Chapter 4
“We’ve looked at a couple of other schools. Iveta thinks it’ll be too hard for Adela to move in the middle of the year, but I want her out as soon as possible. This anorexia fad amongst her friends scares me to death.”
Brendan shook his head sympathetically, pulling on the rowing machine in sync with Skyline’s first-choice goalkeeper, Pavel Kovar. “They’re only, what, ten? Eleven? How do they even know about that stuff?”
“The stupid internet, I guess,” Pavel replied, the words sharpened by his Czech accent. “I had no idea having a daughter would be this complicated.”
For a few minutes, they continued their workout in silence, the swish of the rowing machines the only sound in the empty gym.
Brendan considered Pavel’s predicament but had nothing to add, and he knew his teammate preferred silence to unnecessary chitchat. On paper he should dislike Pavel, who took his first-team slot when Roland joined and brought the Czech keeper over from Europe. Instead, he resented Roland’s decision, not Pavel himself, and over time they’d become solid friends. A steady family man, Pavel always had a litany of domestic stresses ready for discussion, which Brendan found a welcome window into a life much less lonely and isolated than his own.
“How far have we gone?” Pavel spoke first, squinting at the display on the machine.
“Five miles. Keep going.”
The Czech keeper groaned but pulled with renewed vigor. Skyline’s team training session had ended more than an hour earlier, and they were both eager to wrap up their workout and head home.
They’d made it another half-mile down the imaginary river when the gym door opened. Brendan didn’t bother to look up—lots of players stopped in for a workout after training—but when Pavel glanced over his shoulder and then stopped mid-pull, Brendan did the same.
Roland approached them wearing a grim expression, forehead creased behind his stylish plastic-framed glasses.
Brendan groaned inwardly as he let the seat go slack and flexed his calves. He’d never had a bad relationship with a manager until the Swede arrived a year into his Skyline contract. Even then, he thought Roland’s reputation for bringing European excellence to American teams would make them fast friends—after all, Brendan had spent years playing in England and Spain.
Yet they’d disliked each other from the moment they met. Roland clearly resented inheriting an expensive player on a long-term contract, and Brendan wasn’t thrilled to go from starting every game for Skyline to being displaced by Pavel.
But there was more to it. Brendan chafed under Roland’s intense training programs and admittedly could’ve been more tactful. Even after he’d adapted his style and began shutting his mouth he still felt the manager’s suspicion every time they interacted. As though Roland never quite believed the hype around this great American goalkeeper but didn’t have enough evidence to do anything about it.
Like now, as the Swede’s gaze darted between the mileage on the two rowing machines.
“We’re not cheating, I promise,” Brendan assured him dryly.
“I’ve just spoken to Tony,” Roland replied, ignoring Brendan’s comment as he named the team’s medic. “Peter went in for an MRI today.”
Brendan’s attention sharpened at the mention of Peter Lucas, the young, second-choice goalkeeper Roland pulled up from the academy after the SportBetNet debacle in February. Peter had limped off the training field yesterday and hadn’t turned up for this morning’s session.
“It’s not good news,” Roland continued. “He ruptured his Achilles tendon.”
He and Pavel cringed in unison.
“He thought it was just a sprain,” Pavel said, wincing.
Roland shook his head. “Much more serious. He’ll be out until next year.”
The fact and its implications settled between them with the weight and subtly of an eighteen-wheeler. Upside down. And on fire.
“So,” Brendan said unnecessarily.
“So,” Roland echoed. “Looks like you’ll be watching the rest of the season from the sideline instead of the stands. Be prepared to dress for Saturday.”
Brendan fought to keep his nodding reply calm and neutral. “I hope Peter makes a quick recovery. He has a long career ahead of him.”
Roland made a sound that seemed to be the vocal equivalent of a sneer, then left the room without another word.
Pavel grinned as soon as the door shut behind their manager. “Congratulations. You’ve just been promoted to second-choice keeper.”
“Apparently.” Brendan repositioned his feet on the rowing machine, processing the bombshell that had just fallen into his lap. His elation felt wrong, coming at his teammate’s expense.
He’d spent the last six months coming to terms with the reality that he wouldn’t retire in the blaze of glory he’d imagined during his eleven years playing professional soccer. His last match wouldn’t be marked by a legendary save, a clean sheet, or a guard of honor applauding him on his final trip down the tunnel. Instead, he’d be in the stands with the rest of the squad, anonymous and forgotten, his locker already cleaned out, his cleats hung up for good.
Not anymore.
“Unfortunately for me you have the constitution of a prize bull,” Brendan remarked, taking up the rowing-machine handle again.
Pavel shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“You never get injured.”
His teammate grinned. “For you, I’ll make an exception.”
“Please, don’t.” He indicated their twin machines. “Come on, another ten minutes.”
Pavel groaned but repositioned himself on the machine.
Within seconds the swish of their workout pervaded the gym. Brendan tried to focus on the sound, on his form, and on the satisfying use of his body. He tried to narrow his awareness, maximize his workout, and push himself as hard as he could, as always.
But his thoughts clamored for attention and his hands trembled and his heart insisted on an erratic, too-fast-too-slow rhythm.
It’s not over, he repeated with every pull. It’s not over.
* * * *
“Very nice,” Erin remarked approvingly as the real estate agent led her through the front door of Brendan’s home. On a quiet, residential street, the house occupied a big lot made private by lots of mature trees. As Erin crossed the threshold into the pristine, open-concept living room, she realized the million-plus price tag reflected more than the good location.
“The house is just shy of six thousand square feet,” the agent, Marsha, explained, her heels clicking across the wooden floorboards as she led Erin into the kitchen. “Hardwood floors flow throughout. The kitchen was totally redone two years ago, then hardly ever used as far as I understand. Granite counters, stainless steel—”
“Why hasn’t the kitchen been used?” Erin interrupted.
The agent smiled, her heavily made-up eyes crinkling at the corners. “The owner’s a confirmed bachelor. Luckily he has pretty good taste so it isn’t all man-caves and game rooms.”
“Big house for a single guy.”
Marsha leaned in. “Between you and me, the owner is a professional athlete.”
Erin made what she hoped was an appropriately impressed face before returning her attention to her surroundings.
Tick. Definitely the right house.
Erin scanned each room intently as Marsha showed her the rest of the ground floor and then led her upstairs, alert for anything incriminating. The living room, dining room, and first couple of extra bedrooms were all frustratingly bland. In the third bedroom—which had obviously been professionally staged, unless Brendan had the unlikely habit of decorating unused rooms with fresh flowers—she began to wonder if this was a pointless exercise. His house was on the market and open for viewings. Not exactly the context in which he was likely to leave scandalous personal materials or recently dated betting slips lying around.
“And here’s the master,” Marsha said grandly, pushing open the double doors.
“Finally somewhere that looks a little human,” Erin muttered, stepping inside.
The master bedroom was big, so big that one end had been divided into a seating area by brackets of open shelving. As opposed to the boringly neutral choices elsewhere, this room was palpably masculine. Beige carpet, bluish gray walls, and on the large bed a gray duvet folded down over white sheets.
She skimmed her fingers across a pillow, taking in the details of this personal space. She’d known Brendan for years and she’d known him physically, intimately, but as she drifted around his room she realized she didn’t really know him at all.
She wandered into the seating area, where an Eames chair was positioned in front of a wall-mounted flat-screen TV. Maybe he spent most of his time in here, and that explained why the living areas downstairs seemed so sterile.
She stood beside the chair, imagining his long frame stretched in front of a soccer game, legs crossed at the ankles.
Her gaze slid to the bookcase. Maybe he was more of a reader.
The shelves were certainly packed. Fat travel guides for countries across Europe, Spanish-language textbooks and a few books actually written in Spanish. Not too many novels, but lots of non-fiction, mostly about sports.
She squinted at a spine on the bottom shelf. The Zen of Gambling.
Not exactly damning, but she mentally filed its presence nonetheless.
“I like this.” She stood in front of the glass doors leading out to a small terrace overlooking the backyard.
“Wait until you see the bathroom,” Marsha promised.
Erin stepped into the en-suite. Like the bedroom, it was oversized and minimal in a manly way, with navy-and-gray mosaic tiling, a huge tub, and a separate, equally large stall shower.
His scent hit her when she opened the shower door, setting off memories strong enough to rock her back on her heels.
Bright yellow lemon. Freshly stained wood. The hint of a distant bonfire carried on an autumn wind.
She closed her eyes, overwhelmed by vivid flashes of recollection. That same scent on his skin when he hugged her at the wedding, her nose brushing his neck above his crisp collar. In the crowded elevator, when he quietly took her hand and she squeezed his big palm, confident the signals she’d sent him all evening had been received. Feeling safe and satisfied as she rolled over in the tangled sheets to find his lazy grin, his mussed hair.
And back in New York, unpacking her suitcase, lifting the dress she wore that night. The smell of him overpowered her then exactly as it did now and she’d dropped to the bed, expensive silk clutched in tight fists as she braced herself, breathed to quiet her racing heart, crossed her legs to ease the sudden pressure between them.
“Did you notice the floating vanity?”
Marsha’s voice slammed through her thoughts like a bus running a red light. She propped her arm against the floating vanity in question as receding adrenaline left her weak and unsteady.
Ever since Vegas, the thought of Brendan incited a strange, not totally unpleasant but heart-pounding and then draining physical response. Sort of like stepping off a roller coaster, knees wobbling, jaw tight, totally pumped to ride it again.
Belatedly she realized Marsha was waiting for a response.
“It’s great,” she enthused hollowly.
“I know!” Marsha pressed her hands together. “Wait ‘til you see what he’s done with the basement.”
As Erin trailed Marsha through the hall, down the stairs, and across the kitchen to the basement door, her adrenaline spike gave way to guilt knotting so fiercely in her stomach she almost doubled over.
What the hell was she doing, spying on Brendan’s house, trying to dig up blackmail material? Yes, he’d undermined her favorable impression of his hard body and gentle hands and—focus, Erin—and turned out to be a backstabbing son of a bitch instead, but that didn’t mean she should sink to his level.
She reached deep into her stores of empathy, driven by the intimacy of seeing his bed, touching his sink, inhaling his scent.
Maybe he felt cornered when she brought up the year-end report. Maybe he truly believed he did nothing wrong. Or maybe she hurt him more than she realized when she called to insist their one-night stand could never be anything more.
Either way, he didn’t deserve this. And she was better than this.
Time to tell Marsha she might buy a condo instead and haul ass out of here.
The excuse was on the tip of her tongue when Marsha pushed open an antique-looking, glass-paneled door at the bottom of the stairs.
Erin took two steps inside and froze.
“Here’s where he hides the bachelor vibe,” Marsha explained.
“Wow,” was the only response Erin could muster.
He’d converted the expansive basement into an authentic English pub. A polished-wood bar ran along one end, complete with a row of taps and shelves of spirits. The floor was carpeted in muted evergreens and clarets and dotted with low, round tables and matching stools. Pennants from his former clubs in Liverpool and Valencia dotted the walls, and although a few high slit windows let in some natural light the space had a pub’s cozy fireplace smell.
She moved further inside, then stopped.
On the wall to the right past the bar was a whiteboard, so clinical and huge that its incongruity jarred in the otherwise dim room.
It wasn’t the decorating choice that widened her eyes. It was the tight, neat handwriting in bold black marker—and the words didn’t advertise drinks specials.
The handwritten grid probably wouldn’t mean anything to most people—maybe even to most gamblers. He used acronyms for leagues and teams, abbreviations or initials for players. But she knew the context, and she knew her sport. She knew exactly what she was looking at.
Betting odds.
“Gotcha,” she whispered.
“This could easily be converted into a home gym.” Marsha appeared at her side. “Or a fantastic cinema room.”
“It’s perfect exactly as it is. In fact, would you give me a minute? I’d like to soak it all in.”
Erin could practically hear the cash register springing open in Marsha’s mind. “By all means. Take as long as you’d like. I’ll wait upstairs.”
The agent’s high heels echoed up the stairwell. When she heard the upper door close, Erin focused on the whiteboard.
She shouldn’t touch it. Or take a photo of it. Or acknowledge it anyway. She shouldn’t even be down here. She should’ve left five minutes ago.
But if she wanted to march enthusiastically down that road, she shouldn’t have scheduled this viewing at all. She shouldn’t have dropped her credit card bill in his hotel room. She shouldn’t have slept with him in the first place.
Except she had slept with him. And she couldn’t un-see this.
What could she do with it? She tapped her finger against her lower lip. It wasn’t ironclad proof—he could just be tracking the odds without placing any bets. Not sure what the point of that would be, but nonetheless, it was possible.
She took a step back, physically and emotionally. What did she want? And how far would she take this?
Even if she found something that would ruin Brendan’s career, in her heart she knew she’d never use it, not the extent she probably could. She might threaten and allude, but she wouldn’t go so far as to share something with her superiors that would see him banned from the league. Not this close to the end—not when she wasn’t sure herself that he’d done anything so terribly wrong.
She wanted to scare him. Not destroy him.
But he didn’t need to know that.
She picked up one of the black markers in the tray below the whiteboard. The surface was crowded with his precise handwriting and immaculate gridlines, so it took her awhile to find a spot with enough space to make an addition.
Eventually, she found somewhere. One of the matches had been rescheduled, so instead of successive columns for the odds on a home win, an away win, a draw, and whether or not both teams would score, there was a white rectangle labeled with what she assumed was the new date the match would be played.
She crouched in front of the board, uncapping the marker. She wrote carefully, trying to match his handwriting, confident he’d notice the addition but Marsha wouldn’t.
Eight letters and a dash. She straightened, pleased with her handiwork.
Hopefully, this would be enough to send him a message and scare him into compliance before things between them got any more complicated.
She replaced the marker and bounded up the stairs, grinning an awful lot for someone about to tell a Realtor she’d decided she couldn’t afford such a beautiful house.
* * * *
“Didn’t she know she couldn’t afford it when she called for the viewing?” Brendan cradled his cell phone in the crook of his neck as he yanked his sports bag higher on his shoulder with one hand and opened the door from the garage into the kitchen with the other.
Marsha sighed. “I’ll be honest with you. I think it was the pub.”
“The pub?” he repeated incredulously, slinging his bag on the kitchen island and unzipping the top. “The pub is great. Why would anyone not buy the house because of the pub?”
“I warned you it could be a deal-breaker.”
“It shouldn’t be. It’s in the basement. If she doesn’t like it, she can pretend it isn’t there.” He tugged his balled-up workout clothes from the bag and threw them into the washing machine.
“I told you that for this price people want something special. A gym, or a home theatre. Even a guest suite. This was a single lady. Corporate type. What’s she going to do with a pub?”
“Drink in it,” he suggested, removing his empty water bottle and shoving it in the dishwasher, then moving to the fridge. “Anyway, I’m not sure single ladies are my target market, even if they are the corporate type.”
“Really,” Marsha said dryly. “Then who is your target market?”
“Families.” It was a perfect family home. That’s why he bought it.
“And what’s a family going to do with a pub?”
Good point, but not one he planned to concede. “I’m not turning it into a gym.”
“But you have all that equipment in the spare bedroom. If you just took out the tables and moved in one or two—”
“I’m not doing it. Find another buyer.”
“I’ll try, Brendan, but—”
“Talk later.” He ended the call before she could protest further and shoved the phone in his pocket.
He opened the fridge and stared unseeingly at the shelves.
Were people really put off buying his house because of his pride and joy in the basement? It hadn’t been on the market that long and it was something of a specialist purchase at the price, but still…
Brendan shook his head, selecting a bottle of water and a tangerine. Then he pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of his gym bag and tucked it under his arm.
He couldn’t think about his house sale right now, not after the bombshell he’d had at training. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about Peter’s injury, and he needed to clear his head.
He needed to work his odds.
He jogged down the stairs into the basement, his favorite place in the too-big house. He’d built it to look exactly like a down-market pub he used to frequent when he played in Liverpool—one of the few pubs he could enter without being swamped by soccer fans. The regulars knew exactly who he was, but no one bothered him, and it became his oasis in a city—in a country—that was soccer mad.
His chronic, background anxiety and feverish thoughts eased every time he stepped inside his own private public house. If only he could make it smell slightly mustier and pay some grumpy old dudes to slump at the bar all day, he’d never know he was in Atlanta instead of England.
He placed his water and tangerine on the bar and took a seat on the last stool, perfectly positioned to glance between the whiteboard and his notebook. He flipped through pages creased and indented with dense handwriting to the one he’d started that morning. He picked up a pen from beside the bar mat and settled in to study his odds, hand poised over the paper.
He flexed his hand, his whirring thoughts already slowing as he scanned the board. His shoulders relaxing, he mentally stepped into the methodical, long-standing routine of calculating and recalculating odds that had been better for his anxiety than anything a psychiatrist ever tried.
“Anxiety”—that was his favorite diagnosis of the several he’d had since he was a teenager and his cyclical, ultra-focused thought patterns became so intense and intrusive that he stopped sleeping. For as long as he could remember he’d had hyper, scrolling thoughts, like an unending stock ticker running behind his eyes. He unconsciously and instantaneously evaluated every angle of a situation and calculated the probable outcomes. As a child, he knew which slice would be biggest from the slant of his mother’s arm as she cut a cake, and immediately called dibs. If he crossed an intersection he instinctively took stock of how many cars were approaching from which directions and the likelihood that any of them intended to turn without signaling, based on a snap scan of their positions in their lanes.
Sometimes it was useful. His immense capacity for concentration meant he was an outstanding student, and his naturally heightened awareness and super-fast reaction times made him a star athlete from a young age. He first excelled as a Little League catcher but found his true love when he joined a rec soccer team. After only a handful of games his coach told his mom to find him a real club, and a week or two later he was the youngest player on a highly competitive traveling team. Assessing his height, speed, and uncanny ability to read his opponents’ intentions, his coach immediately put him in goal.
More often, though, his unusual thought patterns meant he lived with a veering, uncontrollable brain and a constant sense of worry. Because he could predict a full range of outcomes for any given circumstances, he often had negative, fearful thoughts. In the car he braced himself for what felt like inevitable crashes. He’d anticipated fistfights around every corner at school, and he developed an irrational paranoia about failing to complete an assignment or study for a test and spectacularly flunking out.
After turning in three weeks of math homework early—and then falling asleep in class—his teacher called his mother, who took up the cause of his suspected mental illness with the same gusto she’d used to fight for his older brother’s dyslexia diagnosis and champion his younger brother, Liam, who had Down syndrome.
He and his mother completed a circuit of every psychologist and psychiatrist in the greater Lincoln, Nebraska, area and received verdicts ranging from adolescent hormones to obsessive-compulsive disorder. He began to resist his mother’s attention and downplayed his symptoms. Steadily she backed off, and he transitioned from hiding his problem to developing techniques to control it, to maximize the upsides and minimize the downsides.
By the time he graduated from high school he’d become a master of mental self-regulation. For the most part, he simply matured enough to be able to talk himself out of his worst thought spirals, and when the noise in his head became too much he quieted it by working ahead in his calculus textbook, channeling his focus onto the complex equations. In college he took his first statistics class and was instantly hooked, gulping down modeling theories, filling entire notebooks with calculations while setting records on the soccer pitch.
He finished college in May and in July he was in England, twenty-two years old, with more money than he knew how to spend and fiercer competition on the pitch than he’d ever imagined. He bought advanced statistics textbooks but still struggled to control his increasingly intrusive thoughts—until he walked past one of the storefront betting shops that were legal in the UK.
That afternoon he sat in a pub for three hours, drinking juice, analyzing the players in the Italian league, researching their past performances and assessing their chances in that weekend’s match schedule. He filled out a betting slip and handed it into the shop with a modest wager.
He tripled his money.
Of course, his system didn’t have the same soothing effect now that he couldn’t place any real bets. As soon as the data leaked from SportBetNet he shut down all his accounts and hadn’t wagered a cent since. He’d thought about it, and he’d gone as far as entering his credit card details into one site or another, but always changed his mind in the end, reminding himself the day after his contract expired he could gamble every hour of every day if he wanted.
In the meantime, he had his homemade pub, his notebooks full of calculations, and his master fixture chart on his whiteboard.
He scanned a page as he unpeeled the tangerine, looking at the anticipated team sheets for upcoming English matches. He popped a segment into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, opting to look at one of the London rivalries first. His thoughts settled into a calm hum as he went down the lists of players, weighing each one’s recent performances, injuries, intersection with other players, long-term records against this opponent, track record of conduct in emotionally charged pairings like this one…
He decided it would be a draw, either 1-1 or 0-0. He glanced up at the whiteboard to see the odds bookies were offering on both scores, squinting at the chart—and dropped the tangerine on the floor.
Gotcha—EB
He ground his teeth as he put the pieces together.
A young, single woman viewing his house.
EB.
Erin fucking Bailey.
He snatched up his phone and redialed the Realtor, then stormed up the basement stairs as he listened to it ring.
“Hi again, Brendan.”
“What color hair did she have?” he demanded, stalking across the kitchen.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The viewer today. Was she a redhead?”
“Actually, yes. Why? Do you know her?”
He ended the call without another word and turned his phone upside down on the counter, ignoring its buzzing as Marsha called back.
He paced a directionless circle around the kitchen, shoving his hand through his hair as his anxiety amped up from a background hum to a breath-quickening whine.
Less than two hours ago his career had gotten its biggest boost in months when he’d been promoted to the second-choice keeper. Now it teetered on the edge of failure again, with Erin poised to push it off the cliff.
He couldn’t believe she had the audacity to sneak into his house and spy on his personal space in some sick attempt to double down on this antagonistic game they’d fallen into.
Scratch that—yes, he could. He should’ve known she’d retaliate. He was stupid to think this had ended in her office.
He stopped pacing and forced himself to pull his thoughts into a coherent line. There was no defense he could use without implicating himself. He couldn’t call her boss, he couldn’t call the press. Any effort to expose what she’d done would send her straight to the league with what he guessed was photographic evidence of an ongoing gambling habit. He’d never be able to convince them he hadn’t actually placed any bets—how could he prove a negative? That would be the end of any sliver of redemption he might grab over the next couple of months.
He had to hand it to Erin. She was smart, strategic, and knew exactly what she was doing. She’d made a brilliant move in their personal chess match. He never saw it coming.
It would’ve been kind of sexy, actually, if it wasn’t so infuriating.
He flattened his palms on the counter as he made a decision. He couldn’t out-connive her, nor did he especially want to. But that didn’t mean he would give up.
He retrieved his phone, swiping to dismiss Marsha’s three unanswered calls. He scrolled to a number and tapped to call.
“Good afternoon, Erin Bailey’s office, Suzanne speaking.”
“Hi, Suzanne. This is Brendan Young.”
“Mr. Young, hello. I’m afraid Erin’s in a meeting, may I take a message?”
He drummed his knuckles on the cool granite. “No. But you can do something else for me.”