RHINO: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (With FREE Bonus Novel OFFSIDE!) (57 page)

I shake my head. “I don’t care what you think about Jasper, I know you hate him, I understand that. I know you’re worried about me too, but guess what, I’m not your little girl anymore. I’m old enough to make my own decisions and instead of trying to protect me you should try and respect me, because what you’re doing is pushing me away and not bringing me closer. You’ll lose me, like you’re losing everything else.”

For a moment Dad looks like he’s going to soften. I think I see the possibility of the recognition of doing something wrong in his eyes and then as quickly as it arrives, it disappears again and they cloud back over. With a dismissive wave of his hand, Dad undoes several years of close bonding between us.

“
It’s over. Get over it.”

I can’t hold back another wave of tears. I give him one last chance to make amends.

“
Dad, please don’t do this to us.”

“
Have a good weekend, Penny. I’ll see you here on Monday morning as usual.”

I can’t believe how cold he’s being. I’m stunned by his insensitivity. Ok, Jasper and I have only been together officially for a few weeks, and my last relationship wasn’t exactly a perfect example of matrimony, but there’s no need for him to behave like this, even if there is nothing we can do about it.

He’s my father and he can see I’m hurt and he should be supporting me, even if somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks he’s doing the right thing for me by sending Jasper away.

I go to my office, and then I go to the restrooms and then I go out to the field and I walk the distance from goal post to goal post wondering what the fuck I can do. There is a message on my cellphone from Jasper that says “We need to talk”, but I don’t have the courage to face him yet, nor the decision that might have already been made for us either.

I want beer and bad jokes and bed time with Jasper, but I don’t want any of those things to be the last time that I get them so I walk, loops of the field, wondering how I can save this, the silhouette of my father watching from the window of his office above.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Jasper confessed his love for me. It wasn’t all that long ago that I confessed it back to him too, and now this. It’s not like this is the middle ages, and a boat back across the sea is a forever thing, I mean, we have planes and the world is smaller than it has ever been at any point before, but I also know that long distance relationships hardly ever work.

America to England is a hell of a long way, without even factoring in the problems with visas. I’ve never lived away from home before either. I’ve never even been out of this country for Christ sake. What if I have trouble adjusting? What if that puts pressure on our relationship and we end up breaking up anyway? What if Dad is right and Jasper only ever wanted a one year thing?

Fuck.

How can a life collapse twice in the space of a couple of months? How can I go from getting married to being single to finding the love of my life and then losing him all in a matter of weeks?

Maybe it is best that he goes. Maybe I should just forget about him before I’m in too deep, and look for someone and something else. There are plenty of people like Jasper Stone in this world, right? Plenty of men out there for me.

I’m in the corner of the field where Jasper walked the ball
and
a member of the opposition team five yards into the end zone. Somehow I’ve gravitated here without thinking about it, and as I allow the turf to come into focus, I see divots, chalk marks and rough patches where the grass has broken.

I kneel down and run my hands along the marks the trailing players toe caps carved into the grass and I think about him, that singled minded determination to win at all costs, whatever that cost might be.

Before Jasper, this place was a desert. The crowds had all but disappeared, the hopes of the players and the coaching staff shattered. My life was a mess too. I didn’t know what happiness was until Jasper came along, and now, after a mere taste of what could be possible between us, it’s being taken away from me. No, it’s being violently ripped away from me.

I need to speak to him. I need to see Jasper and sort this out. Dad watches from the window above like a demon and I watch him watching me rush out of the stadium, the rest of my life about to run away from me in the space of a couple of days.

If this is a goodbye, I’m saying it quickly so I don’t get emotional. The best break ups are the ones where you sever contact and don’t look back. The locker room in which we fucked, the corridors he walked in and out of, the sweat, the tears, the musk of a hundred nights of pain for a single moment of glory.

It’s a reckless decision, but I’ve nothing else left. My hand has been forced. After this year, after Dad has driven the Tigers into the ground, and the stadium, the players, the history and everything else with it has been sold to a faceless multinational, there’s going to be nothing left for me here anyway.

I don’t even bother going back upstairs. Instead, I take the quickest route to the parking lot and I don’t look back. I can feel it looming over my shoulder like a vulture about to strike, the metal of the stands braced against the darkening sky as though holding back the night itself.

If I stop to think I won’t do it. If I let doubt creep in it’ll cripple me. A lifetime’s worth of memories for a couple of months of happiness is more than a worthwhile trade for some, but it’s not going to be enough for me.

This isn’t just a couple of people fooling around with each other, I’ve seen that and I know what it’s like. This is way more than I could even begin to describe to do it justice. It’s me and him, and everything else falls by the wayside to make it work, one hundred percent.

My hands are shaking as I try to get the key into the car, urgency and expediency never having been as important as right now. My brain is going at a million miles an hour, and as much as I try to avoid it, I can’t help hopping from doubt to disbelief and and all the way back again.

Jasper could be packing. What if Jasper really wants to go? And then the worst, the one that has my stomach turning knots and my knees weak because of it, what if he doesn’t want me to come with him?

I’m not a rash person. I make decisions after hours of thought, taking time to weigh up all of the possible permutations. I rarely act on impulse and ‘spontaneous’ is definitely not a word I’d ever use to describe myself, but here I am, driving away from one life and into another at sixty miles an hour.

I’m mad at Dad for letting this happen, mad at Corsham too for requesting something they shouldn't even be allowed to consider. For this season, regardless of the possibility of the ban being lifted, Jasper Stone is our player. He belongs here, at Moxlin, in my bed, alongside me.

We signed the deal because the chance of his ban being reduced was considered to be less than one percent. We signed the deal because they wanted their bad boy rugby star out of the media for long enough for the bad press to die down. Haven’t we done that? Hasn’t Jasper been a respectable representative here in Arkansas? Apart from that first minor fuck up, of course, Jasper has been a consummate professional and an even more consummate lover.

We shouldn’t even be considering giving that up. I’m definitely not going to give him up without a fight either. Alright, they want their star player back, alright, they’re having a shitty season, but guess what? Corsham will survive, Moxlin won’t, and right now Jasper Stone belongs here and nowhere else.

The ring on my cell phone makes my heart leap. I shouldn’t look at it, but instinct makes me do it. I know it’s going to be Jasper and I don’t want to let it ring out. I try and dig it out of my bag, but I can’t do it without looking down. I’m zipping along the road faster than I should be just to get to him, my brain a mess of thoughts, my head panicked and my body so shaky I feel like I’ve drunk a full liter of coffee.

I only look down for a second, maybe even half that, but when I look up I know it’s already too late to avoid it. The back of the lorry comes towards me at what feels like a thousand miles an hour, the traffic ahead suddenly stopped.

I’m conscious when the windshield breaks, I know that because I hear it, like the piercing screams of a thousand demons. I’m awake too, to feel the engine block shift towards me and the car crumple up like an origami model. There is a trickle of what feels like water dripping down my forehead and the last thing I remember before the world closes off entirely is the name I see on my cell phone.

Dad.

Fourteen.

Jasper

There’s nothing worse than hearing bad news. I’ll always remember the moment my dad told me about his cancer, as though it was nothing but some kind of stomach bug he was going to get over in a couple of weeks, and the way my heart dropped so far I half expected to find it lying on the floor. Even before he told me I figured something was up, and I don’t mean in the weeks before, when he knew and no-one else did, I mean in the seconds before, when he sat me down and I saw a fear in his eyes I’ll never forget to my own dying day, even if he pretended as much as he could that it wasn’t really there.

I try calling Penny a number of times during the day, but when she doesn’t answer I figure I should leave it. I worry she’s already made her decision to break it off with me because she’s been left with no other choice, and separation at this stage of our relationship makes the most sense for all concerned, but try and think positively that the reason she’s not getting back to me immediately is because she’s working out how to unclusterfuck the situation we’ve somehow found ourselves in.

What I don’t expect to hear is that her radio silence is because she’s been cut out of a car wreck on the way over here, and rushed to hospital unconscious, in a seriously critical condition.

It’s Harrison that calls me and, like I experienced with my dad years ago, I know it’s serious before he’s even spoken. I can hear the bad news in the staggered lilt of his breathing as clear as a cloudless day.

“
Where?” is all I need to say to him, already on the way to my own car, hoping for all humanity that it’s not as serious as he’s making it sound.

On the journey to the hospital, I already know. I knew before, but this just reaffirms it. I’m crying. I’ve never cried before and I’m crying now. A two meter tall, two hundred and forty pound man crying his heart out for a girl he’s barely known for two months. A girl who he knows he’s going to marry one day, have children with one day and grow old with one day, hand in hand, shit joke after shit joke until the end of time, only if she has the strength to make it through this.

Harrison’s at the hospital with Penny’s mother. I’ve never seen him looking so grey, or experienced him being so silent. He looks like Penny’s already died and even though I know it’s impossible because I can still feel her inside me, I can’t help but worry.

“
It’s my fault”, Harrison says. “I fucked up.”

They have her in the theatre for hours. They have her in there for so long there are moments when I think she’s never going to come out again at all. Doctors throw words at me that make little sense, that nurses translate into an English I can understand, and it makes me even more concerned than the first time I hear them. Blood on the brain. Swelling. Induced coma. Lost a lot of blood. Critical.

From Harrison I get the jist of what happened. Penny, mad at him for sending me away, on her way to me to try to resolve it.

“
She was going too fast”, Penny’s mother, June, bawls.

We wait for news, bad or good, none of us in the right frame of mind to speak much. Hospitals make me feel uneasy. My dad spent a long time in one because of his illness, and as a consequence, I spent a long time in one with him too.

They are the wrong place for sick people to be, surrounded by others who walk the halls like zombies or lie in beds scattered around passageways and corridors, spilling out into entrance ways and communal waiting rooms like people who have forgotten they should already be dead.

This was not how I imagined the day to go when I woke up in Penny’s arms this morning. A fourth win for Moxlin in my fourth game, a plane ticket passed across the desk to me by a man who has resented me from my very first day here, and now Penny, the most important thing in my life, fighting for her life in this clinical, characterless, color drained building of death.

I have to go outside before I scream. I need air and I can’t cope with the possibility of this day ending without Penny in it.

My dad taught me how to win and then he lost his very last battle, fighting all the way like a fucking champion until finally it finished him off. It’s because of his death that I am the person I am. It’s because of him that I refuse to give in, and because he’s no longer here anymore that I struggle to keep the demons away outside of the game.

I thought for a long time it was always going to be like that, a beast on the field and an animal off it, right up into I met Penny. I used to think if I didn’t go crazy on a night out it was because I wasn’t doing it right. I had to be the last man standing, the last to go to bed, the biggest drinker, the most badly behaved.

The only thing that mattered to me was winning whatever game I ended up playing. Being the best of whatever I decided to do. Now I know none of that means anything at all compared to what it feels like to be with someone you love. All of that shit leaves me empty, whereas Penny, and what we feel for each other, fills me up so much I feel like I’m going to burst.