Ben considered himself on the far E end of the extrovert-introvert spectrum. Yet his stomach was aflutter as he entered the grounds of Firhill Complex to watch Evan play. Football still felt a foreign land to him, and the Glasgow Greens “spy” match hadn’t whetted his appetite for the sport and its fans.

Unable to spot Evan amidst the two clusters of players, Ben headed for the home stand, which was crammed out with fans waving rainbow paraphernalia. Though it was nearly a half hour before kickoff, the supporters were already chanting at full volume.

“Ben Reid, get yourself over here!”

He looked up, relieved to see John Burns waving at him from the stand’s top row.

With some difficulty, Ben climbed through the crowd to reach his former client, who was sitting with their friend Lord Andrew Sunderland as well as Duncan’s partner, Brodie, whom Ben had met at Fergus and John’s wedding.

Andrew stood to let Ben sit between him and John—and probably also so he could keep his seat on the aisle. “You’ve gone all in, I see.”

“Of course.” Ben tipped his tie-dyed rainbow cap at Andrew, who smiled back from behind rainbow-rimmed dark sunglasses, a cheeky contrast with his otherwise tasteful outfit.

As he sat down, Ben tilted his rainbow flag so as not to poke the woman in front of him. “Evan says this is a really important match. They need to tie or something?”

John laughed. “When a match is in an elimination tournament, it’s called a ‘tie.’ Like a ‘cup tie,’ for instance. It’s got nothing to do with the final scoreline.”

“Why?”

“Another mystery of football,” said Brodie. “Dinna fash, we can be confused together.”

“Deal.” He reached back to fist-bump Brodie, glad to have found a kindred spirit, then turned to look at the players on the pitch.

Oh. Oh wow.

He’d glimpsed Evan’s violet-and-white-striped football shirt hanging in his wardrobe. But now it hugged the contours of Evan’s chest and shoulders as he warmed up, trotting about and swinging his arms in large circles. Ben remembered how those muscles had felt against his palms last weekend when Evan lay naked beneath, above, or beside him.

He suddenly no longer needed his jacket.

As he stood to remove it, he saw Evan look toward the crowd, shading his eyes against the low sunlight slicing across the field. When he saw Ben, he broke into a wide smile, then blew him a kiss with an expansive sweep of his arm.

Ben waved back at Evan so hard he thought he might dislocate an elbow. “Score lots of gooooooooals! And assists!” he added, so as not to look greedy.

Evan laughed, then fell back in line with his teammates’ warmup, now jogging with high knees.

Ben watched him for a moment before realizing the rest of the Rainbow Regiment had fallen silent. They were all looking in his direction with wide eyes—and wide mouths, in a few cases.

He glanced up, hoping there was a hot-air balloon or a very quiet helicopter hovering behind him. Nothing but high patchy cirrocumulus clouds met his eyes.

He sat down, cheeks flaming. “Why are they staring at me? Is this how they treat all newcomers?”

Andrew chuckled. “Only newcomers who get to bed Evan Hollister, the most elusive and therefore most coveted Warrior.”

“Elusive?”

“Many of the Warriors who are single find regular companionship amongst the Rainbow Regiment.”

Ben squinted at Andrew. “Are you saying—”

“They fuck the fans,” John said.

“Ah.” That made sense. As fit as these lads and lasses were, they could probably have their pick of adoring supporters.

“But not Evan,” John continued. “The Regiment calls him ‘Brother Hollister’ cos he acts like a monk.” He nudged Ben with an elbow. “Until you came along, going where no fan has gone before. They’re probably wondering what your secret is.”

“So am I, to be fair.”

“Nonsense.” Andrew patted Ben’s hand. “Let me know if you need tips on ignoring the envy of lesser beings.”

Ben smiled, but the scrutiny of the Warriors fans was giving him a severe case of the I’m-not-worthys.

They think I’m punching above my weight, and they’re right.

The match began, and within a few minutes Ben was vowing to maintain an open mind regarding football. Moray Rovers took an early lead on something called a “corner kick.” Warriors soon answered by scoring on a “counterattack,” in which Jamie sent a long, sky-high pass to the speedy Duncan, who brought the ball down with one seemingly magical touch before leaving two hefty defenders in the dust. Ten minutes later, Rovers took the lead again on a penalty call which stoked the Rainbow Regiment’s fury to full blaze.

Soon another foul was called near the goal at the other end of the pitch. The players lined up, but this time they were between the goal and the kicking person—which appeared to be Evan—rather than behind him.

“How come he doesn’t get to kick it from right in front of the goal?” Ben asked John, who had assured him there were no daft questions.

“Because the foul was committed outside the eighteen-yard box,” John replied. “If it was inside, it’d be a penalty kick, but this is just a free kick.” He nudged Ben. “And your man is one of the best.”

Ben stood with the rest of the Regiment as Fergus and Evan conferred near the ball. The whistle blew, and both men stepped back. Fergus ran toward the ball as though to kick it, but at the last second he veered away. Evan stepped forward, planted his foot, and sailed the ball up, up, and over the wall of players. It curled into the corner of the net, past the outstretched arms of the goalkeeper.

“Yaaaaaaaaassss!!!” Ben’s unexpected scream ripped his throat. “Fuckin’ yaaaaas, ya beauty!” He hugged John, bouncing up and down on the rickety stand as the Regiment cheers rose around him. This feeling was beyond anything he’d ever experienced while fully dressed.

Today, Ben didn’t wish he was home watching the curling.

“What happens if they win?” he asked his friends as halftime drew near, his whole body still buzzing from Evan’s stupendous goal.

“When they win,” Brodie said, “Warriors will go to the quarterfinals.”

“Gonnae no jinx it!” John said. “The football gods don’t like when fans assume victory. Mind, this Moray team went to the finals last year.”

“Since when are you such a pessimist?” Andrew asked.

John beckoned him to lean in so the three of them could hear his hushed voice. “Since Fergus was complaining of a tight hamstring all week.”

“Oh God.” Andrew sat back.

“Is that very bad?” Ben asked.

“Muscle injuries can be brutal,” John said, “and hams are the worst. I told him he should rest today, but he wasnae having it. Said the Warriors needed him, which they do.”

Ben looked out at the pitch. Without knowing a thing about positions or tactics, he could tell Fergus was important by the sheer number of times he touched the ball. He and Evan were in constant motion, only slowing down when play stopped entirely.

“Just got to hope for the best,” John continued. “And of course, stress-eat our faces off.” He opened his rucksack to display an array of individual crisps packets. “Who wants some, apart from Andrew, who scorns all processed foods?”

“Me!” Brodie reached between them to grab one. “I’m fair starving.”

John offered a packet to Ben. “I’ve got fizzy drinks, too.”

“Nah, I’m fine,” Ben told John, but his stomach gave a loud growl of protest.

John glanced down at the noise. “Your belly disagrees.”

“It doesn’t get a vote,” Ben said. “I’m fasting sunrise to sunset.”

“Oh! Sorry.” John put the crisps back in his rucksack without taking any. “Is it Ramadan already? I thought that was in June this year.”

“It is, but I’m Bahá’í, not Muslim. We always fast for the nineteen days before our new year, which starts at sunset on the twentieth of March.” He pointed to John’s bag. “Don’t stop yourself eating on my behalf.”

“Och, I don’t need that rubbish.” He patted his gut. “I’m still burning calories from our wedding reception, thanks to the unlawfully delicious food you got catered for us.”

Ben felt a flare of pride at the memory, then an even bigger flare of awkwardness, considering the man he was now dating.

“Does Fergus still hate Evan?”

John looked surprised at Ben’s question. After a pause, he said, “I don’t know, honestly. I don’t hate Evan, mostly because if it weren’t for his cruelty and stupidity, I wouldn’t have Fergus. Obviously Evan’s not a heartless eejit now,” he hurried to add, “seeing as he’s with you.”

“Does Fergus ever talk about what it was like before things went bad?”

“Not really.” John turned back to the pitch, but his focus seemed to wander over the bare-branched trees beyond. “Maybe it still hurts, or maybe it’s just the way Fergus is. By that I mean he’s like most men, who only talk about feelings after several drinks or a particularly cataclysmic orgasm.”

Ben chuckled, feeling John’s warm nature melt away some of his trepidation. “Evan hardly ever drinks, so that’s an opportunity missed.”

John darted a glance at him. “Since when does he hardly ever drink?”

“Since I’ve known him. Sometimes he’ll have a glass of wine with dinner or a dram of whisky with—” Confessions of being a spy. “Why?”

“That’s one thing Fergus did tell me about their last few months together. He said Evan could down half a dozen pints and still walk a straight line. It worried Fergus.” John chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “I remember this bit cos it was so odd: He said that last year, Evan didn’t even seem to enjoy drinking. He drank like it was a chore, like it was on his to-do list.”

On the pitch, the official blew the whistle long and loud. Evan walked toward the bench with his team, wiping sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He looked up and gave a smile that warmed Ben’s blood in an instant, a smile that was easy to return, but faded the moment Evan turned back to his teammates.

Had Evan’s job driven him to drink last year? Ben wondered. In that case, wouldn’t Fergus have noticed other symptoms of stress? What would inspire Evan to booze it up with such diligence?

There were so many layers to this man, no doubt many that Ben had yet to discover. On the pitch he was flamboyant, even a bit grandstanding, in contrast to his reserved manner everywhere else. His work at MI5 allowed him no glory, keeping him virtually invisible.

Ben’s smile returned as he realized only he saw Evan as the icy spy, the fiery lover, and the warm, compassionate man who doted on his stray cat. Ben was the only one who saw all of Evan’s sides.

For now, that would be enough.

Evan could always tell when a Warrior’s partner was attending a match—not by hearing the player’s name screamed with lust and affection from the stand, but by the sudden spike in their playing intensity.

He’d seen it with Colin, when Andrew had come to the fifth-round cup tie two months ago. The fierce striker had played so hard he’d collapsed after scoring the winning goal. And Duncan, Evan had heard, got himself a red card the first time Brodie had shown up at a Warriors match last year. Then of course there was the center-back duo Robert and Liam, whose defensive focus had fluctuated with their friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers-to-friends-to-boyfriends relationship. That now seemed well and truly settled, much to the benefit of the Warriors’ overall goal difference.

Evan and Fergus, on the other hand, had maintained a consistent working partnership throughout their romantic ups and downs, leaving their emotional baggage behind when they stepped onto the pitch. So it used to annoy Evan when a player’s performance varied with the state of their love life.

Today, he understood. In the first half of this match he’d sprinted faster, hit harder, passed more sharply than usual, all due to Ben’s presence. Evan was a hypocrite, but he was a happy hypocrite.

An effective one, too. Due to the offensive strength of Moray Rovers, Evan was playing central midfield—half offense, half defense—rather than in his usual attacking role, which was currently held by Colin, normally a striker. Taking cues from Fergus in the deep defensive midfield position, Evan shut down Moray’s attacks and fed the ball back up to Colin, Shona, and Duncan in the Warriors offense.

Best of all, he’d stopped hanging onto the ball and started passing it. Maybe being forced to trust Ben had taught Evan how to trust his teammates as well, how to take chances when he couldn’t control every microsecond.

Most important for his sanity, this match gave Evan ninety minutes to forget about ISIS—or ISIL, as the government was calling the group now. It was impossible to contemplate terrorist plots when one had a sixteen-stone defender literally breathing down one’s neck.

“How are you feeling, stamina-wise?” Charlotte asked Evan when he reached the bench with his teammates at halftime, the score still even at 2-2.

“Great.” He toweled the sweat from his face and accepted a Lucozade bottle and orange quarter from a substitute. “Thanks, mate.”

“Are you great or outstanding?” Charlotte examined him head to toe. “Be honest. What’s your week been like? Working any overtime? Getting enough sleep?”

“No overtime. Good sleep.” He’d not seen Ben since Monday morning, due to the lad’s interim dissertation deadline yesterday.

“Outstanding, then.” She stepped up onto the bench, garnering the players’ attention for her halftime talk. “Not bad out there,” she told the team. “The conservative approach has kept us in the game to this point. Now we need to go for it.”

“Their defense is excruciatingly disciplined,” Fergus said.

“And compact,” Duncan added from the bench beside Evan, scraping mud from between the studs of his bright red football boots. “It’s pure tricky threading passes through the middle.”

“Which is why we’re gonnae go wide to stretch them out, get their center-backs out of their comfort zone.” Charlotte held up their tactical board and pointed to the top. “I want Evan to play on the right for now, cos that’s where their weaker fullback is. Beat him down and get those crosses in, okay?”

Evan nodded eagerly. He was dying to go into predator mode again. Next to scoring a goal himself, he loved nothing more than sailing in a perfect cross and watching a teammate head it home.

Charlotte subbed out one of the other midfielders for a more defensive choice to make up for Evan moving forward, then raised her voice to get the whole team’s attention:

“Mind, lads and lasses, if anyone thinks to play for a draw, the replay match would be in the middle of the week at Moray. That’s nearly a four-hour drive from Glasgow. How many Warriors’ll be able to sack off their afternoon’s work or uni to get there on time?” She scanned the sea of doubtful faces. “We’d be lucky to field even eleven players, much less subs.”

Evan silently agreed. The last thing Warriors needed was an extra game, especially given the accidental friendly match with Glasgow Greens, scheduled for their one free weekend—the weekend they were meant to rest and train before the season’s final push.

“Today is win or lose,” Charlotte concluded as they stood to return to the pitch. “So let’s play like there’s no tomorrow.”

“How are you handling Evan’s job?”

Ben looked at Lord Andrew. They were alone in their top row now that John and Brodie had thoughtfully left the stand to eat their halftime snacks without making Ben hungrier. “His job?”

“It must be difficult,” Andrew said, “with all the secrets.”

Ben remembered what Evan had told him last Saturday night: “Never talk to anyone about what I do, even if they act like they already know.” He also recalled how a security breach could cost Evan his metaphorical and literal head.

“You mean architectural secrets?” Ben asked, hoping his widened eyes looked innocent instead of scared.

Andrew took off his sunglasses and examined him with a penetrating silver-blue gaze. “Right.” He drummed his fingertips against his knees, his eyes darting over the dozens of football fans milling in front of them. Ben knew that ever since his attempted kidnapping, Andrew sometimes had difficulty with crowds. Yet he braved them to cheer on his partner, Colin, at every match.

The silence grew until Ben couldn’t stand it. “Why do you ask?”

Andrew ran his thumbs along the seams of his trousers. “Evan’s helped me a lot with my…issues.”

Ben nodded. Andrew had recently shared his PTSD struggles with his legions of online fans, but before that, he’d confided only in Evan.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Andrew continued, “or whether it’s anything to do with his job, but he seems to understand what it’s like.”

“Ah.” Ben thought about Evan’s fear of the dark and his need to see Ben’s face during sex. “I don’t know what happened to him either, but I’m glad he was there for you.”

“The thing is, I just can’t reconcile the Evan I know with the villain some of the Warriors make him out to be.”

Ben sensed he’d heard but a fraction of the terrible rumors. “Don’t tell me what they say. Bahá’ís are meant to avoid gossip.”

Andrew arched one lordly eyebrow at him. “I’ve heard they’re also meant to avoid being gay.”

“It’s okay to be gay, as long as we don’t…you know, do gay things.”

“Like waving a rainbow flag at a Warriors match?”

“Like having sex with other men,” Ben said.

“Ah, so you can be gay as long as you’re celibate. What could possibly go wrong? Let’s ask a few priests.”

Ben bristled at the sarcasm, but he had no defense.

“So what happens if you break the rules?” Andrew asked. “Do they excommunicate you?”

“In a sense. I could lose my voting rights, and I’d no longer be Bahá’í in the eyes of the community.”

Andrew frowned. “What about in your own eyes?”

The question made Ben’s chest ache. “I’ll always be Bahá’í.”

“Good. Don’t ever let anyone tell you who you are.” Andrew touched the seat behind Ben. “Brodie here, his family were small-minded monsters, so he had to make a clean break from them and be nothing but his new, fabulously gay self.” He examined Ben. “But I think your situation’s more like my own.”

“How so?”

“The aristocracy is built upon heredity—namely, having children with other worthy folk of the opposite sex. I’ll never fit in with that scheme, but I’ll be damned if I’ll dissolve my connections with that world and the traditions I love, simply to maintain the illusion of a pure identity.” He lifted his chin in his signature haughtiness. “Being a toff is part of who I am, just like being Bahá’í is part of who you are.”

“But not all of it.”

“Exactly. One day our worlds will catch up to us. Until then…” Andrew swept his palms up and out as though making a proclamation. “We must simply ‘live in the tension,’ as my therapist says, between our two identities.”

Strangely, Andrew’s words made Ben feel better, even though they provided no easy answers. It helped to know he wasn’t alone in feeling like he was always betraying part of himself.

“Hiya! Are you Ben Reid?”

Startled out of this heavy conversation, Ben turned to see a pair of guys in their early thirties moving into the empty row in front of him, taking the place of the fans who’d stepped away for the halftime break.

“Erm, yeah.” He introduced Andrew, whom they already knew from the Regiment and because he was famous.

“I’m Michael,” said the taller one, “and this is Philip. We emailed you last month about our wedding on the eighteenth of April?”

“Ah, right. Sorry I had to say no.” Ben tried not to squirm. He hated disappointing people, and doing it to their faces was pure torture.

“Nae bother,” Philip said. “You told us to ask again in a month to see if your uni schedule had got a wee bit less mad. If we still needed help, that is.”

“Which we do.” Michael took a seat in front of Ben so he was looking up at him, like a subject beseeching a monarch. “We’re desperate.”

“Not to pressure you.” Philip fidgeted with the hem of his Warriors Come Out and Play T-shirt. “I’m sure you’re busy.”

“He is,” Andrew said. “Dissertation and all.”

The thought of that looming project, plus exams, made Ben’s head spin. Yet he found himself pulling out his phone to check his scheduling app. “The eighteenth is during spring vacation at uni.”

Their faces brightened with hope.

“Tell you what,” Ben said. “I might be able to do a simple wedding-day coordination package. That means I wouldn’t be arranging suppliers—”

“We’ve got them sorted,” Michael said. “We just need someone to keep it all organized and-and-and—”

“And keep us sane,” Philip finished.

“That’s exactly a wedding-day coordinator’s job.” Ben wanted to agree right then and there, but he needed to consider both his schedule and how this could affect his mother. “Just upload everything—contracts, invoices, any documentation—to your favorite cloud storage place and email me the link tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow whether it seems manageable.”

“Cheers, mate.” Michael shook Ben’s hand, clasping it between his own. “You’re an angel.”

“Nah, I’m mostly human,” Ben said, though he couldn’t help grinning at their gratitude.

“By the way,” Philip said, “we’ve changed the venue. We’re marrying here, after the Warriors’ friendly match with Glasgow Greens. Will that be a problem?”

Ben looked over his shoulder at the looming fitness complex. “You’re to be married in there?”

“Nah, on the pitch,” Michael said. “We got permission to put up a tent for the food and drink next to the building over there.”

“Oh.” Ben’s mind reeled with this project’s potential pitfalls. Here there’d be no events manager like at a hotel, so he’d be overseeing every detail. “It’s quite a bit more work at a venue like this. I’d need to hire at least one assistant.”

“Do it,” Michael said. “We’ll pay anything.”

Philip glared at his fiancé, but then sighed and said, “Aye. Anything.”

Ben was torn. With no permanent job in place after graduation, he could use the money. “We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

The two men thanked him again, then returned to their seats in the front row.

He turned to Andrew. “An outdoor wedding at a park where the only shelter and public toilets are in a gym?” Ben rubbed his temples, trying to stave off the looming dehydration/hunger/stress headache. “What a nightmare.”

“Simply frighten them away by charging an astronomical fee,” Andrew said. “By the way, Colin told me about the genesis of this friendly match—that day you and Evan and Jamie went to scout Greens players?”

“Yes, it was my idea, and yes, I see the poetic justice in it now being my problem.”

“Still, I heard it was first-class improvising on your part.”

“Sadly, I’ve loads of experience cleaning up after my big mouth.”

He couldn’t help worry that someday he’d accidentally reveal Evan’s biggest secret. After only a week of knowing he was dating a spy, Ben was mentally knackered. Maybe it would get easier with time, but right now it felt like being in another sort of closet.

As halftime ended, Ben watched Evan and Fergus return to the pitch together, nodding as they spoke and gesturing to various parts of the field.

What did everyone else see when they looked at those two men? Did their fists clench at the thought of what Evan had done to Fergus? Did they wish him an eternity roasting on the spits of hell? If only they knew the truth.

Ben’s stomach clenched—this time not from hunger but from dread at the knowledge that the Warriors and their fans would never know what really happened last year. They’d never know Evan for the hero he was.

And Ben could never tell them.

“Today is win or lose,” Charlotte had said, and the Warriors had taken her words to heart. Evan and his teammates played harder than ever, opening up the Moray defense with wider, faster attacks, risking a devastating counterattack in the quest for that one elusive scoring chance.

Now, Moray had just won a throw-in, but their fullback looked uncertain as he lifted the ball above his head. Evan guessed which Rover he was about to throw it to, and dashed to intercept.

He’d guessed right, timing it perfectly to steal the ball. He did a quick stutter step to avoid a midfielder, sent a lofted pass to Fergus, and shot forward along the touchline, calling for the ball back. The pitch ahead of him was wide open.

But a gust of wind came up, slowing the ball on its flight to Fergus, so that by the time the Warriors captain received the pass, a Moray midfielder was bearing down on him from behind.

“Man on!” Evan shouted.

With no time to take the ball with his foot, Fergus leapt to head it out in front of himself. He raced forward with lengthening strides to pick up the ball, then sent a hard, low pass back toward Evan.

Before he’d even received the pass, Evan saw Fergus pull up, clutching the back of his right thigh.

Oh no. Evan kicked the ball out over the touchline to stop play. The whistle blew.

The two official match physios hurried with their medical bags across the pitch toward the Warriors captain. Fergus was already down, leaning back with his legs outstretched, palms flat on the turf behind him, chin lowered in defeat.

The crowd had fallen silent. Evan looked back at the stand, where John was on his feet, palms pressed to his face. In front of the bench, Charlotte was beckoning Evan. He hurried toward her, accompanied by Jamie, while the rest of the squad gathered around Fergus to offer support and also partake of the water bottles the physios had carried on their packs.

“Looks like a hamstring,” Evan told Charlotte. “If he comes off, how do you want to play this?”

“Depends.” She handed him and Jamie their own squeeze bottles. “How much you two got left in the tank?”

“I’m all right,” Jamie said.

“Me too.” Evan took a short sip of water. “You know I’ll run myself into the ground if that’s what it takes.”

“Please don’t.” Charlotte pinched the bridge of her nose, something she did when trying not to panic. “Okay, I’ll make a like-for-like change. Both of you keep doing what you’re doing. We’re gonnae break through on that right side, I know it.” She turned to the substitutes. “Craig, you’ll take Fergus’s place.”

Fergus arrived them, limping off the pitch with the help of the physios. He ripped off his captain’s armband and tossed it to Evan.

“Shall I give this to Liam?” Evan asked. Usually the vice-captain got the armband when the captain went off.

“No, it should be you.” Before Evan could process the honor his ex had given him, Fergus added, “Liam’s on a yellow card, and if he got sent off it’d be embarrassing to pass on the armband again.”

Evan examined Fergus’s band. It was vivid blue, unlike the black one Evan had used as captain last season, the one he’d sent to Fergus on the day of that fateful quarterfinal—the day he’d left for Belfast.

He’d had to make the cruelest possible break so Fergus wouldn’t try to find him or ask questions that could get them both jailed or killed. What could be crueler than an express-delivery envelope containing a discarded armband and a sorry-I’m-in-love-with-a-Belgian note?

In the end, he and Fergus had both survived. But neither had escaped unscathed.

“It’s quicker if I do this for you.” Jamie took the armband and wrapped it around Evan’s biceps, securing it with the Velcro pads. “We have to win now, for Fergus.” The fullback tugged the end of Evan’s shirt sleeve out from under the band. “Right?”

“Right,” Evan replied, still in a haze of memory.

Jamie seized him by both shoulders and shook him. “RIGHT?!”

For a moment, Evan’s vision went red, and his ingrained self-defense sequence—step back, reach up, grab head, slam knee—flashed through his mind.

Jamie froze, clearly seeing the look in Evan’s eyes. As he started to let go, Evan grabbed his shoulders in return, bunching his jersey in his fists.

“RIGHT!” Evan gave him a shake. “For Fergus!”

They let go with simultaneous shoves, then shared a high-five. As Evan turned to the pitch to get back into position, he felt a new surge of adrenaline that felt limitless.

He’d survived tougher enemies than this. Nothing could beat him—not last year’s Cup finalists, not the awesome responsibility of captaining, not even the soul-crushing regret of last year’s departure from the team.

Despite the Warriors’ defiance, the next ten minutes were shaky while Fergus’s substitute, Craig, got fully warmed up. Then the tide began to turn in the Warriors’ favor. With fresh legs, Craig was able to block the attacks of the rapidly tiring Rovers center-forward.

When the Moray manager sent in a substitute striker whom Evan remembered from the scouting reports, he gathered the Warriors for a brief talk.

“This guy’s pure fast,” he told them, focusing on Craig and the four Warriors defenders. “But he’s also nervy. If you put pressure on him the instant before he gets the ball, he’ll take his eye off it, and bang, it’s yours.”

“So we intimidate the everliving crap out of him,” Liam said, “which is basically what I live for.” He gave Evan a grim smile, probably the kindest expression he’d bestowed upon him in nearly a year.

Soon it was clear the Warriors defense had the new striker well in hand, so Evan turned his focus to offense. The Rovers back line had started to fray under the onslaught of Woodstoun’s flank attacks.

As the clock neared ninety minutes, the Moray fullback on Evan’s side of the pitch was obviously tiring. The exhausted defender’s likely substitute was warming up on the touchline, ready to provide relief.

Oh no you don’t, Evan thought. I won’t let you off that lightly.

He dribbled past the Rovers winger, then saw a gap that let him keep driving toward the corner. The left fullback yelped in alarm and headed for him, followed by the center back.

With one last surge of energy, Evan got past both defenders. In the corner of his eye, he saw a teammate’s arm go up and heard Colin’s hoarse shout.

Planting his foot, Evan swept the ball up and over.

At the far post, Colin rose like a dolphin to head the ball. It whipped into the goal past the helpless keeper.

“YAAAAASSSS!” Colin raced toward Evan, arms spread, their fair skin a stark backdrop to his fierce black tattoos. Evan met him in a victorious embrace, and they were soon joined by Duncan and Shona, whose impact toppled them over. From the bottom of the burgeoning pile, Evan could hear the shrieks of the crowd and knew Ben’s was among them.

Once the Warriors had picked themselves up, Evan got their attention and put on his serious voice. “Keep the heads, everybody. We’ve not won yet. Focus on what you need to do each moment, and we’ve got this.”

They did have it, a few minutes later. When the final whistle blew, Evan sat down on the pitch and put his head in his hands, utterly spent.

“Nope. Not having it.” Duncan reached down under Evan’s shoulders, then hoisted him up by the oxters. “You’ll celebrate with the rest of us, not sit about moping like we lost.”

“I’m not moping, I’m processing.”

“‘Processing.’ And here I thought I was the psychobabbler.” Duncan pointed at the stand as they walked. “Look, there’s Ben and Brodie. Aren’t they cute when they’re happy? Also when they’re not happy, but you know…”

Evan shaded his eyes to see Ben waving his rainbow cap and singing with the rest of the Rainbow Regiment.

Alas, the Warriors’ bliss was dampened when they found Fergus sitting on the bench with an ice pack strapped to his thigh.

“I’ll need tests to see the extent of the damage,” he told them, “but based on my symptoms, the physios say I’ll be out at least a month.”

“Will you stay on as captain until he’s back?” Charlotte asked Evan.

“Of course,” he said, “and not a day longer.”

Liam snorted. “Aye, right.” Then he rubbed his mouth as he realized everyone had heard him.

Fergus gave the defender a glare that said, And this is why you’re not captain.

After Charlotte’s post-match debriefing, Fergus motioned Evan over to sit beside him.

“What is it?” Evan asked, unwrapping a protein bar and offering half of it to Fergus, who shook his head.

“I just need to be miserable for a minute without worrying the team, and I figured your presence would explain it.” He began to unwind the strap holding the ice pack against his leg. “This could be the beginning of the end for me. They say once you’ve had one hamstring injury…”

“Aye, they tend to recur.” It was a leading cause of athletes’ early retirement. “But there are things you can do to prevent the next one. Have you tried the Nordic method? You kneel down and have a partner hold your—”

“Not everything from Norway is better, okay?”

Evan suppressed a smile at the resurrection of their old bickering topic. “Lutefisk is a well-known antidote to muscle strain.”

Fergus rolled his eyes. “Faen ta deg.”

Evan laughed. “I can’t believe you still remember the Norwegian for ‘Fuck you.’”

“I wish I could forget.” Fergus bent over and took a clear plastic bag from his kit bag. “For the armband.”

Evan unwrapped the band from his biceps—carefully, knowing how protective Fergus was of his possessions—and slipped it into the bag. “Or I could buy a new one if you prefer.”

Fergus stared at the armband for a long moment. “Yes,” he said softly as he took it back. “In case anything should happen to you.”

Evan’s words stuck in his throat. He wanted to promise that nothing would ever happen to him, that he’d never let the Warriors down again.

But that promise would be as frail and fragile as a baby bird’s bones.