I’m going to London. But it isn’t in the way I ever imagined it would be.
36
Lara
“I just put him down for his nap. Poor bugger, he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open through changing his nappy.”
I chuckle to myself as I pad over to Vance, wrapping my arms around him. He’s been with us for almost a week since Mason’s accident, and I’m falling into the routine I love so much again.
“Come sit with me. I have something to talk to you about.” My gorgeous man walks me backward, his hands never leaving my hips.
My heart thuds in my chest wondering what he could want to talk about. He’s been telling me for months that he loves me, and I’m a woman who’s had a man get down on one knee for her before. Could this be … ?
Last night, I nearly blurted out the words he’s been waiting to hear. I was riding Vance, my hair wrapped in his fist and my nails digging into his chest, and he looked up at me like I ruled the entire world, like he’d create a new religion just to worship me.
I have probably always been in love with him, but the love I feel now is just more. It’s bigger, it has that sense of largeness in your chest that makes you wonder how the universe could contain a feeling this intense.
“What’s going on?” I ask, my throat dry.
I swear, if he asks me to marry him right now …
Of course, I would say yes. The man I’ve been in love with half my life, the father of my son, the partner who I look forward to coming home to—I’ve dreamed of this moment.
Vance looks down and then back up into my eyes. “Remus left for another team, to take another keeper position. Niles Harrington just called. They want me to come to London.”
Disappointment floods me worse than a boat that’s capsized. Embarrassment washes over my cheeks, because how naïve and ridiculously childish could I be? Of course, Vance doesn’t have plans to make me his wife. All he’s thinking about is Rogue and becoming their starting keeper. As usual.
“Oh, Vance, that’s wonderful! It’s what you’ve been waiting for.” I try to infuse as much false cheer into my voice as I can.
How can I be incandescently happy about this when it means he’ll be leaving us for longer? His life will become chaotic, and who knows how Mason and I will fit into it.
“Well, sort of. They want me to audition for the spot, and are bringing a few other keepers to see which fits best with the squad.”
His expression falls, and someone who isn’t familiar with every tic of his wouldn’t notice. But I do.
“Wait, so you’ve been working for how long to impress them, to show them how much you deserve this, and they’re not giving you the spot outright? Those wankers!” Now I’m enraged for him.
Vance shrugs. “Maybe it’s just one more test I have to go through. But that’s what I have to talk to you about. I want you and Mason with me. Would you come to London? Maybe just for a few weeks, and then—”
“Vance, I can’t just uproot him for a few weeks to live in a hotel. He has preschool, I have to go to work. We have a home here.”
“Come on, Lara, we can find him a preschool there.” He’s not even listening to me.
“You’re not even certain you’ll be given the starting position, so what’s the rush?”
Those chocolate eyes go black with upset. “That’s a great vote of confidence, thanks.”
His sarcastic tone only serves to annoy me more. Here, I thought he was about to propose. To ask me a question that would solidify our family. Instead, what he’s proposing will pull us further apart, or, if he has his way, have Mason and I trail behind him around the world.
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” I snap.
“You just don’t want to come. Admit it.” This conversation is digressing into our fundamental argument.
“It’s the same problem we had before you broke things off. I don’t want this life, Vance. I don’t want to be a footballer’s wife. I don’t want to uproot my child and follow you around the world. He needs stability, and I love my job, if that has any weight in the matter.”
“You don’t want to be a footballer’s wife? Bloody hell, Lara, then what are we doing? I wouldn’t ask you to give up your home, or your job, but you’re asking me to give mine up? Everything I’ve worked for in the last fifteen years, I’m just supposed to walk away?”
Vance blows, shooting up off the sofa.
“If you loved us enough, yes.”
“If you loved me enough, you wouldn’t ask me to.”
We’re always going to have this sticking point between us. He wants to live his life for the game, and I want him to live life for me. I want a love that means not having to choose anything over it. And with Vance, I will lose. Every time.
“Just go. You’re going to anyway. I don’t want to fight with you.” Because I’m tired, and because it’s useless.
“Bloody hell, Lara, you can’t even tell me you love me!”
And there it is. Vance throws the one grenade in his arsenal, the one line he knows will cause our whole world to implode. All the hurt I’ve tried to untangle, the barbed wire wrapped around my heart, sinks deeper into the flesh of the organ he’s dismantling once more.
“Why do you think that is? Last time I said it, you left and never looked back. You went gallivanting off into your posh life and left me, a scared, heartbroken teenager with a baby on the way. The last time I told you I loved you, my heart was shattered into a million pieces. Is it any wonder I’m unable to say it now? Look what you’re doing; you’re about to leave for London with no real timeline of when you’ll be back.”
Vance’s eyes plead with me, but his mouth is a permanent, displeased, straight line. “I would never hurt you like that again. I thought you had more faith in me, in what we’ve built, than to think that.”
But I’m on a role. “Will we ever be enough for you? Will I ever be enough for you? This goddamn football club has stolen the best years of your life, they’re wasting your talent, and still, you’re going to go kiss their feet and audition for a job that should already be yours.”
“You don’t understand. You’ve never understood.” His voice is quiet and small.
“I guess I don’t.” I can taste the heartbreak in my mouth. “But you’re going to choose them. You’ll go to London because that’s where your loyalty lies. So just go.”
I can’t watch as he walks out the door.
37
Vance
My knee skids across the pitch, the burn of grass against skin sure to leave a mark.
I barely feel it, though.
I’ve been at this for hours, footballs flying at every part of my body as I dart from side to side in the net, attempting to block them from going in. My abs and stomach have been beaten in, and I’m sure I’ll have bruises all over my ribs when I sink into an ice bath after this. There is a jagged pitch burn running from the middle of my left thigh down past the knee, and I can feel droplets of blood on my sock.
But I can’t stop. Around me, the other players of the Rogue Football Club practice drills, passing to each other and cutting back and forth in sprints across the grass. The stadium above us is empty, a silent cathedral that will fill with parishioners in the coming days.
“All right, Morley, you’re done. Next!” The trainer who’s been firing shots at my body for the last twenty minutes shouts at me to get out of the net.
This is bloody bullshit. Having to share time in the net with this German bloke and another keeper from a second tier Italian league. I’ve done everything Rogue and Niles and the trainers and headmasters have ever asked. I’ve given up my life, my childhood, time with my parents, and my little family—everything for the good of the club.
I’m clearly the front runner, the most skilled and dedicated keeper on this pitch. And yet, it’s been weeks of interviewing and auditioning and proving myself for this position.
The one Lara said should already be mine outrig
ht.
God, do I miss her. I miss them. It’s been weeks since I’ve seen Mason’s face and talking to him for the couple of minutes before Lara takes the phone and says he needs to go to bed is not cutting it. My heart is decimated, and it’s my own fault. I know that.
But, she just never understood. She told me to go, to leave. Told me she didn’t want to live the life of a footballer’s wife which was what she would be no matter if I played at Rogue or not. It’s the issue we’ve been skirting since I vowed to get her back.
This is my life, the sport I love, and if she can’t live with that, I’m not sure how we can live together. Every morning I wake; my head and heart war with each other.
Push harder on the pitch, you’re almost there.
They need you. You love them. Crawl back apologizing.
And each day, I push past it, ignoring all the instincts shouting at me. I’m becoming numb.
Walking to the sidelines, I grab a Gatorade bottle and shoot the sweet ice blue drink into my mouth.
“Looking good in the net, mate. Real good. You’re a beast, as usual.” Jude comes up, grabbing his own bottle and gulping half of it down.
“Thanks,” I respond.
Jude bends down to tighten the laces of his boots and then stands straight. “You all right? I know your first couple of weeks here can be intense.”
“Just fucking tired, mate.” I shake my head, not wanting to get into it.
If it looks like I’m reluctant or doubting this process at all, I know Niles may not choose me for the starting job.
“It will all be worth it in the end,” Jude tells me solemnly.
That’s the thing though … “Will it?”
Kingston drops into step with us. “It might. It might not.”
“Thanks for eavesdropping, arse.” Jude glares at him. “Don’t listen to him. It will be. This is the dream, remember?”
For the longest time, it was the dream. And then I met my son.
“It took me getting demoted to Nartanica to realize that football isn’t everything. It’s the sport I bloody love, yes, but it isn’t life and death.” Kingston shrugs, being insightful and genuine for once in his prankster life.
Last year, our mate got into a lot of trouble both on and off the pitch, and Niles loaned him out to a fourth-tier team in the middle of nowhere. It forced him to grow up, to realize what was important, and I think he’s better off because of it.
And now, his words sink in hard. “If Poppy asked you to give it up, would you?”
Kingston regards me, and I hear Jude inhale sharply. “Why? Are you think about doing that for Lara?”
“Aria wouldn’t ask that of me. She knows what football means to me.” Jude throws his two cents in.
My head snaps to him. “I wasn’t asking you.”
While I love Jude like a brother, his opinion in this situation is biased and skewed. Football, to him, is life. He lost his parents as a child, and this sport has given him the opportunity to survive. Jude is this country’s next bloody savior, the hype around him is insane. Plus, he and Aria are not Lara and me.
“I don’t know that she would ask. But, if she did … yes. I probably would. This sport is so finite, it’s fickle and tosses us away like rubbish after it’s done with us. Poppy is my forever. She’s the one I have to answer to at the end of the day, and if you don’t believe you have to answer to your woman, well, mate, I don’t know what to tell you.”
My friend smirks and his joking nature makes me feel marginally better.
What if I don’t get this starting job? Would Lara take me back, even if she wasn’t my first choice? I doubted this.
And I’ve already royally cocked us up once and vowed to her that I’d fight through hell to get her and Mason back.
But when it really comes down to it, have I? I’ve done exactly what I did to her the first time. Exactly what I said I wouldn’t do.
Looking around the Rogue stadium, the church I’ve always hoped to worship at, I know I’m about to make the biggest decision of my life.
38
Lara
I’m sitting at the breakfast table, two weeks after Vance left for London, and Mason asks me to put hot sauce on his eggs.
That’s when I lose it.
After fetching the hot sauce, and pouring the tiniest drop of it on his eggs, I shut myself in the bathroom and sob. Because my son is only asking for it to imitate how his father eats his own eggs.
I kept it together for a while there, after he left. I had to, or at least I told myself I did, for Mason. For as long as I can remember, I’ve muscled through my heartbreak and feelings for my son, for the good of our life, and so I went into autopilot. Our routine fell back into the half-conscious state it operated in before Vance came back and promised he’d make me fall in love with him again.
It’s far too late for that. I’ve been in love with him since I saw him that first day across the street in our childhood neighborhood. But now it’s even worse. Leave me once, shame on you. Leave me twice, shame on me.
I should have known it would end. What I didn’t expect, when I was sobbing in the bathroom while Mason ate his eggs with hot sauce, was to feel as much guilt as I did.
I’ve asked him to sacrifice. Every time, it’s been me telling him he needs to prove his love by giving up something he holds dear. When we were together, I wanted him to myself. I wanted to be more important than football.
When I chose not to tell him about Mason, I held it against him that he didn’t know his son. And when he wanted to try, I pushed him away. When the media attacked us, Vance was the one who took the brunt of the hit and decided to say nothing.
It’s taken me this long to realize that not everything ends in loneliness. We’re not my parents. Times can be tough, and love can still remain. It’s what’s in the bones, the foundation, of a relationship that determines if it has staying power.
Like a lightbulb flicking on in my head, I stand up off the bathroom floor. He’s sacrificed for us as much as he could. Now, it’s time to sacrifice for him.
So, I called my mother, packed bags for both Mason and I, dropped him off, and steered my old, beat-up car toward London.
I’ve never driven into the city before, and not only am I on the edge of an anxiety attack due to the fact that I’m about to beg for Vance’s forgiveness and admit my undying love, but blimey, I’ve almost gotten murdered by a taxi twice.
When I finally find a parking spot in a garage three streets over from where Vance is staying in temporary player housing, my hands are shaking. I’ve been thinking about what I’ll say the entire ride here, and now that I’m about to ring up to his flat, I can’t remember a thing I rehearsed.
All I know is that I’ve been so, so wrong. I’ve wanted so much to cling to my independence, to my need not to be tamed. The grit in my bones that wouldn’t allow me to heed control to anyone, especially a man. I didn’t want to end up in a marriage, and subsequent divorce, like my parents. And with a love as intense and massive as the one between Vance and I, a chemistry like that can go volatile quickly.
Blimey, I’ve been so selfish. I’ve been a twit. Look at what’s right in front of me. A man who has tried diligently to prove to me that he’s going to love me, and his son, for the rest of his life.
I’m going to promise him the same thing.
Pressing the button, I wait for him to pick up.
A few seconds later, his gruff, deep voice comes through the small intercom.
“Hello?”
I clear my throat. “Vance? It’s me. Can I come up?”
A beat passes. “Lara?”
“Yes,” I answer timidly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want to see me. I’ve been acting like a spoiled brat since he left for London, not even allowing him to address me on the phone calls he made to speak to Mason.
The buzzer for the door sounds, and I wrench it open, squeezing through before Vance can come down and throw me out.<
br />
I take the lift to the fifth floor, the one I know Vance is on due to the intercom at the front of the building. When I step out onto the floor and peer down the hall, there he is.
It’s been weeks since I’ve held him in my gaze, and instantly, butterflies flutter in my stomach. Vance’s appearance is always shocking; the sheer size of him dwarfs any space he occupies. He’s impossibly tall, stupendously brawny and to those who don’t know his soft-spoken soul, intimidating. His inky brown eyes search mine, and I want so terribly to just run into his arms and break down into a sappy mess.
But I owe this to him, to admit to my feelings the way he’s admitted to his.
“How did you …”
He seems stunned that I’m even standing in this hallway, and I walk to him until we’re almost toe to toe.
“I had a whole speech I thought up in the car.” My voice is nervous, and I smile a little because I’m jumping out of my skin. “But now that I’m standing here, I can’t remember anything I wanted to say.”
“You … I thought we were through. You told me to go,” he says.
A deep breath works its way through my lungs. This is it.
“I’m terrified, Vance. I’m scared you’ll walk out on me again. Only this time, it’s not just me. Mason … that would destroy him. I want you to accomplish everything you’ve worked for, but I’m so bloody scared this will all end the way it did last time. And I’m hopelessly in love with you. Maybe even more than I was when I was sixteen. Because now, I’ve seen you as a father. I’ve watched you tuck our son in, and I’ve made a home with you. I’m shaking in my boots thinking I’ll lose that. But none of the fear would be worth it if I just ran scared. So, here we are. I love you. I’m saying it, out loud. I love you. Wherever you are, that’s where I want to be. That’s where our son should be.”
Well, that was pretty ace. Not the speech I rehearsed, but muscle memory did its job brilliantly I’d say.
The Mighty Anchor: Rogue Academy, Book Three Page 19