I cleared my throat and my head. “We’re a team,” I forced out. “We wouldn’t be winning at all if there weren’t ten other players out there with me.”
“A diplomatic answer.”
“No, just a fact.”
Yesterday, I’d done what I’d always been able to do my whole life: compartmentalize. No matter what was going on in my personal world, as soon as I stepped onto the pitch, it alldisappeared. It was about me and my team and keeping control of a ball.
It centered me.
However, despite my exhaustion after the game in which we’d trounced Perth United 3–1, I hadn’t been able to sleep. Beth’s offer kept playing over and over in my mind. I was stunned at first, then angry at her proposal, and then considering. No matter our history, I could see how hard she worked and hated the idea of someone holding her career over her head like that. If all she needed was me to show up to a party, pretend to be her boyfriend for a few hours, then wasn’t I the prick if I said no?
Still, I wasn’t sure she’d thought her proposal through, which was why I’d suggested we meet after my radio interview in Glasgow.
Thankfully, the interview wrapped up quickly when they realized I wasn’t going to be critical of players on other teams or offer insight into who I thought was our competition outside of the top two teams, Glasgow’s Dalmarnock Thistle and Kingston United. The interviewer attempted to steer us back to rumors that were five years old, about how it was said Dalmarnock had offered to buy me from Caley United, and I’d refused.
No one believed it.
But the rumor was true.
Aye, I’d have won more championships with Dalmarnock and competed every year in the world’s biggest football tournaments instead of only the few times I had with Caley. When I was selected to play for Scotland a few years ago, I’d played side by side with the best our country had to offer, including those from Dalmarnock. We’d performed well. We might not have won as a team, but I knew if I’d moved to Dalmarnock, it would have been a good fit.
However, I’d never leave Caledonia United. Not for all the money or glory in the world. Caley had given me a home, and I’d never turn my back on family.
I suppose that’s what Beth had been thinking when she’d turned her back on me all those years ago. She’d chosen her family. And we were teens. She was only a kid, afraid of causing trouble with her parents. It was time I got over it.
By the time I returned to Edinburgh, I was running late for our meeting, which I guessed wouldn’t go over well with Beth. She seemed to always have something to do or somewhere to be. It surprised me that she wasn’t waiting outside her flat door as I climbed the stairwell.
Then I heard an echoey, “I’m up here.”
Tilting my head back, I found Beth leaning over the railing from my floor, looking down at me.
“You’re late.”
“Train was late.” I’d taken public transport because, despite the fact the Edinburgh Fringe was hosted throughout the entire month of August, it was still quicker than attempting to drive from Edinburgh to Glasgow in rush-hour traffic.
“How did your interview go?” Beth asked as I climbed the last steps.
She stood waiting for me, wearing the same flowery, strappy summer dress she’d worn that morning she befriended the brunette I’d slept with.
“It was fine.” I shrugged, taking out my keys.
Beth rolled her eyes and turned, heading toward my flat door.
My eyes betrayed me, traveling down her long legs. She had great fucking legs. I suddenly imagined them wrapped around my back as I thrust into her, her features straining with pleasure as I watched her take me.
All my blood rushed south.
Damn it.
The gaffer in the shower. The gaffer in the shower.
That helped a bit.
Don’t look at her legs. Don’t look at her, full stop.
“How is the … Scottish Series Cup thingie going?” Beth asked politely.
My lips twitched as I let us into my flat. It was a miracle I’d managed to get her to come to a few of my games back in high school. “You mean the Scottish Professional League? The Scottish Series Cup Thingie is a different tournament, and we don’t play in that again until the quarter finals at the end of September.”
