1. August

Chapter 1

August

“ O i!” August Jacobs —better known to his friends and former fans as AJ— blew his whistle, stomping across the grassed football pitch to his team. The men came to a stop, kicking the black and white ball back up to midfield where he was headed. “Do you not understand the play, or do reckon you know better?”

“I was looking for an opening,” the captain, Bailey Peters, spat back at him hotly. “You can only run a play like that when the opportunity presents itself.”

They were playing a practice game, the starters split into two teams bolstered by their subs. Peters was the only player who ever snapped back at him. Had been since he’d first taken over coaching them.

Peters drove him insane.

Rolling his eyes, he turned condescending, “That’s the idea, Peters. You’ve gotta make it happen.” He pointed at the second striker who he was supposed to be working with in the play AJ was trying to coach them through. “Griffin’s keeping up with you, yeah?”

He stole the ball out from under the captain’s foot and booted it to the striker in question. Sam Griffin stopped it with his own boot without blinking.

AJ turned back to Peters, gesturing wildly, “Fake a fucking pass if you have to, but you want the other side thinking he’s got to be covered. Then you’ll have your opening. It’s not rocket science. I learned this shit when I was nine.”

Peters rolled his eyes at him, and he bit back a snarl.

AJ was a Premier League player. Or, rather, he had been until he’d aged out of the game. At thirty-seven when he’d retired, he’d lasted longer than others, but it still stung to think that he’d never be out on the pitch with a team again. Instead, he’d turned tail on his country and had taken a coaching job across the pond in Australia, coaching a brand-new A-League soccer (God, how he hated calling it that) team based on the Gold Coast in sunny (stupidly hot) Queensland.

By this stage, he’d been coaching the team for a couple of months. It was now nearly November. The official soccer season was only a few weeks in, and he was determined to get the most out of the team to secure their spot on the ladder. A strong debut season would be best for everyone involved, and would pull more sponsorships for the next year.

“Any more questions?” he barked at the team, keeping his eyes on his captain. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck and pooled uncomfortably beneath his shirt, but he wasn’t going to show any sign of weakness in front of the little prick.

Bailey Peters reminded him a lot of himself back in his prime: a natural player and arrogant on the pitch. He played aggressively and was responsible for the majority of the team’s yellow cards. He hadn’t gotten a red card yet, though, and therefore hadn’t had himself ejected from play. In comparison, August had received two reds during his first year of captaincy and had almost lost himself the captain position for unsportsmanlike behaviour besides.

But, as headstrong as he was, Peters was a good player. The pair of them clashed because Peters seemed to feel as though his instincts were better than learned plays. At Peters’ age, AJ had been quite similar. He fought to remind himself of that.

Brushing sweaty strands of light brown hair from his own eyes, his captain grit his teeth and shook his head.

“Right,” AJ stepped back and held his whistle to his lips, “go again!”

The shrill sound as he blew through the little silver apparatus had the team scrambling to kick off and attempt the play he was having them practice.

In his pocket, his phone rang, and he sighed before pulling the device out to glance at the screen. His dark, bushy eyebrows winged upwards at the country code for the unknown number. England.

Putting his phone to his ear, he answered gruffly, “Hello?”

There was a moment of silence before a seemingly unfamiliar female voice asked, “AJ?”

Even though it was his nickname, it was strange to hear it spoken out loud these days. Since starting his new job, most people called him by his given name —or shortened it hideously to fucking Augie , of all things— nowadays. He grunted in acknowledgement. “Speaking. Who’s this?”

A sigh of relief travelled down the line. Her accent was lilting and notably Irish when she finally responded. “You probably won’t remember me. We only dated —if you can even call it that— for a couple of weeks during your last year at Leeds.”

Swiping over his heated, wet forehead with the back of his hand, he cringed, casting his gaze back over the men running across the pitch. McTaggart made a perfect pass across to Smith, who feinted before making a break for the goal. He made a note to praise them for the seamless teamwork before he turned his attention back to the call.

Leeds had been the beginning of the end of his pro career, before he’d changed clubs and had been shifted to the bench, no longer a starter but a substitute.

Knowing that the end was nigh, his behaviour off the pitch had been less than stellar. Boozing, womanising, drowning his sorrows wherever and however he could. But there hadn’t been many Irish women in his past, and he furrowed his brow, fishing through locked-away memories for a name.

It started with a B, he was sure of it. “Bonnie?” he hazarded. “You’re a model, right?” It had been over six years since they’d dated. He was pretty proud of his recall, to be honest.

“Betty,” she corrected quietly, “and, yeah, I am. Or, well, I was.”

He could picture her now. With a name to match the accent, the rest of the picture emerged from the haze of memories in his mind. Tall, reed thin, blonde and incredibly pretty. And far too young for him at the time, having been barely twenty while he had ignored his looming mid-thirties and had clung to the remnants of his career.

He could acknowledge now how creepy that was, but at the time, he hadn’t been sober or man enough to care.

“How’d you get this number?” he asked, pinching the bridge of his nose. Scanning the sides of the pitch for even a hint of shade in the ridiculous Queensland summer heat, he followed the question with, “And why are you calling?”

Betty gave an awkward sounding chuckle. “Always straight to the point with you, isn’t it?” When he failed to respond, she heaved another sigh (he was going to lose count of them at this rate) and answered, “Your brother gave me your number.”

AJ nodded at Parker as the man booted the ball three-quarters of the way down the pitch, saving a goal. How Betty had managed to find Freddy —who he didn’t think he’d ever introduced her to— was yet another mystery. “And why the bloody hell would he do—”

“Because I begged him.”

Rolling his eyes heavenward, he bit back the urge to try and reach through the phone to strangle her for dragging the conversation out. “ Because…? ”

It sounded as though she’d reached the end of her tether, too. “Because you’ve got a kid, AJ,” she snapped, stunning him into silence. “And I need you to take custody of her.”

“ What?! ” he croaked, suddenly feeling very low on oxygen. There was a ringing in his ears and a pounding in his chest, which had become awfully tight all of a sudden. The continued heat wasn’t helping any, either.

A kid?!

Fuck, he couldn’t breathe.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“ Sorry? ” He echoed, incredulous as his temper flared with his impending panic attack, “Fucking sorry? We dated…fuck, no, we were fucking , what, six years ago? So, this kid, if it even is mine—”

“She is,” Betty’s tone had gone hard to match his. “And, yes, she’s five.”

“Five.” He repeated, still feeling woozy. “ Five , and you never tried to tell me—”

“You dumped my arse after two fucking weeks, Jacobs,” she reminded him, sounding caustic and hurt, “and you were spiralling as badly as your career. You weren’t exactly daddy material.”

“Fuck you. That wasn’t your call to make.”

“Actually, it was. My body, my choice.”

August wanted to keep arguing with her, but there were bigger issues to concern himself with. Such as: “She? You said ‘she’, yeah?” If it really was his kid —and he didn’t think Betty had any reason to put herself through this if she wasn’t certain— he had a daughter.

Fucking hell.

The world was spinning again. He needed to sit down. In the shade. No, in air-conditioning. With a beer. No, with a whiskey. Or three. Five even.

Five.

He was going to be sick.

“Yeah,” Betty’s tone softened as she added, “Ava. That’s her name.”

Ava. He rolled it around in his mind. “It’s pretty.”

“Yeah,” she agreed again. “And she is. Looks just like you, too.”

“Poor kid,” he joked. It landed flatly between them.

He was reeling from the revelation. Unhappy that he apparently had a five-year-old daughter who he’d never met, had never even known about, bile rose in the back of his throat.

What did the kid —Ava— think of all this? Had Betty even bothered to tell her about him?

The other part of Betty’s bomb finally went off in his head.

“Hang on, did you say you want me to take custody?”

There was another moment’s silence before she exhaled over the line. “Yes.”

“Permanently?”

“…Yes.”

With his head spinning again, AJ gave in and sat down heavily on the grass, dimly aware of his players stopping their practice game and looking towards him in concern. He waved them off, his attention still on the call.

His first thought was one of compassion for the little girl he’d yet to meet. How would she feel being shipped around the world, away from her mother, to a strange man she likely knew squat about? It made his heart ache. Having grown up in a loving home, if either of his parents had suddenly wanted nothing to do with him at that age, it would have broken him.

“Why would you do that to her?” The question tumbled from his lips before he could stop himself, and he ran his trembling spare hand through his hair. “You’re all she’s ever known and—”

“The thing is,” Betty interrupted, likely having anticipated an argument, even though he wasn’t refusing her, “I was young when she was born. Too young. And I’ve made sacrifices her whole life. My career, my body, my love life… everything . But I’ve met someone. And we’re getting married. And he wants to start fresh, so…”

AJ’s heart completely shattered for Ava as Betty trailed off, sounding indifferent. He understood that his former fling had made sacrifices, and he appreciated that motherhood wasn’t a walk in the park (his mum, sister, and sister-in-law had all made that very clear over the years) but he couldn’t imagine that it would be so easy to just let her daughter go and wipe her hands of the whole ordeal.

To choose a new man’s desires over her own flesh and blood…August felt his blood boiling again. Even if Ava wasn’t his, he would rather give her a loving home over whatever cold situation she was leaving behind.

Impulsively, with this last thought ringing in his ears, he asked, “When are you sending her?”