Chapter 12
“Brendan.” Iveta Kovar smiled warmly as she opened the door of Pavel’s sprawling house in Buckhead, then opened her arms for a hug. “It’s good to see you.”
He pulled in the former model for a quick embrace, then raised the expensive bottle of Scotch he’d brought. “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I’m hoping he’ll forgive me once he sees this.”
She shook her head, motioning for him to step inside. “There’s nothing to forgive. Pavel didn’t want any visitors at the hospital. Now that he’s home he’s agreed to see a few people. Your name was at the top of his list.”
“Good to know he’s feeling well enough to velvet-rope his sickbed.” He stopped Iveta’s brisk progress through the entrance hall with a hand on her arm. “How is he?”
“He’ll be fine,” she assured him, her stiff smile undermining her positive tone. “It was a serious skull fracture, but he got the surgery he needed right away and the doctor says he’s extremely lucky. He’ll be out for three months but should be able to start training just in time for the new season.”
“That’s great,” he told her sincerely. “How are you and Adela holding up?”
She hesitated, eventually letting the smile drop from her face. “It’s been hard, Brendan. We almost lost him.”
“I know.” He put his arm around her as her chin started to quiver. “But he’s a hardheaded son of a bitch and he’ll be absolutely fine.”
She nodded weakly, regaining her composure. “I’ll take you upstairs. He’s waiting for you.”
He followed her up the grand, curving staircase to the thickly carpeted upper floor. He’d been to Pavel’s house before, but only when his teammate had thrown parties. Compared to those raucous, crowded visits the house seemed cavernous and eerily quiet. Their footsteps were inaudible as she led him down the hallway and tapped lightly on a door at the end.
He braced himself as she pushed it open. He’d developed a strong stomach after a decade of witnessing hideous injuries on the pitch but he prepared himself nonetheless, schooling his expression to stay relaxed and friendly.
As soon as he stepped through the doorway he realized there was no need. Pavel didn’t look bad at all.
Fully dressed and seated in a chair in his masculine, oak-paneled study, Skyline’s first-choice goalkeeper looked more like he’d had a bad fall than life-threatening brain surgery. Fading rings of bruises surrounded his eyes and a square of gauze was stuck against a patch of shaved hair, but otherwise, he seemed fine. He even smiled as he spotted the bottle of Scotch.
“Wow, it’s the man who put Adam Francis off his penalty. I’m honored.” Pavel motioned for Brendan to take the chair opposite him as Iveta slipped out of the room and shut the door.
“Don’t be. I hope you’re allowed to drink this.” He plunked the bottle on the desk and took a seat.
“Not for another month at least. Can you believe that? I tried to tell the doctor that beer is like Czech milk, but he insisted.”
“Check his medical credentials. Doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s doing.”
Pavel grinned. “You’ve been in fine form on the pitch. How does it feel to finally start every match?”
“Well, given the circumstances…” Brendan shrugged, uncomfortable, but Pavel waved off his awkwardness.
“Don’t. We both know we should’ve been competing to start all this time, and it was only a personality clash keeping you on the bench. I’m happy knowing you’re standing between the posts in my place.”
“I’m enjoying it,” Brendan admitted. “We’re a lock for the final. Even if we don’t win, it would be a nice way to leave the game.”
“Still intent on retiring?”
“My contract’s up in December. Roland won’t renew it. I doubt anyone else is interested in a thirty-three-year-old goalkeeper with a gambling problem.” He raised a shoulder, resigned. “It’s time. I’m ready.”
“I’ll miss you. Maybe not in the gym, though. I’ll finally stop hearing, ‘just one more rep.’”
“Very funny. Don’t call me when you’re too fat to dive for the ball. I won’t answer.”
They let the joke settle and dissipate between them, giving themselves time to make a comfortable transition to the seriousness of the situation. When the moment felt right Brendan asked, “How are you?”
Pavel shrugged, stretching his legs in front of him. “Physically, I’m all right. I get headaches sometimes, severe enough to put me in bed the whole day, but they’re getting better. The swelling’s going down, the bruising is less sore. I should be back in training in another couple of months.”
“That’s good,” Brendan replied earnestly. “And emotionally?”
His teammate exhaled. “I don’t remember a lot of what happened. One minute this midfielder was running at me, the next it was four days later and I was in intensive care. It took a long time for the reality of the situation to sink in.”
Pavel shook his head slightly, glancing off to the side. “As players, we worry so much about injuries. We worry about whether they’ll end our careers, or even interrupt them long enough to make us lose our spot in the lineup. But we never think they could be life-threatening.”
“Never,” Brendan echoed in agreement.
“I’ve been thinking about what’s really important. My career, yes. The money, sure. But family must always come first. On some level, I always knew that, but it wasn’t the same. Having Iveta by my side through this whole thing—knowing she’ll still be there for me long after I become a forgotten piece of soccer history—it puts things in perspective.”
Suddenly Pavel picked up his head and looked him square in the eye. “You need to get married.”
Brendan blinked. “What?”
“I’m serious.” Pavel leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “You’ve been alone the whole time I’ve known you, and I’ve never understood why.”
They stared at each other in silence for a few moments before Brendan realized Pavel was waiting for an answer.
“I haven’t exactly made my love life a priority,” he offered, thinking of the handful of brief but committed relationships that punctuated his adulthood. “I guess I assumed it would work itself out. Anyway, now it’s too late to meet anyone in Atlanta. Maybe I’ll give it more attention once I’m settled in Nebraska.”
“You should,” Pavel urged. “When she shows up—and you’ll know when she does, I promise—don’t doubt and don’t hesitate. Just grab her. You can work out the details later.”
Erin’s image flashed in his mind.
Of course it did—she was the only woman he’d been intimate with in the last year, and they’d almost had sex on his lawn the night before. That didn’t mean she was “the one.” Far from it. He’d known her for years. If she was his soul mate, surely he would’ve figured it out before now.
He remembered the first time he saw her, a whirlwind of red hair and designer jeans and loudly articulated if slightly slurred opinions. It wasn’t the first time he intervened to help a girl who’d had too much to drink, but it was the first time he had the urge to do more than offer some water and advice and move on.
They didn’t spend long together—ten, fifteen minutes maybe—but it was enough for him to learn a lot about her. He leaned against the outside of the house as she told him all about her private girls’ high school, the years she spent as the only girl on a boys’ traveling soccer team, her plan to lobby the Athletics Department to better partner with the Career Center to make sure female athletes had an early understanding of the sports-related professions open to them.
He found her bemusing, intriguing and decidedly attractive. And so he decided to wrap up their conversation, opting not to ask for her number and leaving the party shortly after guiding her back inside.
At that point, his perspective was totally different to Erin’s. His parents weren’t wealthy. His younger brother’s extra medical and social interventions strained their already tight finances, and his full-ride scholarship was the only thing putting him on the path to a professional soccer career. Otherwise he’d be at the University of Nebraska, living at home, working part-time in his dad’s car dealership.
Erin could afford to get distracted by parties and dating. He couldn’t. So he refused to acknowledge her blatant crush on him and was slightly relieved when her interest seemed to wane.
Sure, he noticed how hot she looked the few times they were together at parties, and he noticed that she looked sexy even when she was just slumming around campus in a hoodie. Of course he noticed her on the pitch—it was impossible not to. But that’s all he did—noticed her—until he graduated and their lives diverged.
He thought about her sometimes, especially during that first couple of lonely years in Liverpool. He kept tabs on her pro career, clicked through her photos on social media, even put a bet on her a couple of times. But he thought of her in the same mildly wondering way he thought about all of his former classmates—not like she was the one who got away.
That proved it, then. Pavel said he’d know when he met her. He’d met and reconnected with Erin multiple times in more than ten years and he’d never had a lightning bolt of certainty. Not even close.
An electric shock, maybe. A tiny zap of awareness. An unshakeable pull to know her, to be beside her. But that didn’t mean—
“Brendan?”
“Sorry. Got caught up in something for a second.”
His teammate stared at him, then broke into a broad grin. “You’ve met her already. You know who she is. You were thinking about her.”
Brendan shook his head emphatically. “No. Definitely not. I was thinking about someone else.”
“Sure,” Pavel replied, making no effort to hide his skepticism. “Anyway, try to make time for that part of your life. You don’t want to be alone forever.”
Brendan winced inwardly at Pavel’s last two words. “Point taken. So, you’ve been watching the games?”
“Here and there, when I can concentrate long enough. How are things in the dressing room?”
“Same. Have you heard about this crazy shit with Oz?”
Pavel nodded. “This hate crime stuff. Insane. How’s he doing?”
“Surprisingly well. But then, that’s Oz.”
“The iceman,” Pavel agreed. “And Kojo? The Brazilians? All good?”
“All good,” Brendan confirmed. “Anxious to hear how you are, though. I imagine my phone will be full of inquiring texts this evening.”
“I guess I should probably start allowing more visitors. It’s only recently that I can count on being well enough to sit up and talk for a couple of hours. Early on, there were days when I was so exhausted I couldn’t get out of bed.”
“Don’t rush into seeing people before you’re ready. The guys will understand.”
Pavel nodded thoughtfully, then his attention sharpened. “Guess which one of our teammates hasn’t been in touch at all? No well wishes after the accident, no texts to ask how I’m doing—nothing.”
“I’m surprised there’s anyone who would do that. Guedes, maybe? And only because he doesn’t speak English and I could see him accidentally sending Portuglish texts with lots of emojis to the wrong number.”
Pavel laughed, shaking his head. “No, even Guedes managed to send his version of a get-well note. Brian, on the other hand, hasn’t said a word.”
Brendan frowned at Pavel’s revelation about the American winger, Brian Scholtz. Brian was having a tough season. He’d deservedly lost his first-team spot to Rio, his contract expired at the end of the year, and there hadn’t been any rumors of other clubs keen to sign him. Roland was the type of manager who cared about dressing-room harmony, so snubbing a seriously injured goalkeeper wasn’t the most strategic route to a new contract.
“Maybe he lost your number,” he offered.
“I doubt it.”
“Do you want me to speak to him?”
“No,” Pavel replied so insistently that Brendan’s gaze shot up. “Don’t have anything to do with him if you can help it.”
Brendan arched a brow, inviting his teammate to elaborate.
Pavel looked away, then back, his expression stiff. “Look, I know firsthand that goalkeepers are weird. We’re part of a team, but we’re apart from our teammates most of the time. We train separately, and we stand at one end of the pitch while they run all over it. I know we all have our idiosyncrasies, the quirks we use to channel our energy and make us successful.”
“Like your drum kit.”
“Like your notebooks.”
Brendan froze, his hands knotted together in his lap.
Pavel leaned forward and patted his knee. “Don’t worry, I had no idea what they meant until everything came out. Even then it took me a while to put the pieces together. I doubt anyone else even notices them.”
“They’re just stats. I like working the odds. It’s relaxing. Helps me focus. Doesn’t mean I’m actually betting on anything.”
Pavel held up his hands. “It’s none of my business. You know my position on the gambling thing. You were stupid to do it, but putting you on the bench for the rest of the season was overkill.”
“Roland’s been looking for an excuse to sideline me since he joined.”
“And you gave him one,” Pavel reminded him. “Don’t give him another.”
Panic flared in Brendan’s chest. Pavel couldn’t possibly know what he was doing with Erin—could he? His Czech counterpart could read any striker in the league, so maybe it wasn’t a leap to think he could read his teammate’s guilty conscience, too.
He feigned innocence, praying Pavel bought it. “I don’t understand.”
“Brian. I’m pretty sure he’s up to something, and it isn’t something good.”
Relief softened his spine. “Like what?”
“I can’t prove it, but I’m ninety percent sure he’s betting on the Championship League. He never really got over Rio taking his spot, and when Rio came back from injury and was still light-years better than him, I think Brian gave up. Suddenly he stopped complaining when we had to watch footage of upcoming opponents and took a serious interest, even though he was unlikely to get off the bench. He started asking me questions, too, about other matches—did I think so-and-so was likely to score against whoever, and what did I think of the keeper at wherever FC. I didn’t give it much thought at first, figuring he thought I had a broad view of the game as a goalkeeper, but after a while I realized he was asking far more about other teams’ fixtures than our own. Then he bought a new car. Not a particularly smart thing to do when you’re about to be out of contract.”
“Maybe he’s just not very smart.”
“He isn’t,” Pavel agreed. “The question is whether he’s not smart and betting on the league.”
Brendan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, pausing to absorb this information. It was exactly the sort of lead Erin wanted—and exactly what he couldn’t deliver. He’d never been Brian’s biggest fan, but he couldn’t stab him in the back.
Could he?
“It would be a big deal if you’re right,” he said carefully. “I never bet on my own league and look at the trouble I got into.”
“I know, which is why I would never go to Roland with this. I’m only telling you so you can protect yourself. I don’t think he’s dumb enough to try to involve you—but then again, maybe he is.”
“I’ll steer clear. Thanks for the heads-up.”
Pavel looked like he wanted to say something else, but a knock on the door silenced him.
Iveta leaned into the room, smiling apologetically. “Sorry to interrupt. Are you both sober?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” Brendan returned her smile, reading the signal in her expression that it was time for him to go.
He stood up from his chair. “That’s enough soccer gossip for one afternoon. I’m sure you have something more important to do, like exaggerating your achievements in your memoir.”
Pavel’s smile weakened and Brendan instantly regretted his poor attempt at a joke. Maybe his teammate had trouble writing after his injury. Maybe the mention of a career-bookending milestone like a memoir was too sharp a reminder of how close he’d been to never playing again.
Hell, even at this point the notion that he’d play again was only theoretical. Anything could happen in the course of his recovery. He might very well have finished his last match on a stretcher.
Brendan cleared his throat awkwardly, not bothering to wave Pavel back down as his teammate stood to shake his hand.
“It’s good to see you.” Pavel’s grip was firm, even if his expression had lost some of its humor.
“I hope I’ll be allowed to come back.”
“The sooner, the better.” Pavel slapped Brendan’s shoulder as he turned toward the door. “Good luck this weekend.”
“Thanks. I need it.”
“No, you don’t.”
For a few seconds, they stood in silence, sharing a knowing glance. One keeper scraping to recover his reputation in what little time he had left, the other’s meteoric rise momentarily halted by what could’ve been a catastrophic injury. Two men used to being the anchor on the pitch, their good performances would be forgotten, their mistakes left to haunt them in the fans’ memories for years. Goalkeeping was a thankless, difficult, essential art, and in that moment their unspoken understanding made them closer than any brothers.
“I’ll call you,” Brendan promised, forcing himself to take a step back.
Pavel just nodded, raising a palm in farewell.
* * * *
“The Tucson players are apologetic, and I think the message in the example is the need for awareness of the ethics framework. They both insisted they didn’t realize a fantasy team violated the code, and the manager said the same thing totally independently.”
Erin took a breath before continuing, preparing for the trickiest part of this conversation with Randall. She’d practiced to get the exact tone of this suggestion right—not too flippant, not too determined, nothing to raise suspicion. Brendan’s reputation weighed heavily on her shoulders as she’d taken the long walk to his office for this meeting. For his sake, even more than her own, she couldn’t screw this up.
“No other incidents have surfaced at this point, and I know the design team wants to start on the year-end report. I think we should structure it half and half, using the Tucson players as a cautionary story and Brendan Young as a redemptive one. Throughout his career Brendan has done a lot of advocacy for athletes with intellectual disabilities, and I thought we could highlight—”
“Do you watch many Championship League games, Erin?” Randall tilted his head inquiringly.
“Of course. As many as I can.”
“Who do you think will be in the league final?”
She considered for a second. “Atlanta, Miami, maybe Charlotte.”
“Agreed. So those are the clubs we need to feature in the year-end report.”
Her effort to quickly think up a justification for disagreement must’ve looked worried, because he added, “Don’t worry, you’ve already got something from one of them. If there’s definitely no activity in either of the others, we’ll go with what we have on Brendan Young.”
He smiled, suggesting he genuinely thought this statement would reassure her. It did exactly the opposite.
She came to this meeting armed and ready to divert attention away from Brendan. Now he was back on center stage.
“Can I ask why we’d want to publicize negative stories on the two most successful teams? In my opinion,” she added before he could answer, “it makes us look like we haven’t done our job if gambling is happening at the most elite levels in an already elite league. Some of the smaller, newer clubs can be excused for having green players who don’t know the rules, but if there’s gambling amongst the big stars, the responsibility falls to us.”
Erin held her breath as he gazed out the window thoughtfully.
“That’s a good point,” he replied finally.
She exhaled.
“I was so focused on the scale of the bust itself—the magnitude of the crime we successfully uncovered—that I didn’t think about how it could be viewed in reverse. That if it was so big we should’ve seen it earlier. Nonetheless I still think we need something more significant than those guys at Tucson.”
Erin bit her lower lip, pretending to think. In fact she was quietly panicking, already knowing the answer and praying Randall didn’t arrive at it as well.
He snapped his fingers. “Brendan Young’s gambling was uncovered only a month into the season. Technically we didn’t figure it out ourselves, but the suggestion is we didn’t have time. Plus he’s leaving Skyline so it doesn’t tarnish the club’s achievements at all.”
Well, shit. He nailed it.
“I totally agree,” she lied, recrossing her legs in the uncomfortable chair in his office. “And I think you’ll like what I’ve discussed with Brendan. As I mentioned earlier, he’s given a lot of his time to organizations who work with—”
He wrinkled his nose. “I understand that he’s back on the pitch, but it’s not because of anything he did, and making out like he’s some kind of hero risen from the ashes does a disservice to Skyline’s main goalkeeper. If anyone should be made into a proud example, it’s that guy.”
“Interesting,” she said slowly, buying time, wracking her brain for a new angle to offer him. “What if we switch focus completely? Instead of revisiting the gambling scandal at all, maybe we should profile Pavel Kovar and restate the league’s commitment to fair play and punishment for dangerous tackles. It’s more compliance than ethics, but still important.”
“Maybe.” Randall swiveled back and forth in his chair, drumming his fingers on his desktop as he gazed into the distance. Erin kept her smile steady and natural, every atom focused on selling him on this new direction.
Shifting the focus away from Brendan would solve so many problems. She wouldn’t have to push him for insider information and burn with guilt every time. She wouldn’t worry that the spotlight on him became bright enough to expose what the two of them were doing. She wouldn’t feel responsible for his legacy, for protecting and preserving everything he’d worked so hard to achieve.
She would sleep with him, as many times as he let her, and she would be so happy, and then he would leave and she would be just as happy without him. She was sure of it.
Randall returned his gaze to her, completely unaware that what he was about to say would make her life ten thousand times better or ten thousand times more stressful.
Make it better, she urged on the off-chance she possessed a psychic influencing power she wasn’t aware of. Do what I say. Forget Brendan so I can have sex with him.
“Let’s stick with the Brendan Young idea,” he concluded, jamming a painfully sharp pin into the overfull balloon of her optimism. “It’s a big, splashy, juicy story, and might dig us out of some of the negative-press hole we fell into when it came out. Unless you find something better at Miami or Charlotte—or Atlanta, I suppose—I think this is our best bet.”
Her smile grew brittle. “Absolutely.”
“And don’t lean too heavily on this heroism angle. I’m glad he did whatever he did for charity, but let’s be honest, all of the players have a cause they give time to on the side. He behaved badly and he’s been rehabilitated—that’s it.”
“Got it. We’ll minimize the mention of the disability advocacy.”
“Perfect.” Randall pressed his hands together, signaling the end of their meeting. “Anything else you want to talk about?”
She shook her head. “Just to thank you again for authorizing this weekend’s travel. I know the women’s team in—”
“Fantastic, then I’ll see you on Monday. We’ll discuss your next travel request then.”
“Thanks,” she said sweetly, then rose from her chair and walked out of his office. She closed the door gently, forced neutrality into her expression and took a deliberately unhurried pace back to her office, even stopping to chat to one of the executive assistants. Eventually she took her place behind her own desk.
She picked up her cell phone and scrolled through her messages unseeingly.
Anger. Frustration. Anxiety. Stress. She’d left the meeting with the exact opposite of the outcome she wanted—she should feel all of the above at this point. Where were they?
Nowhere. She was numb. Randall could walk through the door and fire her and she wouldn’t feel a thing.
She put down her phone and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and counting to ten.
Her fingertips itched.
She wished she’d paid more attention in those Gamblers Anonymous meetings. The couple of times she went in New York she’d turned up in moments of delirious desperation, and at the two meetings she attended in Atlanta she’d been focused on Brendan. What was the technique the other attendees used to stave off the temptation to gamble? Rationalization. Had someone said that or was she making it up?
Either way, worth a try. She pushed the phone a little further away, slid a Post-It pad into its place and jotted down what she’d won in a couple of weeks with Brendan versus what she’d lost playing the app on her phone last month. The difference was a joke—the first number was five times the second.
She shoved the Post-It aside and turned toward her work computer, clicking to open a message from Prinisha.
The email blurred in her vision. She still wasn’t stressed, wasn’t worried about the year-end report. She couldn’t think about anything except pressing the spin button on the app.
She picked up her phone, but with the sole intention of texting Brendan. She navigated to their intermittent text conversation, read their last exchange—a coded reference to the bets she would place for them while he was traveling with Skyline that weekend.
She tapped to enlarge the photo that appeared with every one of his messages. She looked at it a lot, mostly because it amused her that he’d chosen it for his profile picture. Probably taken by Skyline’s team photographer, in the image Brendan stood with his arms crossed, wearing his training kit and a big, broad, mid-laugh grin.
There was something endearing about the idea of Brendan spotting this photo, downloading it from wherever and uploading it to his contact card. He’d clearly chosen it for the happy-go-lucky, cheerful version of himself it portrayed.
Her heart squeezed as she imagined him tapping the photo to upload it, opting into a different man than the one she knew. Content. Unworried. Free from the burdens he carried as a professional athlete, free from the attention and expectations and obligations. Free to be who he wanted. Free to find the woman who would love whoever he became.
She swallowed an unhelpful lump in her throat and swiped to close their conversation. She wouldn’t text Brendan. She had nothing to say to him.
She ignored the guilt already blossoming in her stomach as she opened the slot-machine app. As if on autopilot her finger moved to top up her credit, and before she’d fully registered what she was doing she’d spun and lost ten dollars.
Fuck it, she decided miserably, increasing her wager. Damage is done. Might as well keep going.
She spun and lost and spun and lost and topped up her credit and spun and lost and spun and won three dollars and spun and lost and repeated the process over and over and over until she was so deep in her head she barely saw the results of each spin. Her thumb tapped to spin again and again while her thoughts swam with flashes of her meeting with Randall.
She hadn’t done enough. She was back where she started, except now she cared about Brendan. Now she couldn’t let this happen to him. Now she had to save him.
But she had to save her job, too. And her reputation. And her future.
She spun again and again, tapping the button as soon as it lit up to show it was ready. She had no idea how much she’d lost—probably everything she’d won with Brendan—and she didn’t care. She was beginning to see through the fog, and the welcome sting of stress pricked her skin. As she spun numbness gradually gave way to concern, then worry, then full-on terror.
She inhaled sharply, relishing the flood of adrenaline accompanying the crushing weight of panic that thudded onto her shoulders and banished the last wisps of her detachment. Her heart rate peaked and then subsided, and she shivered as fear’s cold fingertips danced up and down her spine.
Although stress made her head throb and her lungs tighten, she felt better. She felt, an improvement over emotional paralysis. She exhaled, stronger and steadier and sharper, ready to channel her stress into productivity.
She glanced down at the almost-forgotten phone in her hand.
Two hundred dollars gone in less than five minutes.
She put the phone aside, disgusted, noting the sweaty thumbprint marring the screen. She had a lot to figure out. Time to get to work.