Sammy and I were cuddled on the couch. He was watching endless cartoons while I skimmed through my phone desperately searching for reactions to the press conference. I didn't care about the news, but I did care about the fans. I was grateful that Sammy was six and had no clue what anyone was talking about. The phone had been ringing all afternoon, I’d stopped answering after mistakenly picking up the first call that asked “How did it feel to have Jase Willis cheat on me with a stripper?” Deep in my heart I wondered what Anthony and Vanessa would think if they knew I'd surrounded their little boy in this much controversy, and all because I was trying to stay in the game that my brother and I loved.
When I'd got home from work, still with a nasty heavy feeling in my chest, I'd found a lasagne on the kitchen counter, my favourite dinner. Figured you might need this, was written on a note, propped against the oven dish. I wondered how much Maria might have guessed. More than I would have wanted I was sure. That woman didn't miss a trick.
"Shall we walk the dog?" I'd asked the little guy. He'd looked at me in shock as he bit into his apple, juice squirting all over his chin, but then he'd nodded. Jasper had his second walk of the day and Sammy and I held hands as we walked around the local duck pond. Jasper told all the ducks exactly what he thought of them. It was nice but it hadn't been the same as when I'd walked hand in hand with the Lion. For the briefest second, for the first time in my life, I had a vision flash through my head - a vision of a future where there wasn't cricket, there was just Sammy and I and a good guy at our side.
But I knew that vision would never have the Lion in it. He wasn't that kind of guy.
That future was never meant to be mine either. It wasn't the life I'd carved out for myself, but then my future had changed when my brother had one beer too many and took a corner too fast. I didn't know what my future was supposed to hold, but the heavy feeling in my heart told me that a job in a team where a man playing cricket was supposed to admit to having sex with someone he hadn't, just to keep his position, wasn't one that I wanted to have.
There was a bad taste in my mouth, and my body felt like it was covered in grime, in a stain that I wasn't sure I would be able to remove.
I groaned when the doorbell rang. The long curved driveway put off most cold callers, but there was always some fucker determined to ruin couch time.
"Seriously, no thank you," I said, swinging the door open and staring straight up into the face of the Lion. A frown flickered on my face, and it was met by a mirroring one on his. "What are you doing here?"
"Why are you hardly dressed?" his gaze worked its way along my bare legs and camisole.
"Cause I'm chilling out under a blanket having cartoon time, and I'm considering a very early night."
Very early, as in I planned to go to bed as soon as Sammy was tucked in because that way the terrible day would be done.
"Get dressed," he snapped.
"No. What are you doing here? I think you are in enough trouble as it is."
His eyes flickered, but he didn't respond. He leant in a little closer, his breath fanning over my face causing me to inhale deeply. "I'd really like to take you somewhere, if you don't mind."
I waved my hand back towards the depths of the house. "I've got Sammy."
His gaze stayed steady on my face. "That's fine, he can come too."
I let him in and told Sammy to go and get changed out of his jimjams. "Stay here." I waved to the lounge and the vicinity I felt it was safe for him to be in.
His eyes clouded, or at least I thought they did, it could have been the light. "Sure."
A few minutes later we were out on the driveway, me pulling my hair into a messy bun and the little guy looking like all his Christmases had come at once. I walked for my car, but his fingers touched me lightly on the elbow. The heat from that one, barely there, touch was impossible to ignore. "My car."
"But Sammy needs a booster," I said.
"I don't," said Sammy.
"Yes you do," answered both of us. The Lion pulled open the rear passenger door and inside was a red trimmed booster. "I'm always prepared."
My mouth hung open, but I couldn't think of anything to say.
He navigated the car down the lanes of the village. It was a smooth ride, that's all I'm going to say. How he'd suffered to be in my old shitmobile the last couple of months was beyond me. "Where are we going?" I asked, as we passed onto the main highway towards London.
I should have asked before we’d pulled off the driveway at home.
"You'll see."
We drove largely in silence, the little guy in the back oblivious to the tension stretching between the two front seats as he sang along to the radio. Finally, when we'd been in the car for about forty-five minutes—and that was with the car dodging the build of the traffic on its trip—we drew to a stop outside a towering block of flats.
Silently, the Lion got out of the car and headed for my door. It was ridiculous that his opening the door and holding his hand out for me to jump down from his SUV made my heart beat an odd march. Ridiculous, but the truth all the same. After I was safely on the ground, without shaking my face into the pavement, he got the little guy out. I was sure I saw him give him an extra squeeze as he lifted him down.
Don't look, Lys, it's the work of the devil, and you know it.
I looked all the same.
Without speaking, we followed him into a stairwell that assaulted our noses with a hundred different layers of bad. His shoulders were relaxed and for the first time since I’d known him, his body wasn’t showing any outward signs of tension.
On the fourth floor, he led us down an open balcony walkway and stood outside a white PVC door identified with the number three hundred and three. "What is this?" I asked.
His fingers caught and entwined with mine like it was the most natural thing in the world. "This is me."
He slid a key into the lock and called out, "Dad?" as he stepped inside.
My feet froze on the threshold. Dad? What was this?
"In here, son," a gruff voice called back.
By our joined hands the Lion pulled me down a darkened hallway. A red patterned carpet was under foot and a dim light hung from the ceiling. Entering what must have been a main living area; the walls shades of brown and dominated by a corduroy, faded chocolate sofa; the Lion's face lifted into one of those beautiful grins. One of those ones that said he should be on a mountain in Olympus somewhere with the other gods and not here on earth holding my hand. Along the far wall was an array of silver prize ware and more pictures than I would be able to count. "Cool," the little guy shouted and started forward. I went to follow but was held back but the pull of the Lion's hand on mine.
"Dad, this is Alyssa, who I told you about." He nudged me forward with his shoulder towards the man in the chair. Facially he looked much like the Lion, but his hair was grey, and his body was thin and frail compared to that of his son.
I didn't know what fact was blowing my mind more, the fact that he was introducing me to his dad, or the fact he had already told him about me. Either way there was considerable brain explosion build up going on. The Lion didn't let go of my fingers and I reached forward and shook the bony hand of his father. "Hi," I said, casting a low gaze towards the Lion who was stood looking like this was totally normal.
"Shall I make tea?" he said and let go of my fingers, moving away into a small kitchen area through a doorway off the living room.
The Lion's dad looked up at me and smiled, "Sorry I haven't got up to greet you. This damn arthritis is slowly turning me into stone." He rubbed his knees, and my eyes were drawn to the fact that bony nobles were visible under the material of his trousers.
I sat on the sofa next to him. "My grandad had arthritis badly," I told him. "He used to curse about it every day."
"Curse. Hell, I'd lop my legs off if I thought it would make them any better." When he smiled, he looked so much like his son—who was currently bashing teaspoons around a mug—that it was quite startling.
"Did it start in your knees?" I asked, keen to keep a conversation going until his son returned.
"No, no." He rotated his shoulder, and I knew what he was going to say before he did, "My shoulder."
"Did you used to play too?" I asked.
He nodded, his eyes glancing out of the window where a puff of dense white cloud was floating past. "Yep, on days like this, I miss it."
"When did you stop?" This was fast turning into question time, but I was beginning to realise why the Lion had brought me here. He was trying to explain himself without actually doing any explaining at all. Clever.
"When Jonathan's mother died."
The teaspoon in the kitchen clattered.
"I'm sorry." I smoothed my jeans, my cheeks heating. I don't know why I was surprised the Lion had kept this a secret, although it stung a little bit that we'd stood in my bedroom and talked about Anthony and Vanessa dying. That would have been the moment to announce something like that.
He came through carrying three mugs, his eyes guarded, and I knew in the pit of my stomach that this man had never compromised any secret he'd ever kept. He was as fiercely private as he was a terror on the cricket field. He was a man of more complexities than I knew how to unravel.
Sammy was balancing a giant silver trophy on his head but I couldn’t bring myself to focus and stop him. I was mesmerised by the man in front of me. Sammy could have been melting down the silverware and I wouldn’t have been able to drag my eyes away.
Watching him pass a mug of tea to his dad, that's when I knew. I knew I'd fallen in love with Jonathan Willis. And that's when I knew that my life would never be the same again.
"Thanks." I took my mug, my fingers shaking slightly. He frowned at them but didn't comment.
"Mum died when I was sixteen, of cancer, just before I got called up for the under nineteen’s England team." His blue gaze settled on my face.
"I'm sorry." I stared right back at him as the rest of the room melted out of existence around us.
He shrugged. "And this stubborn old fool has always refused to leave the place I grew up in."
His dad put his mug down on a conveniently located coffee table. "Why would I? I have everything I need here."
The Lion—Jonathan, Jonathan, Jonathan—rolled his eyes which made me snigger. "Apart from the fact you live on the fourth floor and can't get down the stairs."
"Hey, there's a lift."
"Which doesn't work." There was a growl under the words, but his dad didn't back down.
"It's fine; they can carry me out in a box."
Again with the eye roll. "Always a pleasure conversing with you, Dad."
"Can I?" I motioned to the silverware and the wall of photos. The Lion groaned.
"Sure, it's Dad's wall of fame."
As I walked away I heard the Lion grumbling about it being embarrassing and his dad shushing him. It made me smile from ear to ear. I stared at the photos - Jase Willis throughout his career, silverware raised above his head; him surrounded by his team holding the Ashes; so many amazing achievements. In the photographs his face shone with this complex mixture of pride and sheer determination.
I was staring at an early photograph, faded from the sun in which a young boy stood in front of the red brick of the flats, his stripy jumper still vivid, a cricket bat clutched in his hands. At his side was a woman whose face looked like it was going to split with pride, and his dad. A huddle of three.
"That was after my first ever competitive game." His breath brushed along my exposed neck, and I repressed a shiver that went all the way down to my toes.
"You look so proud of yourself."
His body moved closer to mine, his chest nudging my back and I thought for a tortured moment he might kiss my neck. He didn't. "I was. It wasn't easy being the only boy on the estate who played cricket when all the others were kicking a football around."
I turned to face him, reading every inch of his handsome face. This was him. This was the very reason for his aggressive determination to never lose, to never give up, because inside he would always be the little boy stood outside a block of flats with a cricket bat in his hands.
My heart ruptured into two as I knew I would never be able to change that. I wanted to be the other person in that picture. The mum with her arm around her son, her smile wide and her eyes shining at the camera after a game. I wanted to be that for Sammy, and maybe, just maybe, for a child of my own.
Our paths were different, always had been and always would be.