Saving Hearts

by Rebecca Crowley

  “Maybe he’s just not very smart.”

  “He isn’t,” Pavel agreed. “The question is whether he’s not smart and betting on the league.”

  Brendan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, pausing to absorb this information. It was exactly the sort of lead Erin wanted—and exactly what he couldn’t deliver. He’d never been Brian’s biggest fan, but he couldn’t stab him in the back.

  Could he?

  “It would be a big deal if you’re right,” he said carefully. “I never bet on my own league and look at the trouble I got into.”

  “I know, which is why I would never go to Roland with this. I’m only telling you so you can protect yourself. I don’t think he’s dumb enough to try to involve you—but then again, maybe he is.”

  “I’ll steer clear. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Pavel looked like he wanted to say something else, but a knock on the door silenced him.

  Iveta leaned into the room, smiling apologetically. “Sorry to interrupt. Are you both sober?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Brendan returned her smile, reading the signal in her expression that it was time for him to go.

  He stood up from his chair. “That’s enough soccer gossip for one afternoon. I’m sure you have something more important to do, like exaggerating your achievements in your memoir.”

  Pavel’s smile weakened and Brendan instantly regretted his poor attempt at a joke. Maybe his teammate had trouble writing after his injury. Maybe the mention of a career-bookending milestone like a memoir was too sharp a reminder of how close he’d been to never playing again.

  Hell, even at this point the notion that he’d play again was only theoretical. Anything could happen in the course of his recovery. He might very well have finished his last match on a stretcher.

  Brendan cleared his throat awkwardly, not bothering to wave Pavel back down as his teammate stood to shake his hand.

  “It’s good to see you.” Pavel’s grip was firm, even if his expression had lost some of its humor.

  “I hope I’ll be allowed to come back.”

  “The sooner, the better.” Pavel slapped Brendan’s shoulder as he turned toward the door. “Good luck this weekend.”

  “Thanks. I need it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  For a few seconds, they stood in silence, sharing a knowing glance. One keeper scraping to recover his reputation in what little time he had left, the other’s meteoric rise momentarily halted by what could’ve been a catastrophic injury. Two men used to being the anchor on the pitch, their good performances would be forgotten, their mistakes left to haunt them in the fans’ memories for years. Goalkeeping was a thankless, difficult, essential art, and in that moment their unspoken understanding made them closer than any brothers.

  “I’ll call you,” Brendan promised, forcing himself to take a step back.

  Pavel just nodded, raising a palm in farewell.

  * * * *

  “The Tucson players are apologetic, and I think the message in the example is the need for awareness of the ethics framework. They both insisted they didn’t realize a fantasy team violated the code, and the manager said the same thing totally independently.”

  Erin took a breath before continuing, preparing for the trickiest part of this conversation with Randall. She’d practiced to get the exact tone of this suggestion right—not too flippant, not too determined, nothing to raise suspicion. Brendan’s reputation weighed heavily on her shoulders as she’d taken the long walk to his office for this meeting. For his sake, even more than her own, she couldn’t screw this up.

  “No other incidents have surfaced at this point, and I know the design team wants to start on the year-end report. I think we should structure it half and half, using the Tucson players as a cautionary story and Brendan Young as a redemptive one. Throughout his career Brendan has done a lot of advocacy for athletes with intellectual disabilities, and I thought we could highlight—”

  “Do you watch many Championship League games, Erin?” Randall tilted his head inquiringly.

  “Of course. As many as I can.”

  “Who do you think will be in the league final?”

  She considered for a second. “Atlanta, Miami, maybe Charlotte.”

  “Agreed. So those are the clubs we need to feature in the year-end report.”

  Her effort to quickly think up a justification for disagreement must’ve looked worried, because he added, “Don’t worry, you’ve already got something from one of them. If there’s definitely no activity in either of the others, we’ll go with what we have on Brendan Young.”

  He smiled, suggesting he genuinely thought this statement would reassure her. It did exactly the opposite.

  She came to this meeting armed and ready to divert attention away from Brendan. Now he was back on center stage.

  “Can I ask why we’d want to publicize negative stories on the two most successful teams? In my opinion,” she added before he could answer, “it makes us look like we haven’t done our job if gambling is happening at the most elite levels in an already elite league. Some of the smaller, newer clubs can be excused for having green players who don’t know the rules, but if there’s gambling amongst the big stars, the responsibility falls to us.”

  Erin held her breath as he gazed out the window thoughtfully.

  “That’s a good point,” he replied finally.

  She exhaled.

  “I was so focused on the scale of the bust itself—the magnitude of the crime we successfully uncovered—that I didn’t think about how it could be viewed in reverse. That if it was so big we should’ve seen it earlier. Nonetheless I still think we need something more significant than those guys at Tucson.”

  Erin bit her lower lip, pretending to think. In fact she was quietly panicking, already knowing the answer and praying Randall didn’t arrive at it as well.

  He snapped his fingers. “Brendan Young’s gambling was uncovered only a month into the season. Technically we didn’t figure it out ourselves, but the suggestion is we didn’t have time. Plus he’s leaving Skyline so it doesn’t tarnish the club’s achievements at all.”

  Well, shit. He nailed it.

  “I totally agree,” she lied, recrossing her legs in the uncomfortable chair in his office. “And I think you’ll like what I’ve discussed with Brendan. As I mentioned earlier, he’s given a lot of his time to organizations who work with—”

  He wrinkled his nose. “I understand that he’s back on the pitch, but it’s not because of anything he did, and making out like he’s some kind of hero risen from the ashes does a disservice to Skyline’s main goalkeeper. If anyone should be made into a proud example, it’s that guy.”

  “Interesting,” she said slowly, buying time, wracking her brain for a new angle to offer him. “What if we switch focus completely? Instead of revisiting the gambling scandal at all, maybe we should profile Pavel Kovar and restate the league’s commitment to fair play and punishment for dangerous tackles. It’s more compliance than ethics, but still important.”

  “Maybe.” Randall swiveled back and forth in his chair, drumming his fingers on his desktop as he gazed into the distance. Erin kept her smile steady and natural, every atom focused on selling him on this new direction.

  Shifting the focus away from Brendan would solve so many problems. She wouldn’t have to push him for insider information and burn with guilt every time. She wouldn’t worry that the spotlight on him became bright enough to expose what the two of them were doing. She wouldn’t feel responsible for his legacy, for protecting and preserving everything he’d worked so hard to achieve.

  She would sleep with him, as many times as he let her, and she would be so happy, and then he would leave and she would be just as happy without him. She was sure of it.

  Randall returned his gaze to her, complet
ely unaware that what he was about to say would make her life ten thousand times better or ten thousand times more stressful.

  Make it better, she urged on the off-chance she possessed a psychic influencing power she wasn’t aware of. Do what I say. Forget Brendan so I can have sex with him.

  “Let’s stick with the Brendan Young idea,” he concluded, jamming a painfully sharp pin into the overfull balloon of her optimism. “It’s a big, splashy, juicy story, and might dig us out of some of the negative-press hole we fell into when it came out. Unless you find something better at Miami or Charlotte—or Atlanta, I suppose—I think this is our best bet.”

  Her smile grew brittle. “Absolutely.”

  “And don’t lean too heavily on this heroism angle. I’m glad he did whatever he did for charity, but let’s be honest, all of the players have a cause they give time to on the side. He behaved badly and he’s been rehabilitated—that’s it.”

  “Got it. We’ll minimize the mention of the disability advocacy.”

  “Perfect.” Randall pressed his hands together, signaling the end of their meeting. “Anything else you want to talk about?”

  She shook her head. “Just to thank you again for authorizing this weekend’s travel. I know the women’s team in—”

  “Fantastic, then I’ll see you on Monday. We’ll discuss your next travel request then.”

  “Thanks,” she said sweetly, then rose from her chair and walked out of his office. She closed the door gently, forced neutrality into her expression and took a deliberately unhurried pace back to her office, even stopping to chat to one of the executive assistants. Eventually she took her place behind her own desk.

  She picked up her cell phone and scrolled through her messages unseeingly.

  Anger. Frustration. Anxiety. Stress. She’d left the meeting with the exact opposite of the outcome she wanted—she should feel all of the above at this point. Where were they?

  Nowhere. She was numb. Randall could walk through the door and fire her and she wouldn’t feel a thing.

  She put down her phone and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and counting to ten.

  Her fingertips itched.

  She wished she’d paid more attention in those Gamblers Anonymous meetings. The couple of times she went in New York she’d turned up in moments of delirious desperation, and at the two meetings she attended in Atlanta she’d been focused on Brendan. What was the technique the other attendees used to stave off the temptation to gamble? Rationalization. Had someone said that or was she making it up?

  Either way, worth a try. She pushed the phone a little further away, slid a Post-It pad into its place and jotted down what she’d won in a couple of weeks with Brendan versus what she’d lost playing the app on her phone last month. The difference was a joke—the first number was five times the second.

  She shoved the Post-It aside and turned toward her work computer, clicking to open a message from Prinisha.

  The email blurred in her vision. She still wasn’t stressed, wasn’t worried about the year-end report. She couldn’t think about anything except pressing the spin button on the app.

  She picked up her phone, but with the sole intention of texting Brendan. She navigated to their intermittent text conversation, read their last exchange—a coded reference to the bets she would place for them while he was traveling with Skyline that weekend.

  She tapped to enlarge the photo that appeared with every one of his messages. She looked at it a lot, mostly because it amused her that he’d chosen it for his profile picture. Probably taken by Skyline’s team photographer, in the image Brendan stood with his arms crossed, wearing his training kit and a big, broad, mid-laugh grin.

  There was something endearing about the idea of Brendan spotting this photo, downloading it from wherever and uploading it to his contact card. He’d clearly chosen it for the happy-go-lucky, cheerful version of himself it portrayed.

  Her heart squeezed as she imagined him tapping the photo to upload it, opting into a different man than the one she knew. Content. Unworried. Free from the burdens he carried as a professional athlete, free from the attention and expectations and obligations. Free to be who he wanted. Free to find the woman who would love whoever he became.

  She swallowed an unhelpful lump in her throat and swiped to close their conversation. She wouldn’t text Brendan. She had nothing to say to him.

  She ignored the guilt already blossoming in her stomach as she opened the slot-machine app. As if on autopilot her finger moved to top up her credit, and before she’d fully registered what she was doing she’d spun and lost ten dollars.

  Fuck it, she decided miserably, increasing her wager. Damage is done. Might as well keep going.

  She spun and lost and spun and lost and topped up her credit and spun and lost and spun and won three dollars and spun and lost and repeated the process over and over and over until she was so deep in her head she barely saw the results of each spin. Her thumb tapped to spin again and again while her thoughts swam with flashes of her meeting with Randall.

  She hadn’t done enough. She was back where she started, except now she cared about Brendan. Now she couldn’t let this happen to him. Now she had to save him.

  But she had to save her job, too. And her reputation. And her future.

  She spun again and again, tapping the button as soon as it lit up to show it was ready. She had no idea how much she’d lost—probably everything she’d won with Brendan—and she didn’t care. She was beginning to see through the fog, and the welcome sting of stress pricked her skin. As she spun numbness gradually gave way to concern, then worry, then full-on terror.

  She inhaled sharply, relishing the flood of adrenaline accompanying the crushing weight of panic that thudded onto her shoulders and banished the last wisps of her detachment. Her heart rate peaked and then subsided, and she shivered as fear’s cold fingertips danced up and down her spine.

  Although stress made her head throb and her lungs tighten, she felt better. She felt, an improvement over emotional paralysis. She exhaled, stronger and steadier and sharper, ready to channel her stress into productivity.

  She glanced down at the almost-forgotten phone in her hand.

  Two hundred dollars gone in less than five minutes.

  She put the phone aside, disgusted, noting the sweaty thumbprint marring the screen. She had a lot to figure out. Time to get to work.

  Chapter 13

  “Thanks, man.” The taxi driver accepted Brendan’s generous tip. “Are you gonna need a ride back later?”

  “I’m not sure,” Brendan said honestly. He’d told himself he would take a taxi to Erin’s apartment this Sunday evening so his conspicuous yellow Aston Martin wasn’t parked for her neighbors to see. As for the duration and intent of his stay, well…

  “Here’s my number in case you need a lift.” The driver passed a card around the headrest of his seat.

  Brendan tucked his notebook under his arm and climbed out of the shabby sedan, then looked up at the high-rise building in the heart of downtown Atlanta where Erin lived.

  Ostensibly he was here to work on their bets for the midweek fixtures. In reality, he’d decided to accept her offer. Friends with benefits. No-strings sex. Whatever catchphrase she wanted to use to sum up two people colluding in an illicit gambling scheme who also slept together.

  He cringed as he approached the front door. Not exactly romantic. But where had years of half-hearted attempts at romance gotten him? Here, apparently—ready to accept whatever crumbs Erin offered him, resigned to never getting the whole cake.

  Not that he could blame anyone but himself. While his teammates spent their downtime in clubs or bars or otherwise sexually leveraging their fame and fortune, he buried his head in stats and betting coupons. When he finally looked up he was over thirty, single, and on the brink of retirement.

  H
e squared his shoulders, returning the concierge’s greeting. He was walking into a potential sex situation with the hottest woman he’d ever met like he was on his way to the gallows. So what if she didn’t want a relationship? Even if he wanted to date her—which, okay, he did—it wouldn’t go anywhere. His time in Atlanta got shorter every day. Pavel told him not to hesitate when he found a good woman, and Erin couldn’t have been clearer about her interest and expectations. There were probably hundreds of men who’d give their right arms to be in his shoes. Time to quit moping and enjoy himself for once.

  “I’m going to number eighteen-zero-six. It’s Brendan.”

  The concierge nodded, picked up the phone and announced his visit. Then he hung up and nodded toward the elevators. “Eighteenth floor. Miss Bailey is expecting you.”

  He bet she was. He rode up through the sleek building, noting the signs for the in-house gym, pool deck and game room beside buttons in the elevator. This place wasn’t his style at all—too big, too impersonal. And it must be costing her a fortune.

  Erin was waiting for him in the hallway when he stepped out of the elevator, leaning out of her open door wearing heels and a tight black dress. Her hair fell in waves over her shoulders and she smiled, beckoning.

  “You’re early.”

  “Meeting was short. Low attendance this week, for some reason.”

  “How’s Lenny and the crew?” She motioned him inside.

  “Fine.” He stopped as she shut the door behind them, taking in the spectacular view of downtown from the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along one wall. The apartment itself was well decorated but small, with an open-plan living area. A long, black sofa sat at one end of the room in front of a TV on a black console. The other end housed the kitchen, where a marble-topped island vaguely demarcated the prep space from a dining area. A square table with two chairs had been laid with plates and silverware and a vase of fresh flowers. The lights were low and a bottle of red wine was open on the counter, next to a lit candle.

  He turned to her quizzically. “Are you expecting someone?”