I didn't watch the apology as it played on all the late-night sports shows. His text was enough.
Lion: It's done.
My fingers shook as I held my phone and gazed at the screen. All my carefully kept boundaries were beginning to blur, and I no longer knew what was a game.
Lyssi: Thank you. I texted back.
At nine the next morning he was on the doorstep, shopping bags and cricket bat in hand. He didn't say anything, and neither did I, he just stepped in and went straight for the kettle.
Frozen pizza was his sinful choice of the day. At this point, he transformed from mortal man to God in Sammy's eyes. We’d never had frozen pizza because I knew how full of shit it was. The little guy was so excited he insisted on carrying the boxes back to the car, with the Lion stepping in every so often to grab them as they toppled out of his arms. There was a lot of pizza.
We were finishing lunch and discussing what exercises to put his shoulder through that afternoon when the unexpected happened—a clap of thunder. The little guy shot out of his chair.
"It's just thunder, Sammy." The Lion smiled at him and slid his hundredth slice of pizza towards him. Sammy's eyes stared at the French doors, and the most deafening noise filled the room.
"Bloody hell." I slid down from my stool and sloped over to the door in my flip flops. Ping pong sized balls of hail were smashing against the glass. "Where on earth did this come from?"
"It was forecast, don't you check the weather?" The lion smirked, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
"Playstation." The little guy turned those big browns on me. I could hardly deny him; the poor thing was outside constantly, taking part in one game or another with me.
"An hour max." I wagged my finger at him.
He didn't even bother to say anything, he just grabbed his pizza and ran.
"Food in the kitchen only," I hollered after him, but he didn't venture back out from the den. I turned to the Lion, evaluating him as he sat spinning a biro on the counter top. "If you knew it was going to hail, why did you come over to practice?"
He continued to spin the biro before pinning those startling blues on me. "I didn't have anything else to do."
"What, no mates to hang with?"
Those sandy lashes flickered over his eyes, and he shrugged in answer.
"No girlfriend to see?" Didn't he always have some tall, beautiful woman hanging off his arm?
Another shrug.
"No family?" Bloody hell, this was like Twenty Questions with a brick wall.
This time he shook his head but his eyes glanced to the side, and I decided not to pry.
"So it's just me and you stuck indoors on a rainy day?" I asked.
The blinding smile, so similar to the one splashed on the posters upstairs, lit the room. Wow.
"Do you plan to talk at all during this rainy afternoon?"
Those damn blues flashed up at me. "Why did you pretend to have an injury?"
I straightened my back. "I didn't pretend."
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with your knee, no more than any other sportsman out there," he said, and I narrowed my eyes.
"It hurt." I folded my arms across my chest.
"Ooh, poor baby." He flicked me with his fingers. "Grow a pair, Rivers. Now tell me why you stopped playing."
"You tell me why you quit when you could have treated your shoulder easily?"
Shifting off his stool, he went to the patio door, holding his arm against the door frame above his head and watched the hail as it lessened into torrential rain. "I was getting old."
"What?" I held in a stifled snigger when I saw how tight he was holding his back muscles.
"You don't know what it feels like; you are so far away from that, which is why you're crazy to have made the choices you have." He sighed and held up a hand of surrender at my narrowed glare. "But it hurt, every day was more and more of a challenge, and my temper went with it." The skin under the scruff on his cheeks reddened. "I'm not proud of everything I've done." He came back to the table, and I watched his firm body move under his clothes, my eyes were drawn to the flat lines of his stomach despite my efforts to drag them away. "I've made some terrible mistakes."
"So why didn't you just go back to county cricket, something easier?"
He laughed. "Oh my god, I could ask you the same question. I don't understand why you quit playing completely. I mean you could have still played and had Sammy."
I shook my head. "No, I couldn't." I took a heavy breath that pulled at my ribs. "My sister-in-law's parents were angry after the accident." My voice caught, and I coughed it away. "I mean they had every right, their daughter had died, and they nearly lost their grandson. I think they believed that because my parents lived abroad, they would get Sammy." Another deep breath. "But when the solicitor read the will, it made me guardian and caregiver until Sammy turns eighteen."
The Lion's eyes watched me through hooded lids and dropped lashes. I had this intense need to hold his hand, to feel the sensation of those long fingers slide against my own. But I knew that was ridiculous, so I ignored it and buried it deep within myself.
"Vanessa's parents said they were going to contest the will. That was a year ago, but I haven't heard anything yet. They come and get him once a month, but it will only be a matter of time, things are very strained between us all." I sighed. This felt good to talk about, okay maybe not good, but there was a tingle of relief working its way around my tense stomach. "So, I needed a stable job, one where I wouldn't have to travel, or at least not far, not international and one where I was guaranteed a wage. If it goes to court, those are the things I will be judged on. Waller stepped in to help me." I sighed and brushed my hair out of my eyes, tucking it behind my ears. He watched me intently. "So what's your biggest mistake?" I asked keen to turn the attention away from me.
"Ooh, that's a tough one, but I think I'm going to have to go with marriage number two."
I shook my head and laughed. "I can't believe you've been married twice."
His face which was smiling dropped a little. "They weren't marriages; they were terrible mistakes, made for the wrong reasons." He blew a gust of air out of his mouth. "I'm learning that partnerships should be about more than that."
"Oh." My chest tightened. "Are you with someone now?"
I told myself it shouldn't matter if he were. Obviously, I was lying.
His attention dropped to the neglected pen. “No.”
"Okay, last question?" I'd started the words before I'd thought them through, although deep in my chest, at the centre of my being where my heart was beating a stuttered beat, I already knew what I wanted the answer to be. "Why can't you concentrate on your game?"
He didn't answer; his eyes slowly lifted to my face, where they stared at me with such brutal honesty I had an inkling of the answer without hearing the words. My throat tightened until it was a struggle to swallow.
"My hour's up," Sammy skidded into the room. No way, that wasn't an hour?
The Lion's eyes stayed settled on my face, and my cheeks warmed until I had to rest the back of my hands against them to make sure they hadn't caught alight. Finally, after I felt like I was about to disintegrate into a pile of ash on the floor, he turned his eyes to the windows. "It's still raining, Sammy, how about movie and popcorn?" he said.
"Popcorn now? I'm going to be the size of a house if this carries on." I muttered under my breath.
"Run more, on your dodgy knees," he responded with a smile above Sammy’s head. Good god was the Lion grinning at me in my kitchen? If this carried on, I'd be wiping grey gunk off the kitchen cabinets after my brain exploded. Oh, no, I wouldn't I'd be dead. The Lion would have killed me with one smile too many.
"We haven't got any popcorn." I pulled the most unattractive face at him I could muster which made him snort.
"Yes, we do." Sammy yanked on my arm, doing that kid thing where they can't just talk, they have to pull you or prod you at the same time. "It's in the cupboard. Maria says you aren't allowed to touch it because you will start a fire."
"Agh, she did not." I looked at Sammy's face. "Did she?"
He nodded earnestly.
I jumped off my stool and announced. "I would just like to say I am not that dangerous in the kitchen."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the little guy nodding his head at our weekend visitor and heard the snigger the Lion made in response as he pretended to cough into his arm.
I stared at the cupboards hoping the popcorn would just miraculously fall out into my waiting arms.
The Lion rolled his eyes. "Here, allow me." He stretched, and a flash of tanned, toned tummy peeked out at me from under his T-shirt. My palm itched with a need to slide the roughness of my skin against the smooth expanse.
I needed to get a grip fast.
Ten minutes later we were sat on the sofa with Sammy in between us holding a giant bowl of popcorn. The room had ebbed into darkness as the rain got heavier and heavier. "I don't think we will be able to play tomorrow," the Lion said, frowning at the window.
"We can do some yoga later if you want to stretch your shoulder. Just in case it's still raining and we don't get to play."
He flickered a smile in my direction, and I marvelled at how stunning that tick was when it morphed into the real thing. "Sure, although you know I hate it."
I shook my head, keeping my face sincere. "No, Willis, I think yoga hates you more."
Plucking a popped kernel of popcorn from the bowl, he flicked it at my head.
"Shh," Sammy interrupted us. "The movie is starting."
My eyes met the Lion's above the top of the little guy's head, and I watched as the fine lines around his eyes crinkled into a smile.
I had no idea what was going on, but it could only be bad. It could really, seriously only be bad.
By eight in the evening, the rain had turned into a storm; thunder and lightning crashed above the roof of the house, and the falling droplets of rain were blasting against the driveway and doors, bouncing a good foot into the air with the force of impact.
We'd watched two movies; done some yoga, much to the moaning and bitching of the Lion; and I'd just put Sammy to bed. The Lion had peeped into his room as I kissed Sammy goodnight and seen the posters smattering the wall. He'd looked taken aback, his face crumpling for one brief moment.
He was waiting for me against the hallway wall as I came out of the little guy's room. "I'm never going to forgive myself for being rude to him." His eyes stayed on the floor, and I knew this was as close to an apology as I was ever likely to get.
"It's forgotten about. You feed him popcorn and pizza. He loves you."
"I won't forget." His feet were bare, and he rubbed his big toe along the carpet.
"Did you see what he was wearing in bed?" I took a step forward and tilted his chin with my fingers so he'd look at me.
A shake answered my question as his eyes bore into mine.
"Your signed shirt. You are a god in his eyes, Willis."
"I don't deserve to be a god." He tried to force his head away, but I held it still. This was one of the first times I'd touched him, and my brain whirled as it tried to take in all the many bombarding facts of the situation. His skin was hot, and it warmed against my fingers like the smoulder of charcoal. The fair stubble on his chin shot through with a smattering of grey was prickly, ticklish almost, and more than anything else in the world I wanted to feel his lips on mine again. We watched each other as his eyes blinked slowly and his lips parted.
Sod the contract, sod the job.
He pulled away but his fingers caught mine and he brushed his lips against the back of my hand, the lightest of scorching touches. "We can't," he said. My stomach dove to my feet as he continued, "You're the best thing I have right now, and I won't risk ruining that."
Another crash of thunder clapped above the house, and I jumped away from the spell he was weaving over me. My skin was tingling with snapping electricity, and my head whirled. I poked my head into Sammy's room, but he was fast asleep, the storm raging outside the window not disturbing him from his dead-to-the-world sleep.
I cleared my throat when I turned to face the Lion whose intense gaze was still burning through his lashes at me. "You can't drive home in this."
"No?" That tick reappeared.
"No. I have a spare room if you want to crash then we can go straight from here tomorrow to see if cricket is on."
A hefty pause made my heart beat wildly. "Sure. Thank you. That would be great."
Oh my god. The Lion was going sleep over at my house.
Gaaaaaaaah.
I was blushing, and I couldn't help it. Then I remembered his words that I was the best thing he had right now and a deep ache pulled in the pit of my stomach for the former English number one. What had this game he loved so much done to his life?
"I've got a bottle of wine somewhere if you'd like a glass."
"But you don't drink?" His voice was deeper, a gentle rasp making my skin shiver.
"I never said I didn't drink. I said I didn't like to often."
He shrugged. "Okay."
"Okay."
We spent a couple of hours slowly sipping the red wine I'd found stashed in the cupboard from my mum and dad's last visit, and talked. He told me about his exploits with the England team and discounted some of the rumours I’d heard. I wanted to ask him about the scandal regarding the hooker, but even with my body flooded with wine, I didn't have the guts. The last thing I needed was for the Lion to retreat into the wild beast he was when we first met. He was a different man now, a pussy cat in comparison. At least it was beginning to feel that way to me. I wondered if I should have seen this a couple of weeks back when he first started turning up. Was it my own prejudice that had refused to see him for what he was?
At ten I got up from the sofa. "It's way past my bedtime."
He checked his watch, eyes widening when he saw the hour. "Mine too."
I laughed. Only two sportsmen couldn't feel embarrassed at announcing the fact they went to bed earlier than most teenagers. "I'll show you to your room."
I gathered him some towels and took him to the guest room with the ensuite. "You should have everything you need."
He nodded, and I left him to it. The whole way to my room I was wondering if I had everything that I needed.