Also by Jessica Peterson
THE STUDY ABROAD SERIES
Spanish Lessons (Study Abroad, #1)
Lessons in Gravity (Study Abroad, #2)
Lessons in Letting Go (Study Abroad #3)
LESSONS IN LETTING GO
Study Abroad #3
Published by Peterson Paperbacks, LLC
Copyright 2016. Peterson Paperbacks, LLC
Cover by Elizabeth Bank of Selestiele Designs
ISBN: 978-0-9971613-4-2
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All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination. www.jessicapeterson.com
Chapter 1
Rhys
August
Madrid, Spain
It’s just after nine A.M., and the air is thick with arid heat. The Spanish sun, a white-hot pinprick in a huge, cloudless sky, bears down on my face and shoulders. I’m only on my first lap around the football pitch, and already I’m sweating bullets.
As if my recent performance—or lack thereof—hasn’t made these training sessions brutal enough, now I’ve got hundred-plus-degree heat to contend with. When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to escape the near constant drizzle and shivery damp of Wales. But now that I’ve lived in Spain for a couple years, I’d give my left nut for one of those rainy Welsh days.
A drop of sweat lands in my eye. I wince, wiping it away with my shoulder. I wince again at the low throb of pain in my left leg. It radiates down my hamstring and settles in my knee. Motherfucker. It’s been more than a year since the surgery. My knee should be feeling better. Much better.
It’s not. It hurts. But then again, so does everything else. My legs, my lungs. I feel sore. Tired. Worn out. Not an auspicious way to start the season that’s supposed to save my career. My play has been absolute shite for months now, pretty much from the moment my surgeon cleared me to play again. I’ve got to do better.
I pick up my pace, trying to push through the pain. I don’t care how much it hurts. I’m not going down. Everyone—fans, media, my teammates and managers, people back home—they keep waiting for me to follow in my infamous father’s footsteps. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they whisper behind my back.
I can’t end up like him. Not with so many people back home depending on me. He let them down, but I won’t.
I pump my legs harder, faster. I’m the first one on the pitch this morning—training doesn’t usually start until ten—in the hopes that some extra dedication will make up for my embarrassing performance as of late. I can’t help but think that maybe this will be the practice where everything changes. Where I play like the superstar I want to be, the superstar everyone thought I’d mature into when Madrid first traded for me. Maybe today is the turning point.
But judging from the stringent burn in my quads, it’s not looking good.
“Ah! Mon petit chou! My little cabbage, what is ’e doing all alone on ze pitch? So very early today!”
I start at the sound of a familiar voice. I close my eyes in an attempt not to roll them. The last person I want to see right now is Olivier Seydoux, our squad captain. Yes, he’s my closest mate on the team, but he’s also a pain in the ass. It doesn’t help he’s got the entire organization—managers, trainers, even the kit men—calling me “little cabbage”. I honestly have no idea what it means, but I do know I hate it.
“It’s not even nine thirty, and already you’re busting my bollocks,” I yell across the field, turning to face him. “Who pissed on your croissant this morning, you smelly Frenchman?”
He stands by the goal, a shit-eating grin on his face as he tugs at the zipper of his jumper. The sun glints off his bald head, making his coffee-colored skin burn copper in the strident morning light. I get why half the women in the world want to bang Olivier’s brains out. He’s tall and has magazine-cover good looks, and is one of the best strikers in the league.
That doesn’t mean I have to be nice to him, though. Not today.
“Ah, ze little cabbage, ’e is feeling very sensitive today, eh? Is it ze women troubles?” he says, jogging over to meet me.
“Listen, mate, I live off boiled chicken and broccoli and go to bed at nine every night. What woman in her right mind would sign up for that?”
Olivier falls easily into step beside me. “You are a footballer! You ’ave a little blond manbun! From what ze womens tell me, zey love you and your ’airs very much.”
“No time for girls,” I grunt, trying to keep up as Olivier quickens his pace. He’s a full head taller than me, and his stride is enormous. “I’ve got to focus on my footy.”
“Fo-kus. What a boring F word. I zink you should fo-kus on a better one. Like—”
“Frozen yogurt?” I almost jump when I see Fredrik Ohr’s giant blond bulk trotting behind us. His German accent, usually quite slight, thickens when he’s out of breath. “And is training starting early now? Where did everybody go?”
“No, our petit chou is fo-kusing on ’is footy, so ’e comes early to ze pitch,” Olivier replies. “But I think ’e should fo-kus on other zings, too.”
“Frozen yogurt really does it for me,” Fred says. “Sometimes it’s the only thing that gets me through that last hour of training—knowing I will have a giant cone of vanilla chocolate swirl on the way back to my flat. It’s like my good luck charm.”
I blink. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. You should try it.”
“I’ll do anything at this point to find a good luck charm. Do either of you know a shaman? Maybe a practitioner of voodoo?”
“Me, thinking of having ze naked fun with my lady is very motivating,” Olivier says. He spins around to face us, still keeping pace even though he’s running backwards.
“I wish I could find a lady to have naked fun with,” Fred says.
“You wish you could find a lady, period,” I say.
“Ha bloody ha,” he replies. “But it is true. You know I am fucking shit at talking to girls. They’re just so…pretty. And they smell so good. I sniff their perfume, and poof! My brains spill out of my ears and I forget how to speak.”
“Maybe you should give my pick-up lines a try,” I say, smiling.
“Thanks but no thanks, Cabbage,” Fred huffs. “I think silence works better.”
“Silence definitely works better,” Olivier says.
We round a corner of the pitch. My legs feel like lead weights. Keeping up with the lads didn’t used to feel so hard; I used to be one of the fastest blokes on the squad.
I am one of the fastest blokes on the squad. I just…I don’t know. For a while I thought it was my knee that held me back. I mean, it definitely hurts. But I’m starting to think that the pain is part of a bigger problem.
I’ve got to keep pushing. Maggie’s waiting on the education I promised her, and she and mum are still living in Splott, the inner-city ward in Cardiff where I grew up. Mum refuses to leave until her sisters and all my cousins can leave, too. No one else is going to get them out of there.
It’s up to me. It’s up to me to get the help Aunt Kate needs with her eleven-year daughter, Marie, who requires round-the-clock care. And then there’s my cousin W
ill, who is too much like my father for his own good and really needs to go to rehab, but no one can afford to send him. My cousin Rachel is expecting her first kid, my other cousin Lydia just dropped out of school to help support the family but can’t find work—
God, that’s a lot. But considering my aunts helped to raise me after my dad left—considering how dirt poor they all are—taking care of them is the least I can do. We are one big, sometimes-happy-most-times-dysfunctional family.
“You all right, Cabbage?” Olivier asks.
“Stop showing off.” I wave him and his backwards running away. “I can outrun your ass any day, backwards or forwards.”
Olivier smirks. “Not with zat bum knee of yours.”
“I’m going to jam this bum knee into your bollocks. Then we’ll see who’s faster.”
“I put my money on Cabbage. Meaning no offense, Olivier,” Fred says.
“None taken.” Olivier turns his attention back to me. The beautiful bastard, he hasn’t even broken a sweat yet. “I know you ’ave worries about ze future, Cabbage. You ’ave much talent. You will get your rhythm back, I know it. Maybe ze womens, zey will ’elp you find it? I ’ave been in love before, and I played my best footy zen. Sometimes, ze love, it can fo-kus you. Remind you of ze love you felt for football before all ze moneys and ze crazy parties.”
I shake my head. “Not worth the risk. You saw what happened with Alessandro—he fell head over heels for that Italian chick, what’s-her-name, and now he can’t pay a football club to take him.”
“She was really hot,” Fred says.
“Idiot, that Alessandro,” Olivier says. “In my mind, it is up to ze man to decide whether ’e will be distracted by love or inspired by it. If you are with ze right woman, you will make ze right choice.”
I glance over Olivier’s shoulder at the mountains in the distance. Spain may be hot as Hades, but it is a beautiful place, especially if you’re taking it in from the practice pitch of the most valuable sports franchise in the entire world. I used to dream about training here. When I was thirteen and skinny and living with my two aunts and five cousins in a tiny, run-down flat, I’d spend hours imagining what it would be like to play for Madrid’s famously dominant squad. I remember wanting very, very badly to be a part of something so special.
Wanting to right the wrongs my father made on this very pitch.
Now I’m here. Building a career in professional football is so much harder than I ever imagined it would be, but I still don’t want to lose my place—I don’t want to leave. I have too much to lose.
And I am a very sore loser, if the number of red cards I have is any indication.
“Heads up, lads, gaffer’s coming out,” I say, nodding at the lean figure in smart trousers and a scarf making its way towards us.
“Oh, Christ,” Fred says. “I wonder what William Wallace is going to bludgeon us with today.”
I bite back a grin. Our manager’s elegant outward appearance hides a very angry, very feisty Scotsman with a mouth that’ll put hair on your grandmum’s chest.
“Bring it in, ye tits, it’s time to get goin’!” he shouts.
Olivier turns back around and starts to sprint. I take off two steps behind him, pumping my legs harder, harder, my lungs burning as I pass him just as we reach coach at the top of the pitch.
Olivier arches a brow as we hustle to a stop. “See?” he pants. “We just talk about ze womens, and already you run faster.”
“Women?” coach says. “What fecking women are you two bawbags gettin’ on about?”
“Bawbags?” Fred asks.
“Scrotums,” Olivier replies.
“Oh,” Fred says.
“It’s nothing,” I say, turning to coach. “We weren’t talking about anything. What’s on the schedule today?”
***
A few hours later
Fred comes flying down the touchline, his bright orange singlet flapping against his beefy build as he dodges Matteo. He almost decks Ignacio before passing the ball to me, the shouts—most in Spanish, a few in incomprehensible Scots—of the lads and our coaches filling the air as I move toward the goal. My pulse throbs in time to the frantic refrain inside my head: don’t mess this up don’t mess this up please God don’t mess this up. We’ve got a big match in two days against our rival team in Madrid, and I’d like to prove to coach that I’m worthy of quality playing time.
I see Olivier waiting from the corner of my eye. He darts across the pitch, trying to elbow aside two very big, very insistent defenders. Sweat drips into my eyes and makes them sting. The sun is so hot I feel like I’m being roasted inside an oven. I’m exhausted; I keep waiting for the coaches to blow their whistles and end this interminable practice session, but so far, no dice.
I remember, vaguely, how much I used to love playing footy. Just playing for playing’s sake, running around the muddy pitch in Splott with my mates and a half-deflated football. I lived and breathed the game because I loved it, almost as much as I loved my mum and the little spice cakes she’d make. Football was an escape. When I was on that pitch, it didn’t matter that I was poor, that everyone thought I’d end up in the gutter, just like dad. All that mattered was how I played—and because I played well, I felt important. Wanted. Strong. Some nights I couldn’t go to sleep because I was so excited about playing football the next morning.
Now it’s all I can do to drag myself out of bed when I have to play.
Panic electrifies my limbs as I dribble the ball closer to the goal. It’s just so hard to focus; so hard to clear my mind and let my instincts take over. I’m trying, I really am, but I can’t do it.
I bloody hate it.
Frustration blurs my vision before I’m even in the box. The voices of my mates and the managers press in on me, my feet stumbling beneath my unsteady stride. I try to forget the slight twinge in my knee and keep going.
It’s getting harder and harder to just keep going.
In the split-second that Olivier manages to untangle himself from the defenders, I launch the ball across the pitch, aiming it a little in front of him. I watch, heart in my throat, as Olivier leaps into the air, scrunching his eyes shut as he anticipates nailing a solid header.
The ball soars more than two meters behind and four meters above his head and hits the sideboards with an audible thwack. My heart drops; my face burns.
Shit.
The pass wasn’t even close. It was awful. Not worthy of an amateur, much less Madrid’s Great Welsh Hope. (That’s what the press called me when I first came to Madrid. The Great Welsh Nope has appeared in a headline or two over the past few months. I wish I could say it didn’t rankle.)
Coach holds his hands behind his head and blows out his cheeks. The lads look away. Fred claps me on the back, telling me to keep my head up. I feel like burying it in the grass.
I bungle one drill after the next. My passes are laughably inaccurate. My attempted goals soar above or past or way outside the net, so much so that our goalie, Alexsandr, yawns not once but twice as I work inside the box. My footwork is messy and my speed is nonexistent.
The whistles sound. Training ends. I hit a new low—this is the lowest I think I’ve ever felt on the pitch. I make a beeline for the showers and don’t say a word to anyone in the locker room. I can’t wait to hole up in my penthouse suite—my flat is currently being renovated—and lick my wounds in private.
I’m doing everything I’m supposed to. I’ve rehabbed my knee, I put hundreds of hours of in at training, I take care of my body—all in the hope that my hard work will pay off, and my luck will change.
How bloody long do I have to wait for my luck to change?
It won’t be long before I’m dropped from the first team, or worse. William Wallace’s patience with me is wearing thin; there are countless other lads on the reserve team rearing to take my place and prove their talent. My agent has gently warned me that if I don’t show improvement in the next few matches, I may not have much of a future
in football at all.
So much rides on me turning this thing around. And time is running out.
Chapter 2
Laura
A Few Days Later
Madrid, Spain
Maybe it’s the man bun.
Maybe it’s the tattoos that cover his arms from neck to wrist and curl beyond the collar of his jersey.
Maybe it’s his baby blue eyes. Or his ferocious, angry-Welshman style of play. Or the way his lips twitch into a confidently wicked smirk—oh, that smirk, it slays every vagina in a thousand mile radius—after the ref makes a call that shouldn’t go his way but does.
I don’t know what it is about Rhys Maddox, studly soccer superstar, that’s got me reaching inside my yoga pants while I watch the highlights from this afternoon’s game. All I know is that he does it for me in a big, orgasmic, toe-curling way. Yeah, he’s having a rough season, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s smoking hot. I bet his skin audibly sizzles upon contact.
My hand slides lower, my middle finger dipping between the slippery lips of my sex. Jesus, I’ve been watching these highlights for, what, three minutes, and already I’m this hot and bothered? Rhys has to be my most potent celeb crush I’ve ever had. I love a good celebrity crush. It’s pure, delicious fantasy.
Orgasms are the name of my game this semester, and fantasy Rhys is all too happy to help me out there. The hookup culture back at Meryton University bred this kind of sick double standard when it came to sex. I always got the guys I was with off, but they never, ever returned the favor. And I finally realized that I’d been so obsessed with what turned on my boyfriends, I had no idea what actually turned me on. So now I’m doing a little—okay, a lot—of masturbating to figure out what I do and don’t like when it comes to fantasy, touch, and…well, pleasure.
Lessons in Letting Go (Study Abroad Book 3) Page 1