Chapter 16

16

HAYDEN

It’s unreal to wake up for days with the same mental image, but that’s what happens all week long, even when I need to roll out of bed early to go and make hay. I still see Rae up on one elbow, exploring everywhere I hurt and not seeming to notice any weakness.

He looked at me like I was man of the match instead of someone who failed with the whole world watching, and I had no idea that him touching me where I was bruised would matter this much to me. Or that letting him see where I broke before time in a forest healed me would matter to him.

And who knew that my housemate’s happy humming was contagious?

Not me, but that’s what Rowan mentions over an early morning cuppa at the end of the week.

“I didn’t know you were a Disney fan.”

“Me?”

“‘Once Upon a Dream’? That’s from Sleeping Beauty , isn’t it?” He tilts his head to the bathroom. “If it wasn’t you singing it in the shower, someone else sounded pretty happy at the crack of dawn this morning.”

I grump right back at him, “And someone else can quit bitching because we both know who really makes all the noise around here.”

He only snorts, which stands to reason—I’ve never been able to snark around him. Could never make myself unleash the same banter with bite as the academy lads competing for a spot on the first team against me. I’m pretty sure Rowan knows that’s because I genuinely like him. I’m also pretty certain that we’re both up early today for the same reason.

The sooner the weekend is here, the sooner Rowan will get to stay with his boyfriend again, only this time he won’t be coming back. To the stables, I mean. He’ll move out for good, and apparently Luke doesn’t have any new hires starting anytime soon.

I’ll have the place to myself.

I better not look as goofy at that thought as Rowan does now. He smiles over the rim of his mug again, then smiles even wider when his boyfriend arrives. “Liam! You’re early.”

“Thought I’d grab your things now so you can come straight home after work.” He eyes a collection of guitar cases and sighs, although he’s a shit actor if he thinks that huff passes for unhappy. His grumble doesn’t fool me either. “I said we’d have room for your instruments, Row, not for the whole London Philharmonic.” That grumble doesn’t have bite, but it does sum up what I’ve spent the whole week doing when I haven’t been busy on farms or with kids in a clearing.

Liam gathers together what my housemate needs to be happy, and that’s what I’ve been working on, just like him. Not by stacking up musical instruments for Rae. He doesn’t need those. I’ve found different building blocks. For his story. At least, I think I have, and that’s been worth getting up before my alarm to decipher that old diary.

Wanting more happiness for Rae has also led to me phoning home more often. Today I even forget to feel any preemptive guilt when my phone buzzes.

Kirsty: Found them!

A photo follows that Rowan spies on his way past, the nosy git. “A photo album?”

“My grandad’s.” I can’t say that I remember ever looking through it. I text a quick request back.

Hayden: Can you send a photo of each page?

My stepmum is just as quick to answer. She sends back a single emoji that cries with laughter.

Kirsty: I love how you think I’ve got enough free time for that.

Kirsty: There are loads!!!

The next photo she sends me proves that. She hasn’t only found one album up in the loft. There’s a stack of them piled on the kitchen table between four breakfast bowls and something pink and fluffy. My phone rings as I squint at it, trying to figure out what the fuck all that pink fluff is. Kirsty launches into speaking at a mile a minute before I can ask her, which would be a Rae reminder, only she mentions people he hasn’t met.

Yet.

I haven’t been home in ages.

If things were different, I’d take him with me—thread him into more lives than mine the same way that he’s threaded himself into the life of this school and made it look so easy. That’s what he’s done since that camping trip he went on with the sixth-formers. From even before then, if I count back well over a month to Finn and Willow’s wedding.

I want to thread him into every single night too, and now that Rowan’s leaving, I could.

I leave my housemate to his packing and head out to collect the little ones for today’s nature session, still listening to Kirsty, until I catch a glimpse of someone ahead.

Mitch.

I duck into Rowan’s outdoor classroom and crouch behind the fence. “Kirsty?” I whisper. “Hold on a tick.”

I peer through a gap in the fence, about to tell her that I’ll call back, only Mitch booms, “Stop!”

He isn’t shouting at me.

He interrupts a kick-about between Teo and Noah, and what he booms next is the opposite of what my academy coaches used to yell at me.

“Don’t head the ball.”

Rae must have been close by. He’s as curious as ever. “Why, Mitch?”

“Because of what high-speed collisions can do to a brain. Heading a football has the same effect, especially on developing brains, only the damage doesn’t show up until later. Cognitive issues, memory loss, emotional dysregulation. It stacks up with every injury.”

Teo sounds disbelieving. “Really? Just from heading a ball?”

“Really,” Mitch booms. “The science has proven that without doubt now, which is why heading is being phased out of kids’ matches. Banned—to cut down on needless trauma.”

Banned?

I must have headed balls thousands of times in training. I even stood in an academy goal with my hands tied behind my back and made save after save with only my noggin. Then I’d done it again, just as soon as I stopped puking.

I haven’t thought about that for years. Now my head thuds at remembering those batterings, and Kirsty’s voice buzzes. “Hayden? You still there?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

Mitch isn’t. He must have left while I was locked into a different kind of booming than his voice. This remembered pounding relates to a life I’ve left behind, and, in hindsight, to coaches that Dad would have lost his shit with if he’d seen their training methods.

“Hayden?” Kirsty asks again, but now someone else is my reason for being distracted.

Rae stands in a spot that used to be mine on football pitches, and Teo runs up to take a shot directly at him.

“Fuck sake.”

That slips out as I stand up to see Teo slam the ball into the back of the net, and Rae cackles as though almost getting concussed is a fun way to start his morning.

“What did you say, love?”

Kirsty tells someone in the background to be quiet. Good luck with that if all three girls are in the kitchen with her. That room is tiny compared to the one where I’d shovel down carbs before matches and where I’d walk in on her and Dad hugging after failed IVF cycles.

I baked a cake for her in that kitchen when she told me I was going to be a big brother. Now she says, “Hush, I’m talking to Hayden,” to that cause for celebration. I have to hold my phone away from my ear at the screeching that comes in triplicate, but I must smile at the girls all begging for her to put the call on speaker; across the grass, Rae grins too.

At me .

That could prove fatal. Teo has a powerful right foot, so I bellow even louder than Mitch did. “Keep your eye on the ball!”

That screeching on my phone silences abruptly. So abruptly that I check the screen, assuming we’ve been cut off. Instead, Kirsty asks a careful question. “You’re playing again, love?”

“Footy? No, I…” At some point, I’ve left Rowan’s outdoor classroom and drifted closer to the pitch. Now my toes are only inches from the touchline, and all I can do is swallow.

She guesses again. “You’re coaching?” she asks, sounding…

Hopeful.

Fuck knows what that does to my face. I grit out, “No,” and Rae jogs over, his smile gone.

“Hey, you okay?”

Three voices shriek, “Who’s that?” Which isn’t how I intended to introduce the girls to someone I’m not entirely sure how to label, but I switch to a video call that ends with Rae cackling again at my sisters’ inquisition. I can’t be too mad about them fighting over who gets to hold the phone or about their intrusive questions, not when he answers and I get to find out more about him.

“Why do I sound like this?” His eyes laugh at me as he hams up his accent. “Because I’m a London boy, innit.” He shares which part of the city he grew up in, and they shout back the name of the neighbourhood of a northern city where Dad rented a house after I was scouted.

Ava is the smallest and fiercest of my sisters. “We’re right by the academy. Only boys get to play there, which is sexist.”

Emma is equally indignant. “It is sexist. That’s why Dad painted our front door pink, because girls rule.”

There’s no way she remembers that door being painted. I do, because it was me who slapped on that pink coat of paint when I was fifteen. I only copied what Dad showed me. He’d painted the front door of our old house to make Kirsty smile when she brought the girls home for the first time.

Smile?

She’d cried her eyes out, and so did the girls, which is how I got a crash course in rocking babies. So yeah, it was me who painted the door pink where they live now, but I did it for the exact same reason. Girls do rule, and fuck anyone who says different.

My sister Isla is easygoing, like always. “Girls can play footy if they want to. But mostly, I just like pink. What’s your favourite colour?”

I discover that Rae doesn’t have one, but if he absolutely had to pick, he’d choose sea green. “Like the water down here in Cornwall. Never seen anything like it.” I also discover that I just missed his birthday. The girls share their own birthdate, excited for it only being a week away, and even more excited about the present I sent them early.

“Concert tickets from Hayden!” all three of my Swifties shout.

Kirsty turns the phone her way again. That pink fluff I saw on the table now wraps her neck. “A feather boa,” she explains. “For the concert.”

Rae sucks his teeth and eyes me. “All four of you are going?” Maybe he has an idea about how much that cost me. His gaze slides to my Land Rover in the car park.

That vehicle, one tent, and my tools are all I have to my name, and he knows it.

His eyebrows rise when Kirsty says, “It’s good you’re doing so well for yourself, love. That you’ve got work coming out of your ears year-round, but do not send the girls any more money for merch. One, it’s all overpriced tat, and two, we don’t have room.” Her eyes narrow. “Unless you’ve found a gap in your schedule and are coming home to build that bigger wardrobe for them, I know you’re booked solid until after Christmas.”

Again, Rae knows different.

He stays silent as she lowers her voice.

“But you know what matters more to the girls than concert merchandise or money?”

I’m the one with the axe and bramble cutter. She slices through me with a single sentence.

“They’d give anything to see you sooner.”

More kids have joined Teo on the pitch. I’m vaguely aware of their continuing practice. Of Teo yelling coaching instructions. Of the thump of kicks, and the double-time thump of my heart as Kirsty tells Rae about a person he absolutely has to know is a work of fiction.

This success at business she describes as always spoiling his family. Always sending treats and cash and?—

“Look at these flowers.”

Sunflowers fill the phone screen. These miniature blooms are much smaller than the giants Dad grew every summer in our old garden. They didn’t grow half as well in the shady backyard of the rented house that was only ever meant to be temporary—a stepping stone between my training wages and a contract that was written in my stars.

Now her face is as sunny as if those stars hadn’t fallen to earth. She’s delighted when she points the phone at herself again, which is what I’d hoped after sending her flowers on what could have been a sad day. “For my wedding anniversary.” She gently chides me next. “One bunch would have been enough. You didn’t have to send one to each of us.”

I know that.

I know this too. “The girls have to share a lot already. A few flowers was nothing.”

She tells Rae more things about me that he has to know can’t be true after he’s seen where I stay between jobs in winter and we’ve had conversations about me needing to make hay because the sun won’t shine for much longer. Now he’s got to see why I’m so driven.

My four reasons are right there on my phone, fighting over who gets to wear a feather boa, and I can name what crosses his expressive features—he’s confused.

More than that, he’s…

Impressed.

He also gives off strong there’s more to this story vibes, and I’ve seen that spark of his curiosity before. It flared the moment I cut a path through a Cornish jungle for him. I saw it crackle again in a river after I showed him that pool. He was impressed then too, wasn’t he?

By me.

That curious spark flares again now in the coal of his eyes. Laughter joins it. “Tickets and flowers for four? Didn’t realise I was seeing an actual millionaire in the making.”

“You’re Hayden’s boyfriend?”

Kirsty doesn’t ask that. It’s the girls shrieking in high-pitched triplicate, but here’s why I always picture diamonds when I think of their mother—of what takes real pressure to form—Kirsty’s eyes sparkle as she diverts them. “Time to get to school!”

It is, thank fuck. The school bell rings here to give students a half-hour heads-up before lessons, and it’s a reprieve from another conversation I’m not ready to have.

Not about money.

About where this is headed when both Rae and I know he’s only a few drawings away from leaving.

I’m also not ready for Rae to bite his lip once the call is over like he’s wondering the same. Then his gaze locks on something else behind me, and I turn to see what he’s spotted.

Noah takes a turn in goal and faces Teo.

That would be fine against any of the other kids I’ve seen play here, but he’s up against a formidable right foot. I also know he’s desperate to be treated the same as all the other kids here—I know that—but I also know why he can’t be. Not yet.

Rae comes to the same conclusion. “Shit. He probably shouldn’t?—”

“Get a ball straight to the chest?”

No, he probably shouldn’t after surgery that only proves how quickly Rae has bonded with this group if Noah has shared it with him. Or maybe it was Luke who shared that information. A quick glance up at his study window shows him in the window, watching. Nothing about his body language screams that I need to take action.

He’d shout if Noah shouldn’t be doing anything this physical, wouldn’t he?

I want to believe that, but I can’t risk this game leaving Noah as broken as m?—

Rae shoots away before I can, darting across the grass towards the goalmouth while shouting, “Hey. It’s my turn in goal. You shoot, Noah.”

“No, it’s my turn.” I race Rae then, and who knew I’d start my Friday by making myself a liar on a football pitch, because I told Kirsty I wasn’t playing, didn’t I? That’s exactly what happens though, and yeah, I’m years out of practice, but I still stop every shot Noah fires until Teo switches places with him.

I told Kirsty I wasn’t coaching either, yet I call out instructions that only make my time in goal harder. Teo was good already. A few adjustments to his run-up later and he almost knocks my block off.

I have to work even harder to stop his second shot, which slams into my chest where a river boulder already bruised it, but thank fuck it’s my ribs that take that blast instead of Noah’s.

Teo listens to my winded feedback and his next shot is incredible, even if I have to strain old wounds to save it.

“Hey!” I shout after I stagger upright. “Take it easy on an old man, won’t you?”

Teo’s last shot shoots straight past me, a cannonball to the back of the net, a perfect top corner that I don’t see coming.

I can’t.

Not with my eyes suddenly blurring.

I blink stinging dampness away as Rae jogs over, and I don’t argue when he shuffles me out of goal and takes over. All I can do is focus on a second blurring. This time, the grass between my feet smudges. So does the white line of paint between my work boots. Both are still fuzzy when the bell rings again, the school day starting in five minutes, and the kids run to make it inside in time for their classes.

Rae’s hand lands on my shoulder. It rests right over a scar, his pats there oh-so gentle because he knows what my shirt hides from other people. “You okay?”

Okay?

I can’t see.

Can’t breathe.

Can’t do anything but let his voice wrap me.

It’s another boa, feathery and soft around my throat, which only slowly loosens. Finally, I can chuff out something close to laughter along with the reason for being this choked up before nine in the morning. “Dad used to say that to me.”

Rae asks, “Yeah?” and I’m usually the gruffer of the two of us. Not today. This comes out even lower from him. “When?”

“When he took a turn in goal for me.” Knowing that Rae pictures the same posts as I do means I can let out what I’d usually try to swallow down or forget. Today, remembering is easier, if still painful. “He’d say, ‘Take it easy on an old man.’ I’d forgotten, Rae. Hearing it again? Being the one to say it? Caught me off guard, that’s all.”

Rae’s hand slides to the small of my back. Then it tugs on my elbow, and I don’t know when I stuffed my hands into my pockets, but he pulls one free to plant on his chest. There’s no way to tell if it shakes. Not when both of his hands cover mine completely.

He presses, and I feel the rise of his inhale under my trapped palm.

His exhale is an audible gust—a different reminder—this time of the man who last breathed with me through a tough moment.

I flash a look up to the study window again, which is thankfully now empty.

I can’t look anything like a leader right now. Like someone exceptional who Luke would keep on here for longer. Not while I’m as weak and lost as a lamb. As beaten to the ball as a player who just got slide-tackled out of nowhere.

And by what?

By remembering a single phrase after a decade?

Rae sums that up for me. “It’s the little things that sneak up and kick you in the nuts, right, when someone was that important to you?” He casts a glance at the sixth-form students waiting for him to start another session of recording their journeys. He shares part of his with me. “I get kicked in the nuts plenty. That happens when people are important. Your dad is still that for you. Pretty sure everything you do here is your way of showing that to everybody. He’s why you’re the way you are.” This is quieter. “Why you’re so strong.”

He sounds so certain while I’m only sure of one thing.

Dad would have liked Rae.

I wish he could have met him. There’s no chance of that now, but Rae could meet Kirsty and the girls, only I like the way he sees me.

He thinks I’m strong.

Take him home?

That would mean showing him where I was my weakest.