On Monday for the first time since I'd started this epic journey into T20 cricket, I entered the building feeling like I wasn't heading to an executioner's wooden block. The team had won, they'd let their hair down, the Lion had talked to me and more than that he'd been at my house, made oven chips and played catch with my nephew and dog. It was looking like things were stepping up.
So the silence of the changing room as I banged my way in, reversing through the door to account for my manuals and folders, hit me like a brick wall.
Stony faces stared up at me from the bench, and I stopped, my hands greasing with sweat and slipping against one lever arch file. "What's going on?" I looked around for Waller, but he wasn't to be seen. Honestly, the first thought I had was that a looming heart attack had taken place, but surely someone would have called over the weekend if that was the case.
Behind me, the door swung open, and the Lion strode through, his movement powerful and full of coiled intensity. Nothing like the man that had chased over my lawn only two nights before. His eyes were a burning black, and the icy depths that glared from under sand coloured lashes made me recoil away.
Ignoring me, he faced the players lining the benches, his hands thrusting into the depths of his pockets, and shook his head. All their faces were telling me that their favourite pet had suffered an unfortunate end over the weekend.
Bailey exploded out of his spot on the bench. "This is shit, are you telling me it's an outright sacking: no warning, no enquiry, no evidence?"
The Lion pointed to a paper that was scrunched in the corner. "I'd say management have all the evidence they need. Seriously, if you can't keep it in your pants then don't play in the limelight." His voice and words were inflamed and belligerent and I stepped back from them, an automatic reaction to the venom in his tone.
Surely if anyone had to learn a lesson about playing in the limelight and keeping it inside his pants it was Jase Willis?
I spluttered with indignation and stalked for the paper, grabbing it off the bench. As no one was going to talk to me, I'd find out for myself.
I had to stare at the picture for a good minute, turning the black and white sheet this way and that as I tried to work out what the tangle of limbs and purposely blurred sections of print were representing. "Is that Fredericks’ ginger hair?" I asked eventually when no one else said a word.
"Yep." It was Bailey that answered. The Lion was heavy breathing like a bull about to be let loose on a Spanish street, his hands on his hips, his eyes firmly averted from my face, as he stood there tall and angry.
I peered at the paper closer. "God, what's he doing?" I peered a little closer still. "Is that Emma, the cheerleader?"
The tangle of limbs was Fredericks and Emma doing something that they really shouldn't have been doing against the wall of the stadium car park.
Shit.
"Where is he?" I asked.
It was the Lion who spoke, but his words came out more like a bark. "Sacked."
"Sacked," I repeated. Across his face was none of the man who'd sat at my breakfast bar and eaten semi-burnt chips.
"Yes."
"Just like that?"
There was a beat of silence between us, a moment of unspoken emotion that tangled into the air that I couldn’t describe or understand.
"Yes." It was a cold response, lashed into the air. And then he turned away from me, causing my breath to burn in my throat.
I walked back out the door, my legs heavy and wobbly, and headed down the corridor to Waller's room.
"What's going on?' I asked when I walked in without knocking.
He shook his head which he was holding in his palms about an inch from his desk. "Not you as well. I've already told Jase, there is nothing I can do. Rules are rules. We must be seen to embody a clean image. This is a family sport; parents have to feel they can bring their children to these games." He sounded exhausted, like the life had been beaten out of him—that all his fight and determination for us to win and succeed was slowly being pulled from every cell in his body.
"A clean image? No one told me this when I started."
Waller looked up, his face lined with deep creases. "We didn't have to. You're as squeaky clean as they come."
"Well that's a bit rude. I could have all sorts of secrets you don't know about."
The skin of his face sagged as if he no longer had the energy to hold it up. "Of course you do. Listen, Lyssa, I've spent all weekend trying to save that boy's skin. But the board are furious, a contract is a contract, and both he and Emma broke it."
I slumped on the spare leather seat across the desk from his. "I wished I'd never asked the cheerleaders to come to the drinks now." The blood drained from my face when I realised it was my invite that had led to this.
Waller glanced at me. "This isn't your fault. The cheerleaders are part of the team and should be treated like that. You didn't ask them to shag where a reporter could find them. Fredericks needs his dick cut off."
I couldn't argue with that. I did have a question though. "Do I have the same clauses in my contract?" The question had bubbled up inside me unexpectedly and I didn’t even know what to make of it. When Gemma had mentioned the cheerleaders contracts I hadn’t put two and two together and I was loathed to admit that I hadn’t read the fine print. I’d just been so damn pleased that someone had offered me a job I’d merrily signed on the dotted line.
Waller balked and narrowed his eyes at me. "Why? Please tell me you don't plan to shag someone against a wall."
"What! No!" I cringed back into the visitor chair. Why did I ask that question?
He grinned. "Of course you don't, Lyssa, you're a good girl."
I stood and brushed at imaginary creases in my clothes just so I wouldn’t have to meet his eyes. I wasn't sure whether to be offended or pleased that I was labelled as a virtuous good girl. It was true though, my past was squeaky clean.
"I'll go round the guys up; you know this is going to kill the morale we worked so hard to build." A nasty lump was forming in my throat when I considered the team going back a step, again.
He nodded, his face ashen. "Oh, Lyssa," My hand was opening the door. "It is in your contract too. And management really doesn't take kindly to rule breakers."
I nodded and left the room.
Fredericks was missed. Even I missed the brilliant glow of his flame red hair, and the girls in my locker room were unnervingly quiet. Gemma hadn't had much to say about losing one of her troupe, she'd just said what she'd told me before we even went to the bar that night, that it was in their contract and that was it.
As I predicted the team were reeling. A heavy cloud hung in all the player’s areas and the journalists were having a field day outside, calling down players every morning trying to get gossip, or work out who was going to fall to the clutches of tabloid exposure next.
I hardened my heart and got on with the job.
The Lion didn't talk to me at all, nothing. Not one word at a practice and not one word at the Friday night game, even though he was driving the team hard, spurning them on with constant comments and calls. We won eventually, but only by a small margin.
He didn't talk to me until the Saturday morning when he rung on the doorbell, cricket bat in one hand, recycle shopping bags in the other. "I've got my own bags this time," he said and stepped right through into the hallway.
"But what are you doing here?" I stumbled after him as he walked to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. The little guy was watching teenage mutant ninja turtles and hadn't heard the doorbell. That was good. It meant I could be the only one about to break out into mass hysteria.
He filled my kitchen. I was sure his height and breadth blocked the light from the patio doors, and pitched the room into shadow. It was hard to reconcile the face that was miserable and never smiled in training, to the man who was on the posters on the wall upstairs, to the man in the kitchen. I didn't know who the real Jase Willis was.
And in truth, I didn't know what he was doing at my house uninvited.
Rooting through the clean dishwasher, he found some mugs and began to make coffee, clanging the canisters about as he spooned granules into a mug.
For a moment, I stood there pulling random unattractive faces as I tried to work out what to do or say. His lip twitched with that tick again when I started chewing on my bottom lip.
As casually as I could manage I asked, "Willis, what's going on? You haven't spoken to me all week.” His darted glance made me think he might wonder if I was upset by his silence so I bumbled on witless. “And now you are pitching up to make coffee and go to the shops?"
"It's been a difficult week." His words were soft, softer than I ever heard within the Red Cat’s complex and his eyes when they met mine glinted with unspoken words. He poured water from the kettle into the mugs and gave a stir with a teaspoon he'd grabbed out of the drawer like he knew his way around my kitchen from just one visit.
"Yes, I know that. I was there." I sounded very like Scarlett right there and then. "But you haven't said one single word."
He turned and handed me a mug. "I didn't know you were so sensitive. Normally you just call me a prick or an arsehole or something." He shot me a twisted smile.
I was about to call him both of those when the little guy realised there was a visitor and came padding into the kitchen, skidding along the tiled floor in his socks. He was munching his third banana and looked to be seeking his fourth. That was begging for constipation if ever I heard of it. "Hey, Jase," he looked at his idol but kept his cool together better than the previous Saturday.
"Hey, Sammy." The Lion responded and sipped his coffee.
"Are we playing catch again?" Sammy asked, not bothering to ask me what was happening.
"I thought I could bowl to you today if you like."
That was it. Sammy lost his cool and jumped about before I sent him a look which made him settle and search out his next yellow snack.
"Sammy," I called him back as he went through to the lounge. "What's with all the banana's? You're going to get a tummy ache and then you won't be batting for anyone."
"They make you fast apparently."
I groaned and smacked my head with my hand forgetting the former England number one was watching from against the counter, his lips twitched at a smile in response to my childish actions. "Is that what this is about? Training makes you fast, I've told you this."
He gave me one of his standard boy shrugs and sloped back off to the sofa.
The Lion watched me closer, leaning forward an inch as if he wanted to read the lines on my face. I backed away. I didn’t need to be that close to a predator, even a handsome as fuck one. "Why does he want to be faster, he's a great little player?"
"His twatty coach told him he'd only ever be fast enough for local cricket." I ground out the words, a flare of annoyance prickling my skin.
The Lions face flooded with a red stain and the creases around his tanned cheeks scrunched together. "He said what?"
I sighed. "I know. As I said the man's a twat."
"What a thing to say to a child."
I glanced at him over my mug, wishing my eyes weren't so drawn to him. "I guess no one ever said that to you, hey?"
He chuckled and then looked surprised he'd made the noise. "I was told I'd never play cricket because I threw like a pansy."
I spluttered on my coffee. "Someone actually said the word pansy?"
"Yep, things weren't so politically correct back then." At his words, his face flickered a frown. Like he'd just remembered he was standing in the kitchen of someone eleven years his junior.
"It must have been hard back in the dark ages." I flashed him a grin that felt unexpectedly comfortable.
"It was, we had to play with rocks instead of cricket balls. Did you not know that's why cricket balls are so hard?"
I snorted, and he grinned, and for one long endless moment we stood staring at each other until he cleared his throat, his eyelids dropping over his gaze, hiding his eyes behind those long lashes and I splashed the rest of my coffee in the sink. "Come on, let's get the shopping done."
We were all squeezing into the car—I didn't know why we weren't using his—when I asked my question. I’d come up with a cunning plan but I needed his agreement. "You said you just want to play and practice where no one knew you is that right?"
Was it me or was the car unbearably warm, and small? I needed a bigger car. A spacious minibus maybe.
"Yes?" his glance was wary.
"What about if you could play where no one gives a shit who you are."
Buckling his belt, he nodded. "Well, that could work too."
I grinned and caught him glancing at my lips again. "I think I might have a plan."
"That’s why you are the coach, Rivers."
It was another Saturday with the Lion: shopping, lunch and then him throwing slow balls to Sammy who hit them all over the garden.
It was another surreal day with the Lion.
After he'd left and I checked on an exhausted Sammy, I clambered into my own bed.
He'd been normal. Well, as normal as he was ever going to get. And when I say normal, I mean, coffee making, oven switching on, toilet seat down kind of normal. Neither of us spoke about the kiss that still went down in history as the most random event of my life. Nor did we talk about Fredericks and what happened to him when he broke his contract.
I was beginning to drift into an uneasy sleep when my phone beeped. Glancing at the screen, it took a moment to make sense of it.
Thank you, Lyssi.
The only person who called me Lyssi was my family.
Who is this? I wrote back.
This is Jase, your captain speaking.
I snorted and shoved the phone under my pillow. Then I laid and stared at the ceiling. Then I rolled over and slid the phone back out and saved the Lancashire Lion's number, under Lion, of course.
It's always handy to have.