Training changed from that point. Not so much that the Lion talked to me directly or even looked my way, but he did deem we should be in the same room together. Which in my mind was progress. It was progress, right?
It changed everything. The team was harmonious, more cohesive in training, and our practice in the run up to the next game was on a different level than before. The weather climbed up the temperature gauge, every day another degree would inch its way until we were sweltering and sweating on a daily basis. All the guys were enjoying the sunshine, out on the training field with their tops off and their shorts pulled low, factor thirty slathered onto their skin.
It was hard to get my eyes to behave when surrounded by that amount of naked male flesh, I mean come on, I'm only human. But my eyes were drawn to one bronzed torso repeatedly because it was sheer perfection—annoyingly so. Some days I wished I could take a Sharpie to it and just deface it a little.
I still hadn't spoken to anyone about his injury. And by anyone, what I mean is nobody at all. It felt like a dirty little secret simmering inside my skull, building a pressure I couldn't stop focusing on as it rattled around my brain. I was sure the top of my head was going to shoot off at any moment and steam was going to come pouring out like on an old steam train.
On Wednesday, when Waller released the boys early for some downtime and they all headed for the bar, I watched the straight-lined back of the Lion walk in the opposite direction waving off the calls from his team mates. I knew where he was going. And like a stalker I followed those sexy, curved and now tanned back muscles all the way down to the batting room.
And there I watched as he wound up shot after shot but never once released the ball.
"I know you're there," he said eventually, allowing the ball to fall from his fingers and wiping his hands down his pink training T-shirt. I stepped into the room and my knees gave a little quake like the ground had shifted, or I'd stepped over an invisible ley line. "Why?" he snapped, his fierce blue eyes shimmering like an icy lake.
"You know why." It would have sounded better if my voice hadn't wavered and shook like a little girl’s.
He raised a fair eyebrow, and I remembered again how much I hated him for being such an arrogant, womanising, sexist pig. "Do I?"
Did he have to drawl his words in that way? I didn't think it was strictly necessary. My stomach pinched with a peculiar combination of nerves and...what was that? Disgust?
"Your right shoulder, you've got an injury." There I'd said it at last. "And it's going to cost me my job if you bowl like that again."
"Nope." He shook his head and I stared at him in disbelief.
Was he going to say 'Nope' like we were in a school yard? Was he for real?
"Really?" My face creased with puzzlement. "Why don't you get help. I don't know, get some treatment. It can't be that bad."
I took a step forward and the room shrunk as his tall, dominant frame loomed before me, filling my vision. "For what?"
"You can't bowl," I shook my head at him. "Not the way you used to."
His lip ticked at the corner as if he was battling a facial spasm. "Been watching my form closely, Rivers? I feel honoured."
Ooh. As annoying as his jibe was, when he said my name, it made that uncomfortable pinch tug in my stomach.
"Don't Rivers me." I took a raging step towards him, closing the gap, but he didn't back away, he just watched me with those icy blues. "Of course I know how you play; you were the England captain for god's sake." I gasped. "Until you got injured and benched." I clutched my hand over my mouth and whispered the words under my closed fingers. "There was never a row was there? You were injured, but you just didn't want anyone to know."
He grabbed at my arm, twisting it towards him. "Careless talk can end you up in trouble, Rivers."
I pulled my wrist away, and it smarted from his tight grip. "Have I told you I think you’re a dick."
Was it my imagination or did that tick assault his lips again, tugging one corner the merest hitch higher than the other? Good god, was that a smile? "Well I think you have now," he said. He turned his back on me and swept up the ball, concentrating on the practice stumps ahead. In one clean sweep, he propelled the ball towards the sticks, knocking them flying. "Am I still injured?" He turned his head slightly, and the icy depths flashed over his shoulder.
"I hope that goddamn hurt, you freaking moron." And with my words I barrelled through the door, swinging it back with the loudest bang that I could muster.
* * *
"In some ways, I wish we'd never spoken." I was lying on the bed, my yoga gear probably sweatier than I would have liked, clutching my phone to my ear while Betsy put the world to rights.
"How did that guy get such a big ego, he's not even good-looking." Betsy is always on my side, even when she's telling lies to make me feel better.
"Betsy, he may be missing breasts and a vagina that would make him attractive to you, but he is hot, let's not lie."
She snorted. "Jase Willis is old and craggy, way too old for you."
I don't need to count the number on my fingers. It's eleven. Eleven years too old for me.
"Anyway," she carried on. "Hasn't he been married twice? I mean seriously, Lyssa this guy is a loser of the first order.”
I scrunched my face at the ceiling. "I don't think you become a worldwide star cricket player and a national treasure by being a loser of the first order."
"Has he been Knighted by the Queen? Nope, didn't think so. Has he got an MBE for services to the sport or whatever it is people get? Nope. Has he been slandered more times than I can count in the papers for drunken behaviour and liaisons with women of ill-repute? Yes, yes he has."
"But..." I stopped myself. I didn't know why I was trying to defend him. He was rude, arrogant and he hated me. That was three reasons alone. Then of course there were all the old newspaper headlines that seemed to flash up inside my head, like they were highlighted in neon, more than I would like. "So what am I supposed to do, just let him wreck a game because he's a pig ignorant bastard? Wait for his arm to fall off or whatever it is it's going to do? Or worse, wait for me to get the blame and lose my job all because when it comes down to it he's the famous captain and I'm just, well, me."
There was a beat of silence. "Well, babe, not being funny but aren't you his fitness coach, aren't you supposed to help fix it?”
Betsy's words floored me. I'd never considered the prospect of trying to help him. It was laughable. The thought of that frozen glare as he stared at me in disdain if I offered to help had my stomach twisted in knots, which wasn't that great considering I'd already completed various extended yoga twists in a bid to settle my muddled mind. "He wouldn't want my help," I said, more to myself than her. I could already visualise the disdain with which he would rebuff my offer and his accompanying lip curl. It made my cooling skin shiver.
"Probably not," she agreed. "Listen, babe, I've gotta go. Chat in a couple of days, yeah?"
"Yeah sure, Sammy will be in soon anyway."
"Is he still having nightmares?"
"Without fail."
"And you?" Her question was said in earnest, but I couldn't face talking about my emotions with any level of sensibility.
"Constantly and all about that idiot Jase Willis."
Betsy chuckled and wished me a goodnight and that she hoped the bed bugs or bogey monster wouldn't bite. Laughing, I hung up and turned over to find Sammy standing by the bed.
"Bad dream again, little guy?" I pulled back the duvet and wiggled over to make space.
He nodded and crept into the bed and I wrapped my arms as tight around him as I possibly could. If I could hug away my problems, then I was going to do it right there and then.
After training the next day, I spent time packing away all the equipment. Waller still hadn't spoken to me about the enormous elephant in the room, or on the field, wherever you'd rather the elephant sat. The weather was so hot and clammy, my skin drenched through my sensible T-shirt. The one I'd been so pleased with a few days earlier because it didn't allow my cleavage to fall out at every opportunity, was now clinging to me in all the wrong places. I pulled my hair back up from my neck and wound it into a bun on the top of my head, yanking at the strands until they resembled a wild bird's nest. I'd have to keep my eyes scanned for passing feathered friends, but I couldn't be bothered by vanity. What was the point when you were sweating like a flogged beast?
I was expecting the team to be in the changing rooms, gas-bagging away like a group of old women as usual after practice but instead there was only one person in there.
"Oh," I said. My trainers squeaked to a stop, and I nearly toppled over on the tiled floor. That would have been embarrassing enough, but my knees trembled and clanged together which made the situation far worse. If I hadn’t spoken I could have backed out without him knowing I was there.
Tanned curved back muscles met my gaze along with slim hips wrapped in a white towel. Don't look. Shit.
"Oh,' he said back without turning around. He was such a sarcastic bastard.
I expected him to gather his stuff and march off, as that was the norm whenever we were unaccountably left alone together. Well, it had only happened once, but he'd made his feelings on being alone with me adequately clear. Or to tell me to get lost—now that wouldn't have surprised me at all. Instead, I clamped my lips into a tight line so I couldn't gawk as he turned around and faced me, his hands coming to rest on his hips.
Don't bloody look, Lyssa. Don't you dare.
I looked. I peeked a glance at the deep grooves of his torso...and at his legs, my eyes trained down to where they dripped water from under the towel. Where was that water coming from? I blushed right there and then.
"Can I help, Rivers?"
"Uh."
No. I had nothing. Like nothing at all between my ears, just empty air because in the space where I used to have a brain was just looped words. Chest, chest, chest. Legs, legs, legs. Water, water, water.
I shook my head, removing some of the fuddled fog and decided to do it. Man the hell up and do it. We had a game the following night, and winning was more important to me than everything, well, nearly everything. "Listen, Jason." I couldn't bring myself to call him Jase, and although I had the word Lion looming there on my subconscious, it was probably best not to call him that to his face. His ego was big enough already. "I know you don't like me, for whatever reason," I didn't give him a gap to tell me all the many reasons why he didn't like me. "But I am here to help the team...to help you...I guess." He just stared at me with those evaluating eyes and my cheeks flamed with a steady tinge of heat that I couldn't soothe. "So if you want help with your, uh," his eyes narrowed, so I inserted, "shoulder," instead of the 'injury' I'd planned to say. "Then just let me know." He didn't say a word just kept staring at me, his hands on the damp towel around his hips. I blabbered on. "I just wanted to, uh, put that out there."
When it became embarrassingly, awkwardly, clear that he wasn't going to do anything or say anything apart from continue to stare at me, I began to back away. "Okay, see ya then." I had laden my tone with as much sarcastic bite as I could summon.
When the door was open, my palm sweating against the metal handle, I heard him speak.
"Thank you."
My eyes glanced up and met his. Flabbergasted, I backed away allowing the door to swing shut between us.
When I got home, the little guy was running on the lawn, Jasper barking in his wake. His body was decked in the pink strip with the signature on the back. "Hey, I thought you were saving that so you could sell it one day and make millions?" I called, when I got out of the car.
Sammy ran for me and flung himself into my chest. There was seriously no better way to come home.
"How was school?" I asked as we walked towards the house.
He shrugged.
Wheeling him around, I put my hands on his shoulders, and stooped to his level, my nose brushing his. He smelt of all things good: sunshine, grass and pencil shavings. "Coach said that I wasn't fast enough to play professional cricket."
My mouth flapped like a fish. "He said what?"
The little guy's dark brows knotted together. "He said I wasn't fast enough and that I would only ever play local cricket."
"You are bloody six." I exploded. Rattling my keys, I shook them in Sammy's face. "I'm going to the school," I announced.
His eyes widened, his teeth gnawing on his bottom lip. "But there won't be anyone there. It's bedtime."
"I don't care I'm going anyway." I sounded more of a six-year-old than he did but I didn't care. "Are you coming?"
We jumped in the car and waved at Maria as she stuck her head out of the kitchen door, probably wondering what the hell was going on.
He was right. There was no one there.
My fury didn't lessen on the drive back home but once we drove back up the driveway the gravel crunching under the wheels of the car, I breathed in deeply through my nose and exhaled through my mouth. "Listen," I said, turning to Sammy once I'd cut the engine. "No one can tell you what you can or can't do. No one can tell you how fast you will be. Only you can decide that."
His bottom lip wobbled, and I wanted to take a cricket bat to that coach's head. "How do you know?"
"Because once, a long time ago, someone told me that girls couldn't play cricket."
Sammy's eyes widened until they looked like they were going to pop. "What did you do?"
"I caught him out." The look on Sammy's face filled me with such immense pride that I pulled him into my arms and gave him a tight squeeze before shifting him away so I could make eye contact. "You see, Sammy. Cricket is in our blood. It was in your grandad's blood, it's...was in your dad's blood. It's just who we are."
He nodded. "I know."
We both stared out of the windscreen for a moment, and I thought about getting out so poor Maria could go home, her car was still on the drive. "So, what did you do when the coach said that to you?" I asked eventually.
He grinned at me. "I ran faster."
I snorted and ruffled his hair. "I bet you did. Come on, I'm starving. Let's go and see if Maria has been kind enough to cook for us."
"She has. She said you weren't to be trusted on her clean cooker."
I couldn't even deny she was wrong. Want me to teach you about sit ups, yoga, Pilates, core muscle strengthening then I'm your girl. Ask me to cook and you are just asking for a disaster.
I locked all thoughts of the next day's match from my mind, especially all thoughts of captains that couldn't bowl and unexpected thank you's.