My heart hammered sickeningly fast as the man strode off, leaving me feeling like someone had tilted the world to a strange angle. On the baseline, Miles had stopped serving to watch us, his expression hard to read.
“Keep it up, Miles,” Mannering called. “Six more.”
Miles’s gaze lingered on me a moment, before he swung intohis service motion. The ball hit the centre of the net so hard the force rippled along the mesh.
“Wow,” Macca said, finally breaking our stunned silence. “I was half joking when I said he ought to punch that guy, but now . . .” He lifted his brows at me. “Do you think he knows Callahan’s gay?”
As Miles put a second ball into the net, I thought over everything I knew about his closeted life: pictures bought from the paparazzi, playing matches after getting railed, andquite a lotof practice giving blowjobs. “I don’t think there’s any way he doesn’t know.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Three more balls hit the net and another went long, and without so much as a glance my way, Miles snatched up his bag and strode off toward the locker room, leaving us the court.
HE CAME TO my room that night, quiet and needing. And because I couldn’t tell him how I felt or help him with his troubles, I put all the words I kept caught behind my teeth into every touch. I worked on him with singular focus and Miles responded by letting himself go entirely. He melted in wanton abandon, his lips parted and his brow creased, head turned on the pillow as he came on my hand – that expression one I could at least be sure Emily Rose Johnson would never see. The petty joy of that thought was thoroughly beneath me, yet I revelled in it, as I revelled in being the one who made him feel so good.
In the afterglow, I wanted to keep holding him against me for as long as he would allow, but without the excuse of sex, the tenderness tore at my heart and I headed to the bathroom before I blurted out words I could never take back.
We needed to talk about Emily. We needed to talk about ourcollision course in the draw. We needed to talk about how desperately I was in love with him, yet when I dropped back onto the bed, I said, “I hope that was sufficient railing for tomorrow’s match?”
“Always. Although, if I play like I did in practice today it won’t matter,” he said, and turned his head on the pillow to look at me, his hair tickling my arm. “What did Leo say to you?”
“Oh. He, uh, just didn’t appreciate us giving you advice.”
He gave me a look. “I saw your face. Just tell me what he said.”
It had eaten at me in the hours since. Not because it had hurt to hear, but because of what it suggested about Miles’s life. I sighed. “He said you didn’t need advice from people like us.”
Miles stilled, eyes not shifting from my face.
“And when asked to clarify his meaning,” I went on. “He called us fairies. And said we needed Macca because Tomas and I were too nancy to stand up for ourselves.”
With his own sigh, Miles turned to look up at the ceiling.
“You need a new coach, Miles,” I said, the echo of his own words about Danny loud between us.
“Yeah, I’ve known that for a while. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. He came out of retirement because my parents paid him a fuck tonne of money just for the prestige of having Leo Mannering, like his name alone would turn me into a world number one. Dad and Leo between them hired every member of my team. They pay them. They brief them, not me.”
“Does he ever say things like that to you?”
His gaze snapped to me with sudden horror. “No! God no, I’m not such a pushover that I would put up with him if he did. It’s just the hard taskmaster stuff. Another reason I’m sure they chose him. Someone who could straighten me out. Stop me being lazy.”
Straighten me out.Words whose alternate definition felt hauntingly accurate, yet I said, “You aren’t lazy. I’ve watched you practise. And no one gets to where you are if they’re lazy.”
“They do if they have someone to whip them into shape.”
Straighten me out.Seemed more like Leo Mannering had twisted him up, and I wanted to gently take hold of those snarled coils and unwind them, wanted to ease the sharp points from where they dug into his skin.
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “And I don’t think that’s why he does it.”
Miles frowned at me, the glow from the bedside lamp limning his hair but leaving his expression in shadow. “What do you mean?”
“So, Leo Mannering is a hard taskmaster, sure, but do you think Olivier Penders would have kept him on for so many years if he spoke to him the way he speaks to you? Do you think Vasilyev, who wasn’t exactly known for his calm temperament, would have put up with him talking like that?”
When Miles didn’t answer, I added, “There’s taskmaster and there’s sadistic cunt, and I know which bucket I would put Leo Mannering in. Especially after he made it clear how little he thinks ofpeople like us. I assume he knows.”
“Yeah.”
For a long, drawn-out minute, Miles gnawed on his lip in silence before he squeezed his eyes shut. “God, you must think me an idiot.”
