CHAPTER1
Nate
MANCHESTER ATHLETIC V. NEWCASTLE UNITED, OCTOBER 11.
“That wassome fucking save you pulled off there.”
Jesse Sullivan, our Captain Marvel, and collector of the world’s most expensive shoes, slapped me too hard on the back, making the muscle I’d definitely yanked during the save, spasm painfully.
“It’s a save I’m going to pay the price for.” I rolled my shoulder. “It hurts like a bastard.” I could do without an injury. My back-up was only a bit more than a kid, and while he oozed enthusiasm and hunger, good goalkeepers were made from experience. I was thirty-three. Although outfield players would be coming to the end of their careers at my age, I had another half a decade ahead of me – if I didn’t pick up any injuries that sat me out.
This wasn’t one. I’d overstretched to make a save, a ball headed for the top left corner and if it had hit the back of the net, it would’ve been a worldy of a goal. No one would’ve criticised me for not saving it, but instead it was now a worldy of a save.
“Go and see Amber.” Jesse nodded towards the treatment room. “Maybe shower first.”
I looked over to the door through which Amber was working her painful magic on Rowan, who’d come off in the eightieth minute with a groin strain.
“I might wait for The Count and come in tomorrow.” I tried to avoid having Amber work on me. Not that she wasn’t good – you had to be damned good at your job to work as a physio at this level in the Premier League – I just wasn’t as comfortable with her working on me as I was with The Count.
Jesse shook his head. “No joy. His missus is having a C-section this afternoon, so he’s on paternity leave for the next few days. It’s Amber or James.”
I groaned, grabbing a towel and my shower gel. “Amber it is then. May as well get it over with.”
I was five minutes in the shower, just enough to get rid of the sweat and dirt from the game, because once Amber had finished remoulding my shoulder, I’d have a hot bath and use the steam room. Experience had taught me that my shoulder was going to be worse after she’d done whatever evil magic on it that she decided to cast. We had another game on Saturday, and I had to be good to go; it was a local derby. Pride and bragging rights would be at stake, so my one focus would be keeping a clean sheet.
I dried off, pulled on underwear and shorts, stuck my feet into a pair of club sliders, and left the other lads carrying on with their banter as they got dressed.
For most of them, they’d be heading out into Hale or Alderley, where the bars were a little more exclusive and there was less chance of being papped. I’d be heading home to my daughters to play whatever game my eldest had invented and stop her little sister from sabotaging it before their bedtime, and then I could call a take-out and watch Match of the Day.
I’d just about gotten used to Chan not being around. The memory of my wife was still there – we’d been together since we were both twenty-two – but the ghost of her had seemed fainter since the start of this football season. I no longer expected her to walk into the bedroom and complain I’d left a wet towel somewhere, or to find her in our dressing room straightening her hair. I didn’t feel wrong not having her products in the bathroom anymore, or her perfume not lingering in the air.
Cancer was a bitch, and it had taken my daughters’ mother from them far too soon. There were days when I’d feel like I could boil over with anger, and those were the days when I ran ten miles or lifted heavier than our coaches needed me to. But those days were fewer now, too. I had accepted, with the help of therapy, that my grief would become less tangible as time went on, and I was learning not to feel guilty about that.
I knocked on Amber’s door, half dreading what was about to come. Rowan had just come out, his Geordie accent unintelligible which was probably a good thing given his expression, so she was now free. Free to dig her elbows into my muscles and cause more pain than what I was already in. Hopefully it would be a solution. Hopefully.
“Come in.”
She sounded chipper, as if she was looking forward to inflicting more pain.
The pain she inflicted on me would not be the sort she was aiming for. She wouldn’t, if I had any say in the matter, have any idea of what pain she was causing, nor would anyone else.
I opened the door and gave her a smile, heading straight for the table. “Three guesses as to what’s gone wrong.” I sat down on it, putting my back to her.
Amber laughed, a sound that I sometimes thought sounded happier when it was me she was talking to, but maybe I was being big-headed. “I watched the game. The save was phenomenal, Nate, but you’re going to pay for it.” She rubbed something on her hands and then picked up a spray.
“I already am.”
“You know the drill.”
The contents of the spray hit my back, then warm hands rubbed over my skin. I swallowed as her thumbs started to dig in, manipulating tendons and muscles, my head dipping forward as I focused on my breathing, replaying through the game and how my defence had worked out to allow that shot on goal.
I didn’t need to be thinking about it. We won the game, grabbing three crucial points, and the shot that I saved was pure talent combined with fluke. The defence were blameless, but I needed something to focus on that wasn’t Amber’s hands.
“You’re way too tense sitting up. Let’s have you face down on the table.” Her hand stilled on my shoulder. “This now, and another massage in the morning, plus some mobility exercises and you’ll hopefully be fine and this won’t drag on. You haven’t done much more than mildly strain it from what I can feel. A hot bath after this will help.”
“That’s good.” I made the mistake of glancing over at her. She was about a foot shorter than me, which wasn’t unusual as I was six foot four, and her hair was down to her waist, when she didn’t have it tied up in a messy bun or braid. I’d started noticing her hair back in September, when we’d had a squad meal and the support staff had come with us. Before, I’d associated Amber with sweats and T-shirts, fitness gear and no make-up. I hadn’t really thought much about her apart from how she could be brutal with manipulation and she had no sympathy if we complained something hurt.
That meal had changed a few things.
