Chapter 9
Skyline pressed Boston hard, all ten players over the midline, yet every one of Brendan’s nerves seemed to whine with alertness. A high, tinny buzz like a hundred mosquitos drifted in and out of the space between his thoughts.
He squinted toward the other end of the pitch, shifting his weight from foot to foot. Only fifteen minutes left and the score was nil-nil. Not wildly unexpected against such a high-quality opponent—particularly because Roland used to be Boston’s manager so a few of the players had axes to grind—but not the victory they were capable of, either.
Whether or not they scored was totally out of his hands. Whether or not they kept a clean sheet, however, fell squarely at his feet.
He leaned left, right, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his mental stock ticker running faster than ever. Despite the players’ distance, every second he imagined another scenario, another angle from which Boston Liberty might try to score and moved in preparation, only to frantically reset his position to the center.
He glanced needlessly at the match clock. Fourteen minutes left. Exactly one minute since he’d last looked.
“Stop,” he instructed himself quietly, standing motionless in the center of the goal. His anxiety on the pitch hadn’t been this bad since the beginning of his career, and although he expected to be frazzled in his first match since last season, he didn’t think it would be so extreme.
To be fair, he’d been better in the first half. His almost year-long absence from the pitch hadn’t seemed to impact his concentration, his reaction times or his communication with the defensive players. He made two crucial saves to the cheers and applause of the away fans, and at halftime, Roland acknowledged his contribution in his dressing-room talk.
He began the second half with his characteristically efficient hyper-focus, but as the clock ticked it progressively moved from awareness to worry to anxiety to borderline panic. The physical exhaustion of playing a full ninety minutes for the first time in such a long time, plus the added pressure of knowing there was no one to sub him out if he made a catastrophic error or picked up an injury eroded his mental self-control. Over the second half, he spiraled from on-point and alert to agitated and scattered.
Stilling himself, he took several long, slow breaths, fighting to rein in his veering thoughts.
Visualize what you want and focus on it. The league trophy, glinting gold under bright lights. Renovating the house in Nebraska, knocking down walls, ripping up old carpet, days filled with useful exertion. A big, fat payout from the wagers he and Erin placed that weekend.
Erin. Blue eyes alight with mischief. Sensuous lips curving in satisfaction. Broad, muscular thighs, echoes of her time as a professional athlete. Soft breasts pressed against his chest, her warm fingers on his bare skin—
He shook his head, shutting down that line of thought and throwing all his energy into breathing slowly, watching carefully, blocking out everything except the match.
Boston was on the counterattack, passing the ball back into Skyline’s half with their striker in possession. Brendan dug his cleats into the earth as the action shifted in his direction.
Instinctively he exhaled, pulling down the screen of cool-headed serenity he’d developed to keep his paranoid anxieties separate from the supercharged analytical machinations that created them. He had nothing to worry about. He was unbeatable. He was the best.
The affirmation tucked safely in his turbo-boosted brain, he narrowed his eyes at his own defenders as they sprinted to beat Boston back to their goal.
He widened his stance and slightly bent his knees, gloved hands raised in readiness. One of Skyline’s center-backs, Paulo, got close enough to make eye contact. Brendan nodded to ease the concern in the Brazilian’s expression.
I’ve got your back, his nod assured his teammate. Do what you need to do.
Paulo received his message loud and clear. The defender turned his back on the goal to mark an advancing Boston winger. It was a sensible decision—the winger was the most likely person for the striker to pass to, and by all accounts, he really should pass given no less than three Skyline players were vying for possession.
But Brendan read the striker’s posture, his face, the momentary glance he tried to conceal by immediately looking the other way.
He shot. An audacious chance, backed up by serious technical skill as it arced over the heads of the Skyline players on a perfect trajectory toward the upper right-hand corner of the net. Clever, elegant, well executed, with potential not only to win the game but make the striker man of the match.
Except for the third-choice goalkeeper on the pitch.
Brendan’s feet left the ground as he jumped to save the shot, batting the sixty-mile-an-hour ball away from the goal.
The away fans cheered the save and the Skyline players’ postures registered visible relief, but a quick sweep of his opponents told Brendan they weren’t safe yet. The ball was still too close to the goal for his liking.
Guedes—Paulo’s counterpart—captured possession and passed to Oz, who passed to Paulo, who lost the ball in an interception. The Boston winger pivoted and booted the ball toward the goal in an accurate, powerful shot. Skyline’s defenders were so spread out they couldn’t do anything but watch it, faces stricken.
Brendan leaped sideways to intercept the shot, cupping his hands together in front of his chest. As soon as the ball thudded against his body he fell on it, trapping it underneath his ribs.
The force of the impact had knocked the air out of his lungs and he gave himself a second to recover, resting facedown, his forehead pressed into the grass. Slowly he made his way up, pleased to find his teammates had already started running back toward the midline. He gestured for them to keep going, assessing each one of their positions before placing the ball at his feet. He took a couple of steps backward to give himself a run-up, noted Oz was unmarked, and thwacked the ball in a long-range kick which the left-back controlled out of the sky with his head, his chest and finally his feet.
Oz negotiated the ball down the left channel, and Brendan checked the clock as his teammate made an aggressive run.
Nine minutes left.
He stepped to the edge of his area, watching Oz’s unstoppable sprint. The left-back was hungry to score against his former club, and in the last thirty minutes, he’d channeled his first-half frustration into sheer determination.
He flexed his fingers, rolled his shoulders. At the other end of the pitch, Oz made laughingstocks of one of Boston’s central defenders, popping the ball over his head and recovering it on his other side, then slamming it into the net.
Brendan smiled as his teammates celebrated. The away fans lost their minds and the scoreboard ticked up to one-nil. Boston wouldn’t score in the next seven minutes—they were too tired, and now would be too demoralized, knowing their only hope was to equalize.
They would try, though. He reset his position between the goalposts, bending his ankles, exhaling the swell of anxiety that bubbled up in his mind, recapturing his all-over calm as Boston charged toward Skyline’s half.
They would try. They would fail.
* * * *
Midfielder Brian Scholtz slapped his hands over his ears as Swedish techno music thumped through the dressing room.
“Do we really have to listen to this shit?”
“Goal-scorer’s pick,” Nico reminded him. “Terim got the winning point so Terim picks the music. When you score the winning point, we’ll listen to whatever you want.”
“Still, I’m not sure it needs to be so loud,” Brian grumbled.
“Brian.” Laurent shot him a withering look from across the dressing room. “You didn’t even play. Stop being a dick.”
Brendan exchanged an amused glance with Nico as the young midfielder backed down against Laurent’s remark, delivered in his thick French accent.
“Here’s the man of the hour,” Nico enthused as Oz walked past them toward the showers. They both stood to embrace the left-back in turn.
“Fantastic shot,” Brendan commended him, choosing his words carefully. Oz and Roland were thick as thieves, having played together in Boston and in Sweden before that. Although he trusted Oz as a teammate and they’d never been less than friendly, Brendan had no illusion that anything he did or said had potential to get back to Roland.
“Would’ve been a different story without your double save. It was a pleasure to have you behind us today. You really are a world-class keeper.”
Oz stuck out his hand, and Brendan shook it gratefully. The young Swede wasn’t a particularly forthcoming guy, and Brendan knew this was Oz’s way of telling him the gambling scandal was behind them and that he had the left-back’s support.
He smiled his appreciation at Oz’s back as the defender proceeded toward the showers. His teammates’ approval used to be the last thing he cared about. Now, at the end of his career, he treasured it.
“He’s right,” Nico agreed. “You saved our one-nil-scraping asses today. No one will forget it.”
“Just doing my job.” He slapped the winger on the back and sat down to finish untying his cleats. He stowed his boots in the cubby below the locker, stripped off his socks to toss into the laundry bin, and stuck his feet into his shower flip-flops. Then he reached up and pulled his jersey over his head, holding it at arm’s length to read the name and number printed on the back.
Young. 1.
He’d come to Skyline as number one and kept the number after Roland arrived and he dropped to second and then third choice. At points over the last year, he’d felt like a fraud, tugging on a number-one shirt for training, knowing full well he wouldn’t even be dressing for the next match, let alone playing in it. The badge of honor he’d spent so long earning became a scarlet letter, mocking his fall from grace, signifying everything he’d thrown away.
Pride swelled in his chest. He’d never take anything so important, so rare, or so hard-won for granted again.
He added the jersey to the laundry pile, then took off his shorts, his briefs, and wrapped the provided towel from Boston Liberty’s sponsor around his waist.
He looked down. “Oh.”
Nico glanced over and burst into hysterical laughter, pointing at the too-small towel’s early finish at the top of his thighs.
“Guys, look at Young’s towel,” he called to the room at large, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “They gave him an extra small.”
“To be fair, they don’t make towels in giraffe size,” Laurent joked.
“He asked for extra long, but then they called his ex-girlfriend,” Oz hollered from the shower.
“Very funny.” But Brendan grinned as he made his way to the showers, enjoying being a part of the team banter after so long on its fringes. He picked a stall and turned on the water, ducking under the showerhead. Then he balled up the offending towel and hurled it at Nico’s head, hitting his mark with accuracy that would make any striker envious.
His good mood persisted as he dressed, boarded the bus with the rest of the Skyline players and took the short journey back to their hotel. He waited until he was safely in his room to read a text message from Erin, easing onto the edge of the bed.
They hadn’t seen each other since the previous weekend’s strategy session—as she had coined it—but they’d texted constantly, trading updates on odds and player stats and lobbing predictions about the results of the upcoming match schedule.
Hey, you! Watched the 1st half, great stuff! You look like you don’t even know where the bench is let alone been on it most of the season. Best of luck in the 2nd 45 mins!
He smiled. He expected it to be one of her reminders to send her the finalized wagers to place early tomorrow morning.
He tapped out a reply. Hope you enjoyed the 2nd half. Nice to get a clean sheet, important win for the team. Will send final picks tonight.
He’d leaned over to plug his phone into its charger when it dinged. He raised it again and read her reply.
The humble Mr. Young not taking credit for his super speedy double save in the last 20 mins. Very well played sir, good to see you on the pitch where you belong.
He shook his head, endeared by her love of emojis as he put his phone down. She didn’t quite get the complexities of his system yet, but he appreciated her enthusiasm. He also appreciated her irresponsibly vast array of credit cards, with which they were able to shop for odds and win tangible, exciting sums of money—money he didn’t need financially but emotionally he was surprisingly dependent on.
Maybe the monetary wins were the validation he needed to prop up his often faltering ego, he considered, opening the menu for the hotel restaurant. Or maybe they made his endless charts and notebook scribblings real, in a way. Legitimizing his mental maneuverings in the real world instead of only in his head.
Either way, it worked. What should’ve been one of the most stressful weeks of his life as he prepared for today’s match was relaxed and easy. Whenever his anxiety built he pulled out a notebook and reviewed that weekend’s bets, finding calm in the systematic analysis and reassurance in the knowledge these hypotheses would be put to the real-life test and would live or die on Erin’s credit cards.
He refocused on the menu, deciding to spend the evening in the restaurant with a celebratory steak and page after page of match analysis. He tucked his notebook under his arm and headed downstairs.
The restaurant hostess was still halfway through her greeting when his name rang across the crowded room. He turned in that direction to find a handful of his teammates seated around a table, gesturing for him to join them.
Dammit. He wasn’t in the mood for socializing. His brain was tender after the exertion and fierce control required for the match and his grip on his anxiety felt tenuous, in the same way his hands shook and cramped at the end of a long set of weights repetitions. They’d seen him now, though, and there was no way he could politely move on to sit by himself in a dark corner. He’d have to stay for at least one drink, then make an excuse and find somewhere else to eat.
His body sagged with weariness but he forced a smile as he joined his teammates. Winger Rio Vidal stood and shifted his chair over, then grabbed another from a nearby table and stuffed it into the empty space.
Brendan thanked the Chilean as he took his seat. Between his iffy Spanish and Rio’s iffy English the two of them had a surprisingly good rapport.
“This looks like a Midfielders Anonymous meeting. Are you sure I’m allowed to be here?” He looked around the table at Laurent, Nico, Rio, and Aaron Jackson, Laurent’s American counterpart in central midfield.
“Just this once we’ll make an exception. It’s your lucky day, we haven’t ordered yet. Do you want to see a menu?” Laurent asked.
“I had a look in the room. I just came down for a drink. I’m not hungry enough to eat yet.”
“We’ll wait,” Nico offered. “We can have a few starters while you work up an appetite.”
“No, really, I’m fine. I might go for a walk. See what’s in the neighborhood.”
Laurent shrugged off his excuse but Nico frowned. Brendan shoved his notebook farther down his lap, balancing it precariously on his knees and safely out of sight of his teammates.
“Wine?” Laurent asked as the waitress arrived with an expensive bottle of red. He’d planned to indulge in no more than a post-match beer, maybe two, but at this point, Brendan felt he had to go with the flow.
“Sure.” He snagged a wineglass from another table and pushed it forward. Laurent expertly poured out the bottle between their five glasses and Brendan took a sip, supposing it would be bad manners to down it all in one, although it would get him out of there faster.
He managed to drag it out over forty minutes in the end. He bantered with the midfielders and returned the good-humored ribbing he received in equal measure. Time well spent, bonding with the teammates from whom he’d become alienated over the last season as they felt their way back to relying on each other.
By the time he took the final, draining sip from the glass his thoughts whirred and roared like a buzz saw about to cut through his skull.
“I’m off,” he announced. “Time to leave you midfield dynamos to congratulate yourselves on your creative passes and clever maneuvers, conveniently forgetting that a defender scored our only goal today.”
“Hilarious. What’s that?” Nico pointed to his notebook as he stood up from the table.
Brendan deployed the answer he’d come up with midway through his glass of wine. “Secret goalkeeper stuff.”
Nico looked like he was about to ask for more detail when Aaron jumped in.
“You know I love you, Young, but damn, goalkeepers are weird. Have you guys ever noticed that?”
The other midfielders nodded and Aaron continued, “Every goalkeeper I’ve ever played with has been totally offbeat. Good guys, but strange. I think you might be the most normal one I’ve met.”
If only you knew. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Anyway, enjoy your dinner, gentlemen. I’ll see you tomorrow for the trip home.”
He exchanged goodbyes with his teammates and then had to stop himself from running out of the restaurant, across the lobby and outside. When he finally made it through the hotel doors he leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths of humid air in an effort to calm his racing heart.
He had nothing to worry about, he informed himself. The notebook was so heavily coded he doubted anyone could make it out without any context, and certainly not after a couple seconds’ glimpse. His teammates were his friends and allies, not his enemies.
Having rationalized his stock-ticker thoughts to a crawl instead of a sprint, he pushed off the wall and walked down the street, keeping his eyes open for a suitable venue for a beer, some dinner and a couple of hours of statistics.
He wandered for a while, enjoying the Friday-night bustle on the sidewalks as Bostonians enjoyed a warm, late-summer evening. Well-dressed couples held hands as they stepped inside expensive-looking restaurants, and he tried to imagine where he’d be this time next year. A hot, dry Nebraska summer was more or less guaranteed, but what about everything else?
By then maybe he’d have someone to take to nice restaurants. Whose hand he could hold on a Friday night. Who’d take an interest in his conjectures about the next day’s soccer results. Who wouldn’t mind the time he spent analyzing the sport he used to play, and who would appreciate his winnings, not judge him for playing for them.
Or maybe—more likely—he’d still be alone. Sitting in a bar with his notebooks and his beer, making bets on people who used to fear him, who wanted to face anyone but him for a penalty kick.
He circled back to a bar he’d seen right after leaving the hotel. Its low-key exterior flagged his interest when he first passed it, and in twenty minutes of walking, he hadn’t found anywhere as attractively unassuming. He pushed open the door.
The situation inside was exactly as he’d glimpsed through the window. The décor sat somewhere between an Irish pub and a sports bar, with Guinness logos and Red Sox memorabilia vying for dominance. Men watching a baseball game lined the bar, but that was fine with him. He wanted one of the empty booths along the back wall instead.
He found enough space at the end of the bar to lean in and get the bartender’s attention. She was surprisingly young and pretty to be working somewhere with such an old-man vibe. Maybe she dug old men.
“What can I get you?” She flashed him a warm, seemingly genuine smile. Or maybe she worked here because these oldies fell for her grin and tipped her better.
“Sam Adams draught.” He pointed to a laminated piece of paper stuck under a bowl of nuts. “Is this the menu?”
She nodded. “I can recommend the burgers. We bring them in from the restaurant next door.”
He accepted his beer and ordered a cheeseburger, then crossed to a corner booth. His notebook stuck to the surface of the table and the un-cushioned wooden bench dug into his tailbone.
Perfect.
Calmer than he’d been all day, he pulled out his notebook, flipped to his in-progress page and methodically worked through tomorrow’s fixtures.
One cheeseburger, one beer, and an hour later, he sensed someone standing near the edge of his table.
“Another Sam Adams would be great, thanks,” he murmured, barely looking up from his notebook. Only when someone slid into the other side of the booth did he manage to tear his gaze away from the page.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Nice to see you, too.” Erin plucked one of the fries from the wax paper-lined basket and bit into it, then wrinkled her nose and put it back. “These are stone cold.”
“I thought you were the bartender, coming to take this away.”
“She’s busy.” Erin thumbed toward the bar, which was significantly more crowded than when he sat down. Still mostly old men, though, all glued to the TV.
“What’s so exciting?”
“Some shitty sport with wooden sticks where no one kicks anything. Want to go somewhere else?”
He shut the notebook, sizing her up across the table. Her hair cascaded loosely over her shoulders, and she wore jeans and a V-neck T-shirt. Too casual to be here on business, but surely she would’ve told him if she’d come to watch his match.
Either way, she stood out in their dingy surroundings like a vase of bright red roses in the middle of a junkyard. He found himself breathing a bit easier, as though she’d brought a gust of fresh air with her from outside.
He fought to keep a stern expression. “Let’s start with here, specifically your presence. I thought you were in Atlanta.”
“You thought wrong.”
“You didn’t tell me you were going to be in Boston.”
“You didn’t ask.”
He rolled his eyes. “Just tell me why you’re here.”
“I had a meeting this afternoon with Liberty Ladies, to discuss next season’s marketing campaign. I didn’t tell you because it was scheduled at short notice and I didn’t want to distract you ahead of your match. Also, it wasn’t your business.”
“And this bar? This booth? How did you get here?”
“Coincidence…ish.”
“Ish?” he repeated.
“I thought it might be nice to check in on you. Make sure you weren’t beating yourself up over that mistake in the first half when the central midfielder’s shot hit the post.”
He bolted upright. “That wasn’t a mistake. I saw that wasn’t going in and I knew if I touched it there was as much chance of it becoming an own goal as—”
“I’m kidding. You played great. Anyway, I’m not here to offer performance feedback.”
“Back to the central question, then. Why are you here?”
She raised a shoulder. “I spotted one of the other players leaving the restaurant and he said you’d gone for a walk. I saw this place, near the hotel, with all the Brendan Young hallmarks—dark, dingy, generally uninviting—and decided to look inside to see if you were here. If you weren’t, I would’ve gone back to the hotel. But you are, and here I am.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Not sure it was a great idea to ask my teammates where I was. Now they’ll link the two of us.”
“I thought of that, but it was the guy who doesn’t speak English.”
“Rio,” Brendan supplied, relieved.
“I don’t think he knew who I was. He started to sign a napkin for me. Anyway, we can safely assume there are no soccer fans amongst the loyal over there.”
He glanced again at the crowd near the bar, then back at her. “Are you hungry?”
“Starving. Want another drink?”
He pushed his glass across the table. “Go for it.”
“Oh, I will,” she promised, winking as she gathered up the discarded burger basket and the empty glass.
He watched her sidle up to the group looking at the TV and navigate her way through a clump of men. He couldn’t hear her from across the room, but he noted the amount of smiling, giggling and back-touching seemed unnecessary for placing an order from a female bartender. After a few minutes she came back with a beer in each hand, and instead of resuming her previous seat she motioned him closer to the wall so she could squeeze in beside him.
“How much do I owe you?” he asked, trying to ignore the fresh, summery whiff of jasmine that lit up his senses as her hip bumped his. He thought again of the creeping, twisting jasmine vine that climbed a trellis along the back of his house. According to his gardener, it was quite a mature plant, lovingly cultivated by the couple from whom he’d bought the house three years earlier. Its delicate flowers and sweet scent belied its strength and endurance, and every month it reached higher like it was intent on growing all the way to the roof.
“These were free,” Erin explained. “Courtesy of my new friends, Richard and Larry.”
As if on cue, two men turned around at the bar and waved. Erin waved back.
“I’ve seen women get free drinks before, but never extras for their male friends.”
“I told them you play for Boston Liberty.”
He laughed. Not the muted laugh he offered his bantering teammates, or the privately bemused chuckle when something randomly struck him as funny. A belly-deep, rib-vibrating, utterly spontaneous laugh that kept going until it brought tears to his eyes.
It took a minute or two to collect himself. He hadn’t laughed like that in a while.
“I ordered nachos,” she announced, pulling out her phone. “And while we wait for them, you’re going to put away your notebook and lose some money.”
He groaned as she tapped open a slot-machine app. “I hate this crap.”
“You’ll love it once you learn how to play it.”
“I doubt that,” he grumbled, but leaned over the screen anyway.
“Looks like I’m out of credit. We need to load that up first.” She tapped through various options until her balance to play with was fifty dollars.
He whistled. “Are you sure you can afford to lose that?”
“Who says I’m going to lose it?” She bet one dollar on her first spin, pressed the button, lost.
“Ouch.”
She brushed off his comment with a waved hand. “I’m still warming up. Let’s amp up the action.” She bet five dollars, pressed the button, and lost again.
A knot of discomfort fisted in his stomach as he looked at the depleting sum of credit at the top right-hand corner of the screen. “Let’s call it quits. You can cash out the money you haven’t bet, right?”
“Nope,” she replied with a flourish, losing another five dollars.
“At least bet smaller sums. This is stupid.”
“Chill. You’re missing the point.”
“If losing money on nothing is the point, I’m getting it.”
She shook her head. “The point is it’s random. Out of your hands. Pure luck.”
“It’s not luck, it’s an algorithm developed to make sure the betting site never pays out more than it takes in.”
She sighed. “You are so uptight. I know how slot machines work, online and in-person. You have to let go of the math and hope that you’ll be the one who gets the big payout or any payout at all. Sometimes it happens, and that sometimes makes it exciting.”
“It makes it stressful,” he amended.
“Because sitting for hours poring over player stats and fixture records is like being on the beach? Here, try.” She stuck her phone in his hand.
“I really don’t—” She reached across him to press the button, the side of her breast brushing his arm. The air caught in his lungs as the faint contact sent a bolt of sensation rocketing up to his shoulder.
“You won a dollar! See, we’re already on an upswing.”
She pressed in more closely and he knew it was deliberate. He took a stalling drink of beer as his mental stock ticker whirred to life, analyzing the genuineness of her intentions, the long-term implications, the potential for someone to see them and get the wrong idea—or the right one.
“Your turn,” she goaded, nudging him in the ribs.
“I won’t gamble with your money.”
“You already do. You tell me how to wager on soccer.”
“I give you advice. You don’t have to take it.”
“I’d be a fool not to.” Her hand slid along the wooden seat to bump into his leg. The stock ticker whirred a little bit faster.
He lowered his left hand to rest on top of hers. She looped her fingers through his.
“Go on,” she urged. “Spin again.”
He shook his head, paranoia ramping up with every passing second. He tried to glance past her to make sure they knew no one in the bar but when he turned his head she filled his vision, red hair and moist lips and that coy, tantalizing smile.
“We’ll do it together.” She positioned the phone on the table and guided his hand above it. Then she dropped their interlinked fingers to press the button.
Jackpot.
“Thirty dollars!” She dropped his hand to clap in excitement, bouncing on the seat. “That’s incredible. Never mind your system, you have a gift.”
He began to protest but she silenced him with her mouth, one hand moving to his neck, the other to his waist.
He sank into the kiss like submerging into a warm, Floridian ocean. The sounds of the bar became muffled, distant, distorted, and the stock ticker ground to a welcome halt.
He didn’t care about consequences or possibilities. He wanted her. Now. Nothing else mattered.
He gripped the enticing curve of her waist, responding impatiently to the pressure of her lips. She didn’t need much encouragement—instantly she cracked her jaw to give him access, meeting the thrusts of his tongue with eagerness and hunger.
His erection rose quickly and mercilessly, threatening the limits of his jeans as he shifted to hold more of her, to fill his palms with as much soft, sweet woman as possible.
She made him a glutton, he realized as he moved one hand to her neck, twining his fingers in her hair. Structure and systems and moderation dictated the rest of his life, but with her, he was a starving beggar unexpectedly admitted to a royal feast—no, he was a diabetic bingeing on jumbo-sized chocolate bars. He knew it would hurt later. He knew it might even kill him. Still, he couldn’t stop, couldn’t find satisfaction, couldn’t ever get enough.
She tasted like beer, hoppy and summery and relaxing. Her body was a mix of soft and hard—lush breasts, generous hips, unyielding muscles in her legs and upper arms. Her jasmine scent curled around him like a vine, drawing him nearer.
“Nachos.”
The clunk of porcelain on wood jerked them apart. The bartender scowled at him, shot Erin a look that said she’d better still get her tip, and stormed back across the room.
The stock ticker hummed in double time. The bartender would remember them now. Would she go to the tabloids? It wouldn’t be difficult to figure out he was a Skyline player, not Liberty. Any reasonably intelligent sports correspondent would—
Erin trailed her fingertips down his side, releasing the line of tension tightening the space between his shoulders. His paranoia receded like low tide. Of course, the bartender wouldn’t go to the tabloids, nor would she think about them for longer than it took him to leave a big tip.
Maybe Erin was right. He should chill.
She took a long draught of beer, then smiled at him over the rim of her glass, mischief gleaming in her eyes. “So you do know how.”
“How to what?”
“Have fun.”
“I have fun all the time. Vegas was fun.”
“You were drunk.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?”
The words slipped from his mouth with unexpectedly sharp edges, piercing the moment. His gaze dropped to his lap. Erin replaced her glass on the table, lining it up in the wet ring it had left when she picked it up.
He resisted the urge to withdraw from the ache that had started in the center of his chest at the mention of their night together. He knew this might happen and he kissed her anyway. He couldn’t evade the consequences.
“We drank, but we weren’t drunk,” he spelled out. “Don’t pretend that either of us had anything less than an absolutely clear idea of what we were doing. It’s insulting.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.” But her voice trailed off and her hands settled around the bottom of her glass, fingers tapping distractedly.
He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t. He wanted to drape his arm over her shoulder, pull her against his side and assure her he wasn’t offended.
Except for every time he touched her, another string of jasmine flowers looped around his waist and tightened, tying him to her in a way that made it harder and harder to pull away.
He needed room to move. To leave. And when the time came for him to tangle up in a web of strings, she wouldn’t be on the other end of them.
He sensed her posture change. She tapped the side of the glass once more, then slipped around the edge of the table to sit across from him, not beside him.
When their eyes met again hers were cool and evaluating. He tightened his jaw. Had he made a mistake?
“This was fun, but it wasn’t free.” She tilted her head. “Our deal was that you would feed me some leads on gambling in the league. I have to update my boss on Monday. What am I going to tell him?”
He flexed his hands under the table. He knew this moment was on its way, but that didn’t make its arrival any less disappointing.
“Tucson United,” he told her quietly. “A couple of the guys have an online fantasy soccer team. They lose more than they win, but I’m guessing that doesn’t matter.”
“Not a bit. But thank you. I’ll take it from here.”
He pulled a twenty-dollar note from his wallet and tucked it under the plate of untouched nachos, then stuck his notebook under his arm and stood up.
“We shouldn’t be seen together near the hotel. I’ll send you the fixture choices tonight.”
“I’ll let you know when the money’s down. See you in Atlanta.” She plucked a tortilla chip from the top of the stack and bit into it delicately.
He stormed out of the bar, head down.
He knew the rules when he asked to be dealt in, and he knew the minimum bet. Stepping out of the league’s spotlight while keeping his betting habit alive would cost him.
He clutched his notebook more tightly, already mentally composing an email to Erin with his picks, imagining her clicking to accept the bookie’s odds.
Fuck it—it was worth it. He needed to bet more than he needed friends at Tucson United. And he’d pay a hell of a lot more than what they cost him to keep going.