I was going to lose my job tomorrow.
I’d lost Baird.
And I’d lost my job.
I clung to the numbness like I was hanging on to a cliff for dear life. Because if I let go, my cousin would witness an emotional breakdown the likes of which would embarrass me for the rest of my life.
“Tomorrow,” Beth whispered and slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her.
It was deeply unsettling … how quickly your life could change.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
BAIRD
Abang woke me up from a fitful sleep.
Exhaustion pulled at my eyelids, my limbs; my back hurt, my arse was numb, and my sprained ankle throbbed like a motherfucker. Scrubbing my face, my beard prickling against my palms, I tried to wake up. Nausea rolled through my stomach, and not just from a lack of sleep, as I blinked against the light now spilling across the landing outside Maia’s flat.
I scrambled for my phone to check the time.
Six thirty and she hadn’t come home.
Worry gnawed at my gut.
Along with remorse and self-loathing.
Last night was a big fucking wake-up call.
Aye, okay. I could admit it. I was messed up about cracking my skull open last year.
I didn’t want to face the fact that I was scared every time I walked onto the pitch now. I didn’t want to face that it had fundamentally changed how I felt about a sport that was so much a part of me, I considered it a piece of my personality.
Football had been the one thing in my life I was class at. School had never come easy because I hated having to sit still for long periods. Reading and spelling had never been my thing, and I was better at digesting information through more interactive mediums.
I constantly felt like I was failing in the classroom. But the football pitch was where I excelled. It became the place where I could play out all my frustrations and worries, all the adolescent anger I’d felt toward the dad who had abandoned me. It was the place where I succeeded and made my family proud. It was the place I found blokes just like me who had become an extension of my family.
It was my safe place.
Until it wasn’t.
And that broke something inside me.
But that was no excuse for what I said to Maia last night. Just because she’d seen right through my bullshit, I’d punished her for it in the worst way. I’d made her feel … emotion clogged my throat as the look on her face kept flashing across my mind.
I’d hurt the one person who meant everything to me.
My chest burned with the ache of how painful that was.
“You know what I can’t believe … that for a second, I actually thought something real was happening between us.”
Goddamn it.
“I did let you in more than I’ve ever let anyone in.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Don’t call me ever again, Baird. I don’t need another person like you in my life making me feel like shit about myself.”
