Chapter 16
Erin groaned as Marie plopped an enormous scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the slice of homemade pecan pie she’d just set in front of her. “I’ll have to buy a second seat on the airplane after this.”
“With a figure like yours you can afford to eat dessert.” Marie shot her a wink made saucier by the three glasses of wine she’d had since Erin arrived late that afternoon. Erin had to bite her lower lip to stifle a giggle, and across the table Brendan’s eyes flashed with a look that said he agreed with his mother’s complimentary remarks on her body.
She lowered her gaze to the table as heat rushed into her cheeks. Although he’d remained responsibly sober, she’d joined Marie in draining more than one bottle of wine, and with each sip it got harder to make sure any attention she gave Brendan was strictly impersonal.
The close quarters of the packed house hadn’t helped. Brendan’s childhood home was a two-bedroom split-level in which the semi-basement rec room had been sliced in half to raise the bedroom count to four. With his parents, Liam, Liam’s girlfriend, his older brother Aidan, Aidan’s wife and two kids, and a random aunt stuffed into the open-plan kitchen and sitting room, the ground floor seemed full to bursting. She found herself physically close to Brendan more often than not, and at times the temptation to brush her palm over his thigh or press her fingertips to the small of his back was almost unbearable.
If he fought the same urges, he gave no sign. In fact he’d hardly said five words the whole evening, despite being the guest of honor. He responded politely and affably to anything he was asked, then withdrew into quiet observation—a role his family seemed happy to let him occupy, having no trouble filling his silence with jokes, jibes and good-natured arguments.
She peered at him over her rapidly melting ice cream, remembering his similarly aloof manner when their families shared a table on that long-ago day in college. She couldn’t say it was uncharacteristic—he wasn’t exactly Mr. Party Animal at the best of times—but amongst his family he seemed to extract himself more than usual.
She let her gaze rise above his head, where family photos clogged the half-wall separating the kitchen from the family room. Teenage Aidan in a high-school football uniform. Liam in a cap and gown. Liam playing basketball. Aidan on the altar with his bride. Liam and his dad in hunting camo. Aidan and Brendan as children with baby Liam propped between them. And on one end a photo she remembered from when it happened—Brendan signing his first professional contract, the famous club’s logo looming over his nervous smile, an even more famous manager standing behind him with his hands on Brendan’s shoulders.
An awkward pause in the conversation around the table alerted her that someone had spoken to her and she hadn’t been listening. She found Liam’s gaze two seats down from Brendan, eyebrows raised expectantly.
“Sorry, I was so high in pie heaven I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”
“I asked when the Championship League will be launching programs for athletes with intellectual disabilities?”
She smiled, but Liam pinned her to the spot, his sharp expression demanding a legitimate answer.
“Not next year, or probably the year after, if you want the truth,” she told him, stowing her spoon and folding her hands on the table. “Trying to get them to properly fund the empowerment programs they already have—not to mention the whole women’s side of the sport—is an uphill battle. But I’m working on it.”
“Disappointing,” Liam remarked, then arched a brow. “When you do convince them that people with intellectual disabilities deserve to play, I suppose I’ll agree to be the face of the game. If you beg.”
She blinked, only realizing he was joking as chuckles rippled around the table.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she assured him, picking up her spoon.
Marie prompted Liam to tell everyone—presumably not for the first time—about the hilarious photo shoot he’d endured when a local retailer asked him to appear in their new signage. Liam launched into the funny but clearly rehearsed tale, and her attention drifted back to the man across from her.
Where do you go? she asked Brendan silently, watching him carefully portion his pie with the edge of the spoon, tilting melty ice cream into the crevices.
No, scratch that—she knew where he went, maybe better than anyone. Into his stats. Into the looping, spiraling tunnel of numbers and facts and probabilities that he transformed into neat lines and columns, and then into absurd sums of money.
The question was why, not where. His family was as embarrassing as anyone else’s—his mom a little too loud, his dad a little too right-wing, Aidan not as smart as he thought he was—but by all appearances he’d grown up in a stable, comfortable household with parents who loved him and were proud of him.
Or were they? She scanned the wall of photos again, making a quick mental tally. Pictures of Liam dominated by far, with Aidan a relatively distant second. She could count the pictures of Brendan on one hand.
Maybe they weren’t proud of him, she realized with a jolt. Maybe the gambling scandal had rocked this Catholic family to its core. Maybe his mother had tearfully plucked photos off that wall and packed them away.
Or maybe they just thought he should get a real job.
She bit the inside of her lower lip, halting its sudden, unbidden trembling. Every time she returned to her parents’ big house in New Jersey she crossed the threshold feeling like a triumphant emperor back from the wars. They’d supported every decision she’d ever made and held on tight for even the sharpest twists in her life’s journey. Although the thought of them finding out about her gambling occasionally kept her awake at night, deep in her heart she knew they’d love her just as hard as they always had, backing her through the worst times and the best.
Maybe Brendan hadn’t had that unconditional backing, she considered, looking around the table with newly critical eyes. Maybe his trips home were more complicated than hers.
Yet he was moving back here in a matter of months, so it couldn’t be that bad. Or did he think he had nowhere else to go?
The clink of a spoon against a bowl lowered her gaze, and she found Brendan’s eyes on hers. She smiled, and so did he.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Marie glance at the empty bottle of wine, and she cleared her throat loudly before Marie could suggest she join her in draining a new one.
“I should get back to the hotel before I pass out on the couch. It’s been a long day.”
“I’ll get the car keys,” Brendan announced before anyone could object. “I left them downstairs.”
“I think I might have stashed my jacket down there,” she lied, knowing perfectly well it hung in the closet near the front door.
With a scrape of chair legs they hastily extricated themselves, and she followed Brendan’s thudding footsteps downstairs to the half-basement that housed his and Aidan’s childhood bedrooms.
She’d barely drawn breath to make a snarky comment about his subtlety when he shoved her against the wall beneath the stairs, big body pressed against hers, his mouth warm and insistent and tasting faintly of vanilla ice cream.
She moaned, guttural and involuntary. She softened beneath the length of him, sweeping her tongue over his, finding the ridges of his teeth and the heat of his mouth and sharing the air from his lungs.
His palms flat on the wall on either side of her head, he drew back and brushed the tip of his nose against hers. “I’ve needed to do that all day.”
“Find an excuse to spend tonight in the hotel. You can do much more.”
“No one would believe anything I came up with. I have to stay here.”
“Are you sure? I love hotel sex.”
He shook his head, regret plain in his features.
She exhaled her disappointment, running her hands down his arms. “Show me where you’ll be fantasizing about me.”
He took her hand and tugged her into one of the two rooms. The peculiar angles in the basement bore testament to the process of converting a long, narrow space into bedrooms. Aidan’s room took up the larger end, while Brendan’s had been carved out of the side made smaller by the staircase.
Wordlessly he flipped on the light. She blinked in the sudden glare, then tightened her grip on his fingers as she absorbed her surroundings.
Tidy, sparse, a faint scent of bleach suggesting the room had been cleaned ahead of his arrival. The bare walls were painted lavender, to coordinate with the darker purple-trimmed coverlet on the single bed pushed into a corner. The surface of the chipped wooden desk was empty except for a silk violet in a glass vase, but the matching bookshelf was full to bursting. Paperbacks, marble composition books, yellowing newspapers presumably containing articles relevant to Brendan’s career. And above those, so many medals and trophies and awards the shelves sagged with their weight.
“Did it always look like this?” she asked, puzzled.
“No. I used to have loads of soccer posters, team photos, pennants, lots of teenage clutter. My parents put everything in the attic and made this a guest room.”
She dropped his hand and moved closer, reaching up to sift through his accolades. Many of them were from his high school and college days, MVP awards or championship medals. Then she shoved aside a particularly large trophy and her jaw dropped.
“Oh my God.” She withdrew the molded gold abstraction of a player diving for a ball. “This is a Golden Glove.”
He murmured his assent, his expression neutral.
She held the award higher, shaking it for good measure. “This is one of the highest honors a goalkeeper can get and it’s stuffed in a corner of your parents’ basement, in a room that shows no evidence you ever lived here.”
“My parents redecorated,” he said casually.
“When?”
His pause gave him away completely. “Easter, I think.”
Her hand fell heavily against her side, weighted by much more than the sturdily mounted statue.
She’d guessed right. They’d redecorated his room after the gambling scandal broke. Their high-flying son had taken a hard fall to earth, and they’d rolled up the safety net.
She turned to replace the award, then changed her mind, her throat thick with emotion. She clenched her jaw as her heart seized and jolted, her balance thrown, her knees unsteady, her pulse pounding as though she’d just nailed a forty-minute workout.
He studied his shoes, and she studied him. He filled the doorway, long and lean, the top of his head almost brushing the frame. Here was a man who’d achieved so much, yet apart from the money in his bank account and the house he was trying to sell, he had so little to show for it.
She hadn’t realized how much he lost in that stupid data breach. Forget three months on the bench—he’d lost his parents’ respect, and his hero status in their home.
No wonder he was desperate to move back here and try to rebuild what was gone. And no wonder he’d seemed so forlorn and adrift when she saw him for the first time in Atlanta, the lights along the church walkway illuminating every weary line in his face.
He’d lost everything. He was alone. Battered, discarded, unloved.
I love him.
She inhaled so sharply he looked up. She could only imagine how unhinged she must look, given she’d apparently lost the ability to blink or close her mouth, but since it took all of her concentration to stay upright as the earth seemed to lurch beneath her, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it.
I love him, she repeated silently, testing the words to see if they still felt as indisputable as in the first second they registered.
Yes, each one was heavy with truth, glowing brightly in her mind and clogging her chest with terror and excitement and shredding despair.
She was in love for the first time—probably the last time. In love with an unattainable man. This love was all wrong.
It wasn’t the distance between Atlanta and Lincoln—she could’ve made that work—or even her job. The Director of Ethics and Advocacy shacking up with a known gambler wasn’t great PR, but it could be spun into acceptability, particularly once he retired.
It wasn’t miles on the map or the employer on her paycheck. It was what they both loved most, what had drawn them together from the first minute they met. In the end, soccer would keep them apart.
She loved soccer. She lived it, breathed it, worked it, played it. But although soccer had treated Brendan better than it had ever treated her, it was time for him to walk away. To shut the door on the adrenaline and the ecstasy and the unimaginable heartbreak. To look away from his reflection in a black pentagon slick with dew from an early-morning pitch and find himself—place himself—somewhere totally different.
She took one last look around the little room, at the lavender paint flecks staining the window frame, at the bookcase slumping almost apologetically under the weight of a legendary career about to meet a shadowed end. Then she shoved a smile onto her trembling lips and tapped the statue in her hand.
“I’m bringing this to Atlanta and putting it on your mantel where it belongs,” she told him firmly, fighting to keep her voice from wobbling. And I’ll love you as well as I can. And I’ll protect you with everything I have.
And then I’ll say goodbye.
* * * *
“Congratulations. You’ll be keeping for Atlanta in the CSL final.”
He looked at Erin over his shoulder, and she turned her phone around so he could see the score in the Sunday-night match between Miami and Boise. Unsurprisingly Boise lost, meaning Miami now had enough points that Charlotte couldn’t catch them. As the teams occupying the first and second spots in the table, in two weeks Miami and Atlanta would travel to Memphis to compete for the league title.
“Well,” he remarked, returning his attention to the key that stubbornly refused to turn in the lock on the front door of his house on the outskirts of Lincoln. “Funny how things turn out.”
“Do you see me laughing? There’s not a worthier keeper in the country. Your locksmith skills, on the other hand, leave something to be desired.” He heard her shoes scuff the wooden boards on the porch. “Are you almost done? It’s freezing out here.”
He tried the lock one more time, lifting at exactly the right second to throw the bolt. “Got it.”
She moved past him into the entryway as he stepped aside to switch on one of the construction lamps hanging from the ceiling. Light flowed weakly down the hallway, illuminating the sanded hardwood floors covered in protective plastic, the flaking floral wallpaper, and the staircase that looked gouged where they’d ripped out the carpet.
“Brendan,” she chided. “You can’t be serious.”
“I knew you wouldn’t get it. You’re too urban, Erin. This is country charm.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Lincoln has a population of two-hundred-thousand-plus. I spent the whole evening in your parents’ split-level, ten minutes from Wal-Mart with neighbors they can wave to. I hate to ruin your small-town-boy mythology, but you are not from the country.”
“I should’ve brought you before we went to my parents’ house. Now it’s so dark, you can’t appreciate the potential.”
She picked her way down the hall and leaned into the front living room. “Oh, I see plenty of potential. For ghost stories, mostly. Or a horror movie. And don’t get any ideas, by the way. Only virgins die in those slasher flicks.”
“It’s hard to tell now, but this room is huge. Original floors, super high ceilings.” He used the flashlight app on his phone and swept the thin beam of light up and down the bay window. “The house is really old for this area, so it repays all the work it needs with great antique features.”
“I prefer features like a doorman and a fitness center.”
“I’m putting a gym in the basement,” he replied, a little defensively.
“You’d have to, unless you want to drive, what was it, forty minutes into town?”
“Thirty-five,” he corrected. “And like I said, you couldn’t see all the upside of living out here. The approach up the driveway is—”
She spun, cutting him off. “I don’t need to see the approach, or the kitchen, or the backyard, or whatever else you think could possibly justify this ridiculous project. Because that’s what it is. Ridiculous.”
Her reaction didn’t surprise him. The sting of it did. He wanted her to like this house, he realized belatedly. On some idiotic, deluded level, he thought if she liked it, she might visit. Just once or twice.
“It’s not ridiculous,” he told her quietly, switching off his phone and moving back into the semi-lit hallway.
“Of course it is,” she said forcefully, following his retreat to the front door. “You’re a multi-millionaire. You’re going to get another million when your house in Atlanta sells. I refuse to believe there’s not a house in the greater Lincoln area you could’ve afforded that came with land and running water.”
“I only have another couple of paychecks coming. Then I’m unemployed. I have to be careful with my money.”
He motioned her through the door, then shut and locked it behind them. When he turned Erin stood with her hands on her hips, silhouetted by the construction lamp mounted at one end of the wide porch. He could just make out the displeasure turning down the corners of her mouth and the heave of those spectacular breasts as she drew breath to deliver what he expected would be another round of scolding.
Instead she seemed to change her mind. All at once her posture softened and her hands dropped to her sides.
She nodded to the slatted porch swing that creaked slightly as it moved in the wind. “Can we sit for a minute? I’m not ready to face that empty hotel room.”
He managed a half-smile. “That single bed in my parents’ basement isn’t exactly howling my name either. Hang on.”
He heard the swing groan with her weight as he crossed through the overgrown front lawn to his dad’s pickup. He rooted in the covered bed for a few seconds, then tugged out the camouflage hunting blanket and tossed it over his shoulder.
Erin greeted his approach with a smile, kicking off her shoes and tucking her legs beneath her. “You can’t count cards, but I’m sure you just read my mind.”
“See? This house has potential for ghost stories, horror flicks, and those slightly supernatural romantic movies where lovers meet across time or whatever.”
“As long as it involves a hot man bringing me a warm blanket on a cold night, I’m in.”
“Then we’re good.” He eased down beside her and draped the blanket over their laps, then slipped his arm around her shoulders.
“We are good,” she echoed softly. She slid her hand onto his thigh, and again he got the sense she was hesitating to say something.
He planted his feet and pushed the swing into a gentle rhythm, happy to give her as much time as she needed to find her words.
Absently he rubbed his thumb over the curve of her shoulder, watching a lone set of headlights cut through the darkness as a car cruised down the rural road his driveway split off from. Only two other properties accessed that road, and when the trees had leaves and the grass wasn’t so dry any passing cars’ lights wouldn’t even be visible. Nothing and no one to disturb him out here. Total quiet and isolation.
He exhaled, trying to find the peace in that idea. Silence and privacy were all he’d wanted when he bought the house months ago. He’d rocked on this very swing the day it officially became his, drinking beer, grinning like an idiot, so impatient to escape the noise and hustle of Atlanta.
He still loved the house. He loved getting revised plans from his architect, scrolling through galleries of bathroom fittings, imagining the day he’d finally wake up to an unadulterated view of his expansive acreage. He loved Nebraska, the gentler pace, the warmer welcomes. He loved his hometown community and he loved that he’d have so much time to devote to Young Legends. All in all, he still loved his retirement plan.
He just hadn’t counted on loving Erin, too.
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, finally articulating to himself the unshaped, ominous thought that had nagged him since they got in the rental car that morning. He’d tried to brush it off as excitement for the day ahead, or leftover adrenaline from yesterday’s match, or nerves at how close they were playing to the edge of exposure.
Of course it was none of those things. Of course he’d fallen in love with her.
But then he was always going to, wasn’t he? He’d been naïve to think he could ever have a no-strings attachment. Actually, naïve was generous. He’d been stupid. Straight-up, rushed-in, shortsighted, thinking-with-his-dick stupid.
He’d been with women and not loved them. Not one like Erin, though. Never one so smart or sexy or challenging or funny or—what was the word he wanted?—raging. That was his Erin, raging through life like a wildfire, burning everything in her path. It sounded awful, put like that, but it was exactly the freedom and uncontrolled, unapologetic power he envied.
He was stupid to think he wouldn’t get torched like everyone else. He sighed ruefully, gathering himself as she shifted on the swing. At least he’d have a nice view while he nursed his heartbreak.
He looked down at the flame-haired woman beside him. Her eyes found his, twin beacons in the darkness.
“You don’t have to do this, Brendan,” she said softly.
He tilted his head. “Do what?”
“Exile yourself.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“I think you are. I think you’re punishing yourself for whatever you seem to believe you did wrong.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true. Not everyone dreams of climbing the corporate ladder and living in a flashy downtown high-rise. I never planned to stay in Atlanta after I retired.”
“Did you plan this?” She swept her hand to indicate the empty stretch in front of them.
He hesitated before replying, wondering what she was getting at. “Actually, I considered Spain. I held on to my house in Valencia for a while, renting it out, but I sold it earlier this year.”
“When did you put it on the market?”
“April. Why?”
“And when did you buy this place?” she prompted.
“June, but I don’t see—”
“After the dust from the data leak had settled,” she cut in, then clucked her tongue. “You’re such a good Catholic and you don’t even realize it.”
“I’m really not,” he assured her.
“You are. You’re self-flagellating. This is your penance. Your punishment. The SportBetNet leak turned a big, glaring spotlight on a sin you kept secret, and you felt the full force of its shame. Your manager shunned you, your league shunned you, and I’m willing to bet you got some heat from your parents, too. Now you think this is what you deserve, or maybe what you owe—to slink home and isolate yourself out on the fringes while you try to crawl back into your parents’ good graces.” Her gaze pinned him to the spot. “Am I wrong?”
It took him a second to collect his thoughts, and to parse through the racing stock ticker of conflicting emotions her scarily incisive analysis had set off. He hated that she’d figured him out so minutely, better than he’d figured out himself, giving voice to deeply hidden, ugly parts of his life he shied away from even acknowledging.
But he also loved it. Loved that she could know him so well, understand him more accurately than anyone else on the planet. Loved that she cared. Loved every damn inch of her.
He wanted to tell her exactly that, but that wasn’t part of their arrangement. Instead he said pointedly, “Fuck you, Erin.”
“I knew it.” She folded her arms smugly and sat back. “Don’t hate the striker for reading the keeper. We all have tells.”
He braced himself for the confession no one had heard before now. “My parents were pretty harsh when the story broke. At first I couldn’t understand why—gambling’s not that big a deal, in the grand scheme of things. It’s not like I cheated, or doped, or had an affair. Eventually I realized it wasn’t about me, and that nothing had been about me for a very long time.”
She pressed in closer. “What do you mean?”
“It’s my fault,” he began, but she cut him off with a shake of her head.
“Don’t take responsibility before you’ve said anything.”
He reframed what he wanted to say, tried again. “Aidan had a late dyslexia diagnosis and always struggled academically. Liam has Down syndrome and needed a lot of attention and advocacy from day one. I am—I was—the easy, low-maintenance, nothing-to-worry-about middle child. Until I started having these racing, obsessive thoughts. Like my brain was a fan with a broken off button, spinning faster and faster and faster.”
He glanced down at her wide-open, attentive expression before returning his focus to the horizon. “I still get them. When a player walks up to take a penalty, my brain churns so fast I can’t even distinguish one thought from the next. I see everything, or what feels like everything—every possible angle, every strategic choice, every penalty they’ve taken before this one and what that means for the one they’re about to take.”
“That’s incredible,” she remarked. “And somehow not surprising.”
He shrugged. “Now I can control it, to some extent. The stats help. Gives me something to focus on when my mind starts to spiral. But when I was a teenager I didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t sleep, felt panicky all the time, and eventually I told my mom. She launched straight into campaign mode, running me around to specialists, searching for a diagnosis. She was used to fighting corners for my brothers and couldn’t wait to do the same for me.” He blew out a breath. “It was too much. I wasn’t used to that level of attention and I couldn’t handle it, so I lied to get her off my back and totally withdrew, happy to let my brothers be the focus of the family.”
“How is becoming a superstar professional athlete evading your parents’ focus?”
“All part of being the easy child,” he explained. “They didn’t have to fund my education because I got a scholarship. They didn’t have to worry about my getting a job or helping me with rent because I signed a big contract. They didn’t have to worry about anything at all, because I had this perfect, successful life thousands of miles away.”
“I get it,” she said slowly. “You were the photo they could point to with pride while they dealt with the bigger problems in front of them.”
“On point again, Bailey. When the gambling thing came out, I became one of those problems. We’d been so distant for so long, I think resentment came more easily than support.”
She didn’t respond. His statement hung heavily between them, yet he felt lighter.
“You have to come back here,” Erin said finally, her voice thick with resignation. “You have to move home and bridge this gap. You only get one family, and it’s time for you to find your place in your own.”
He nodded. “It’s been a long time coming.”
She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. “I’m going to worry about you, all alone out here, by yourself.”
His heart staggered at the notion of her giving him a second thought after they parted, but he said, “No, you won’t. You’ll work, and go out for drinks, and date other men, and forget all about me.”
She shifted at his side, twisting to snuggle closer, pressing her forehead against his collarbone. He moved his other hand to hold one of hers, closing his eyes as he drank in the weight and warmth of her.
“What if I don’t?” she whispered.
He gritted his teeth against what felt like his heart tearing loose and careening around his chest, one second buoyed by hope, the next free-falling with despair.
He could tell her right now. He could say he was falling for her, ask her to commit to something—anything—and attempt to tie her up in the strings they’d promised this affair wouldn’t have. She might go for it. Clearly she was in a moment of weakness, daring to admit she may actually care about him a tiny bit. Maybe she’d agree to testing the emotional waters between them, and throwing out their strictly sex terms. Maybe she’d even let him call her his girlfriend.
But what would be the point? He’d pack up and leave Atlanta, and she’d come to her senses the first night she spent alone in her apartment. They might drag things out for a while—desperation on his part, obligation on hers—but eventually it would end. They’d separate guiltily, regretfully, and more painfully than if they never really got together at all.
She deserved better. He owed her better. He couldn’t let her race toward a stoplight he knew was about to turn red.
“No strings, remember?” Each word felt like swallowing broken glass, but he forced them out anyway. “There’s no future for us. You have a hell of career already, and it’s only going to get bigger and better. As for me, I want…” You. I want you. Nothing more, nothing less. “…I want this, out here. Quiet. Stability. No more attention.”
She nodded against his shoulder, and then she straightened, running her fingers through her hair, shifting in her seat, flashing him her wide, confident smile. Her shaky intake of breath betrayed her, though. He couldn’t see the tears in her eyes but he knew they were there.
He cleared his throat, shoving aside a swell of pain at her distress. “Getting cold?”
“Yeah.” She fidgeted and fumbled, and then a cell-phone screen briefly illuminated the darkness. “It’s late.”
“I’ll take you to the hotel.”
He folded the blanket while she slipped her feet back into her shoes. They walked to the car in silence, and he studiously avoided looking at her as he stowed the blanket in the back and then followed her into the cab.
He shut the door, then allowed himself a brief glance at her upturned face.
“Thanks for showing me your house,” she said softly, her lips barely curved in a smile.
“Anytime,” he promised, and started the engine.