entire Village was swept by security. The entire USWNT was assembled by the coaches and told of the incident. A vote was held as to whether or not to play the gold medal match two days hence, and led by Alyssa and Tara the vote was unanimous. Game on.

Logan wept in Solomon’s arms after the meeting, terrified that he’d been in such danger, but overjoyed that he’d acted so heroically.

The gun-toting man whom Solomon had subdued was Tara’s stalker from Austria. His singular obsession with her had gotten him past security, somehow into the Village, and beyond all odds, gotten him Tara’s phone number. He’d been texting her, posing as an athlete, sending her pictures of ”himself” that he swiped from a stranger’s Facebook page. Once he finally lured Tara into the open, he planned to abduct her, but the presence of Alyssa threw a wrench into his plans. He’d taken the girls to an empty room, on what he perceived to be an empty floor, to wait until he thought he could escape.

The security team was globally panned when word of the terrifying turn of events got out, and Solomon was hailed as a hero. He refused all media requests to discuss the incident, out of respect for Tara and Alyssa’s privacy and so as not to give any attention to the stalker.

Sensei Shinji, his teacher in Cincinnati, hadn’t called after Solomon’s medal-winning victory. He wanted his first words to his star pupil to be shared in person. But once word of the incident got out, his name popped up on Solomon’s phone.

“Bula, Sensei Shinji.”

“Bula. Kailoma, I can’t express to you how proud I am. You have honored yourself, this dojo, and all of your fellow judoka. I have nothing left to teach you,” Sensei Shinji’s voice shook as he spoke.

Solomon, in tears, responded to his grandfatherly teacher. “Thank you, Sensei Shinji, but I could spend a lifetime with you and still have much to learn. I look forward to returning in a few more days and resuming my studies.”

“Don’t forget to bring Miss Lowery to the dojo so I can meet her. If she’s as important to you as Sensei Gavin says she is, she must be quite special.”

Solomon was surprised, but not shocked. Sensei Shinji seemed to know everything. “Yes, Sensei, she is. And I will.”

Before hanging up, Solomon had something to add. “Sensei, you were absolutely right. Ju yoku go o seisu.”

“Ah, yes,” Sensei Shinji chuckled. “Indeed it does.
Softness controls hardness.”

T
he gold medal match
, expected to be a brutal repeat of the bloody group stage match between France and the United States, lacked drama. Tara scored in the fourth minute and Lori in the tenth. The wind knocked from their sails, and their counter-attacking game plan ruined, France wilted in the Rio sun.

In the end, the journey had been much more challenging than the final destination. Such was life, Logan was learning.

Hope for a competitive second half vanished when Lori Gallagher, veteran linchpin of the team, hammered home an early goal to put things out of reach. Logan and Savannah were brilliant controlling the defensive middle of the field, and Logan even caught herself giving Angie DeCarlo, her nearest teammate, a hug when the final whistle blew. Leah Beierle, her hair colored a startling bright gold for the occasion, joined the embrace, a moment captured by a fortunate photographer who sold the shot to
Sports Illustrated
. The image graced the cover of the magazine’s Olympic wrap-up issue.

Savannah’s parents had flown home after the quarterfinals, to a less stressful environment closer to the medical care they needed.

Solomon watched the game with Tracy Lowery, both wearing USWNT jerseys with Logan’s number on them. Solomon wearing his medal, of course.

Taking a halftime walk to the concession stand, Solomon bumped into Adonis DeCarlo, and the two shook hands. Adonis expressed admiration for Solomon’s rescue of Alyssa and Tara, and the only shade he threw Solomon’s direction was to tell him that although Solomon looked good in bronze, that it wasn’t really
his
color. And that he’d see him in Tokyo in four years.

At the medal ceremony, as each woman had gold draped around her neck, team captain Lori Gallagher leaned forward just before the anthem began to play and shouted to Logan:

“Hey, Lowery! Does this,” she pointed to her gold medal, “make us the tears, the fire, or the roasting meat?”

Logan stifled a laugh, while most of her teammates could not, and she replied. “It makes us fucking Olympic champions!”

F
ast forward to Tokyo
…

S
olomon’s bronze
medal translated to megawatt celebrity status in Fiji. His home base remained Cincinnati, but his visits home became more frequent, and he was treated like royalty from the moment he touched down. Judo exploded across the islands, with dojos popping up on every other block. A medal had seemed out of reach in Rio, and although he’d climbed the world ranks of 90 kilo judoka, he still entered Tokyo as a dark horse in an ultra-competitive division.

Solomon had met Adonis four times since the Olympics in various tournaments, splitting the matches evenly, both men winning twice. They’d become something like friends over time.

By 2020, Logan had solidified her place as one of a handful of true
stars
in worldwide women’s soccer. She was on cereal boxes, shoe commercials, and her poster graced the walls of little girls, especially those with curly hair, all over the United States. Savannah, Alyssa, and Tara were what many considered the “core four” of the squad, favored to repeat as gold medalists.

The twins were still around, but after multiple knee surgeries, Allie had retired from the international game. Angie was easier to take without her sister around to egg her on.

With the exit of one set of twins, however, a new pair came on the scene. By the time the Tokyo Olympics kicked off, they were just a few months past their third birthdays.

When Logan and Solomon left Rio, both wearing their medals, they thought they were wearing the best possible souvenirs from a month spent at the Olympics.

What they didn’t know yet, was that the most precious keepsakes they were bringing home with them weren’t medals or endorsements.

They were fraternal twins. Conceived in a certain Olympic swimming pool in Rio.

Not only were Solomon and Logan now international sports stars… They were also parents.

One boy (Lowery). And one feisty little girl (Laini).

It was scary how perfect life seemed. But instead of dwelling on whether they deserved it all, Solomon Kano and Logan Kano would just say that it was part of seizing their moment.

Something they promised to do together forever.

A
lison Ryan is
a romance author who lives with her husband and sons in a southern kind of heaven. She loves books about love, watching too much Bravo, and good bourbon. Not always in that order.

In her former life she has been all of the above: a Las Vegas limo driver, an insurance adjuster, an American Idol reject, a repo woman, and a graveyard front desk clerk at a dilapidated motel on the shores of the Redneck Riviera. (Panama City Beach) Her 20's were a fun, but exhausting time.

She is quite happy to be pretty boring in her 30's.

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