Chapter 22

22

RAE

We have a chaotic morning that I capture with my stylus. Hayden’s mum rocks a pink boa on my phone screen. Feathers fly as we share breakfast around a crowded table. His sisters are a trio of preteen whirlwinds. I draw them spinning with excitement once they’ve finished eating. It’s cute how much of that excitement is aimed at Hayden—how they take it in turns to snuggle close—and I don’t blame them. I’d cuddle him too if he didn’t look so shellshocked—not because of my arrival. If anything, his feet locking around mine under the table suggest I’m an anchor.

Kirsty clues me into why. “Give your brother a chance to breathe, girls! He’s hardly had any sleep.” This is sympathetic. “I couldn’t sleep either. Which is how I heard you go out early, love.” I can guess the reason for his sleeplessness after she says, “Girls, your brother and I have phone calls to make, so go make yourselves busy by unpacking your suitcases.”

Hayden pays more attention. “Suitcases?” Kirsty gestures at the hallway, but all three of her girls speak before she can answer.

First is Emma, I think. She’s feisty. “Because we couldn’t have a birthday without you.”

Isla spins in a circle, her own boa losing fuchsia feathers. “We were going to come to Cornwall with your tent after the concert!”

Ava is the smallest. She shows no sign of moving from Hayden’s lap, her eyes as soft as his. Both sets look across the table at me as Ava asks, “Do you know how to pitch Hayden’s tent? It’s a really big one.”

It’s the wrong moment to laugh.

I can’t help it, and Kirsty joins in. Hayden makes the save by rumbling, “Rae was a quick learner.”

I learn fast again this morning. This time I get a crash course in genetic markers. In a family’s grief and their different coping strategies. Kirsty’s meant fighting for her family. “I made the academy cover the cost of rehab.” She guesses that Hayden’s coping strategy was providing. “Which was my responsibility, not yours,” she insists, but she says so with such familiar compassion that I’m a little bit amazed they aren’t blood relations. “I’ve always been able to take care of the girls, love.”

That seems to act as a reminder.

Hayden isn’t wearing his tool belt. He still finds a tape measure. He also sets Ava onto her feet. “How about I go measure your room for a new wardrobe? I could build it while I’m here.”

Ava skips away. “We already got one. James built it for us.” She holds out a hand to me. “Want to see?”

I don’t, but I see Kirsty nod, so I follow Ava to the foot of the staircase while her mum starts a conversation in the kitchen that she’s waited to have face-to-face with Hayden.

“James is a coach at the football camp, and so good with the kids. He wants to meet you, when you’re ready. To get to know the whole family.” This is quieter. “It isn’t anything serious. Not yet. But it could be. He isn’t a replacement, Hayden. He couldn’t ever be. It’s just?—”

“Time?” Hayden sighs, and if he says more, I don’t hear him.

Three little Swifties are waiting upstairs for me, and I want to get to know this whole family as well, so I climb the stairs to get that party started.

We escape later.

Hayden and I walk so closely that our shoulders brush. He’s quiet until we approach the practice grounds where shouts echo. A game is in progress behind walls too high for me to see over. “There’s nothing wrong with being competitive,” he says. “Nothing terrible about wanting to be the best that you can be.” He stops, and I do too. We stand on the other side of the street as kids hurry inside, the studs on their boots clattering. “There’s everything wrong with not noticing when one of your top prospects is drowning.”

I watch him stand up straighter instead of folding as he admits this. “Tramadol was legal in competition when they prescribed it. It isn’t now. Back then, testing positive wouldn’t have mattered.” He wets his lips, his gaze fixed on the academy doorway. “Only I needed so much that what they gave me stopped touching the sides.”

“Of your pain?”

He snorts. “Here’s the stupid thing. I was healed when I tested positive for whatever it was I took that day. I was fully recovered. Had been for months. Tell that to my body. Everything hurt, Rae. I couldn’t move without wanting to puke.”

He describes a skin-crawling craving I’ve witnessed firsthand, and I hate it for him.

“But I couldn’t risk not being able to play, so I asked an older player, and they hooked me up with someone. I took what they gave me, too fucking desperate to care what it was. Ket, I think. Not sure. Second worst day of my life.”

I can guess the first.

Our shoulders brush again. We’re close enough that I feel him flinch when someone blows a whistle. He doesn’t shy away from this. “I was about to suggest medication for you. Googled ADHD, and found a whole list of things to help with focus.”

“When?”

“Before I heard your talk. Don’t know what I was thinking.” He chuffs out a choked sound. “Suggest stimulants to you after your mum?—”

“Sent me out to score some for her? Mate, she didn’t take the prescription version. And I haven’t ruled it out. Almost started a course of treatment once, but I just couldn’t shake off this...” I don’t know how to phrase this without sounding irrational. “It isn’t that I thought I’d end up like her. I know stimulants don’t work that way on people like me. And there are several different options. I just…”

“Couldn’t help worrying you were wired the same way. Like I can’t help being shit scared that I’m wired the same way as Dad, even though it’s unlikely?”

I bet he’s picturing all the results and medical letters Kirsty dug out before we came on the walk together. “You feeling any better about that?”

He shrugs. His gaze is fixed on the sign above the academy doorway, and I’ll draw him in profile like this later. For now, I brush the back of his hand with mine, and I thank every star in the sky, even if they aren’t visible in daylight, that he doesn’t hide this tremble from me. I also get to hear him murmur, “No grass stains, no glory. No bruises, no story,” and I see him straighten again.

Here’s my protective giant.

My king of woods and water.

All that is missing is a crown as he faces me and asks, “Want to see where I did start to feel better?”

And me?

I’ve never said yes faster.

The timing couldn’t be better. We drop off four overexcited Novacs at a concert and drive away with the one and only tent Hayden kept. It doesn’t take too long before we leave the city behind and are faced with hills covered in trees. He follows a track into the heart of the kind of forest he once told me his dad liked the least.

“Managed for wood production. All a bit too tidy for him. And for me.”

He drives and drives, these straight lines of pine soldiers continuing for miles until he slows to a stop. “This part is more my speed. Can you open the gate?”

I do, and in the next few minutes, the landscape completely changes.

“All broadleaf species. All native.” He rolls down his window and sniffs. “Smells completely different. These woods are private.” They are also owned by someone with Cornish connections. “After what happened, Kirsty got in contact with the club at home. Must have told them everything.”

“How do you mean?”

“Because it’s the only way Justin could have heard what happened. No way would the academy want bad publicity. They said I’d failed a fitness test. Only the people Kirsty told knew the whole truth. And they closed ranks.”

Around him.

He stops the Land Rover and turns off the engine to tell me how. We sit in the last of the day’s fragmented light as he explains, even though it takes a while.

I’m not about to rush him now he’s relaxed in his seat and breathing easily for the first time in ages. I guess that’s the effect of the woods when he can say this without more of his earlier flinching.

“Kirsty asked for help. Told them I needed peace and privacy. A chance to regroup and retrain where no one knew me. The Polish network sprang into action, and that’s how I ended up here as Aleksander’s apprentice. I needed to be in the middle of nowhere.”

“Because?”

His gaze is as bare as some of these trees. “Because rehab is one thing. The outside world is another. I couldn’t trust myself to be any nearer to civilisation. Didn’t know myself anymore without football in my future. Missed Dad so fucking much. All over again, you know? That’s when I figured out I hadn’t really grieved him. Aleksander was older than him and as grumpy as fuck, but he reminded me of him every time he taught me what Dad would have if he’d been here.”

We leave the Land Rover behind, and Hayden walks me to a cabin fitting so well into this natural setting it might have grown here. He tries the door to find it padlocked. “This is where we lived through each winter. He lives with his son’s family now. Must be well into his seventies. Still sends me a Christmas card every year.”

We set up camp then—pitch the one tent he let himself keep—and then we drink smoky black tea on opposite sides of a campfire as he tells me, “Aleksander showed me how to manage the woods. And how to manage myself. Which I did, right up until…” He holds up a hand and then snorts. “Fucking typical that it’s steady now.” He admits this much more quietly. “He kept my brain too busy to think about what I’d done.” He amends that. “About what happened to all of us.”

“How?”

“He would only speak to me in Polish. Kept my hands busy too, but that only freed up brain space to see what happened at the academy for what it was—a kid trying too hard to fill his dad’s shoes.” He scrubs at the back of his neck. “I’m still working on that. The one thing he wouldn’t let me do was use his chainsaw. Made me use a crosscut saw with him instead. You know what I mean?”

I don’t, but I can picture it better when he explains the process of cutting down huge tree trunks into manageable logs and slices.

“It’s the kind of saw built for two. You can’t easily use it alone. It’s easier to push and pull together.” He snorts again, only more softly this time. “I can’t tell you how many times I faced him while we used that saw together.”

I draw the scene he describes on my phone, sketching a younger Hayden with his own protective giant, and Hayden comes to look. “The only thing missing is his mushroom basket.”

“Mushrooms?”

“Yeah. The woods are full of them this time of the year. Some of them will kill you stone dead. Others are fucking delicious. Aleksander knew the difference. I’m kinda surprised he isn’t here gathering them. Perfect time of year for it. He must have picked thousands while I was with him.”

“What did he do with them all?”

“Fried them for our breakfast. Did that so often I can almost smell them right now. He even sent me back to Cornwall with a bagful on the passenger seat of his old Land Rover.” His gaze slides to the vehicle behind me, and this smile is my favourite. “He taught me how to drive in it, then gave me the keys. Called it my apprentice wages.”

Even if we’re losing the light now, I can see enough to know he’s relaxed while remembering. I don’t know what the fuck it is about woodland that does it for him, but I’d capture it as well, if I could, for him to hold on to during shakier moments. Let him see for himself how far he’s come from the broken kid who arrived here, only first I need to kiss him.

His mouth is hot and sweet, smoky like the air is this close to the fire.

The breeze carries more smoke our way, and Hayden breaks off to stamp out the last embers. Then he extends a hand.

I take it, not caring if it shakes or if it’s steady. That’s all part of him, and I want the whole person with nothing hidden.

We kiss again inside a tent as bare as he has been. There is no stove here, no running water or home comforts traded for work by a man who wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to keep sending flowers or concert tickets or more. His family don’t need him as their provider. Or their shelter. They only wanted to be that for him when he needed, and he’s a different person for finally seeing it firsthand.

We only have camping mats instead of a honeymoon mattress, but I couldn’t care less when his mouth finds mine again, and our kiss deepens.

His tongue touches mine, and I know he stamped out the campfire. I just watched him do it. Something still smoulders. Inside me. It has for so long now I don’t know when it started or what struck the match that flares each time we do this. I just know I don’t want to stop, and him pulling me down onto a mat with him only makes me hotter. So does what he tells me while taking my clothes off.

“You came to find me.”

He rumbles that against my throat.

“I had to.” I tilt my head back, eyes closed, but I still see the last flickers of leaves and branches through this bell tent’s canvas. I can also still see that flicker of surprise from early this morning, and Hayden’s relief that we weren’t done yet with each other. “I thought I’d already drawn enough for an ending.”

He pulls back, shadowed and so good-looking even while creased with worry. “You didn’t?”

“No. Not for us.”

He responds as if he isn’t anywhere close to done yet either. His mouth is warm, his teeth sharp. They rasp lower down my body as he unfastens more buttons and pushes aside fabric. His beard is a soft-rough combination across my chest. My nipples tauten. So does my belly, while my fucking soul quakes with an aftershock of realisation—I could have walked away from him. Could have taken him at his short-term word. Relief I didn’t spills out. “Love you.”

He sucks my dick, and I love that too, along with his hand spreading on my stomach like he needs to hold me here to keep me.

Keep me?

I’m gonna tie him to this tent and never let him leave it.

Laughter bubbles up, fizzing, and I can’t stop it.

He looks up, and maybe it’s a strange time to be this joyful, but that’s what I am. I’m filled to the fucking brim because we’re getting to have this moment. This second chance. Together.

It’s my wildest ride yet.

I have no intention of stopping, but he breaks off, and I’m not so joyful about that, or about him sounding this raspy and real. “I still don’t?—”

Know what the future holds for him?

He comes out with something different.

“I still don’t know how I got a second shot. With you.” He kisses the head of my dick, still looking up at me. “This time, I won’t miss.” Then he sinks, taking me so deep I see heaven, and I bet there will be stars above this tent later. I have constellations all of my own now, and Hayden hung each star in them.

He also gets his clothes off in a hurry. We press together, and I don’t know which I want more—me in him or him in me.

Here’s what I want most.

I snuggle close and get back to kissing, and he doesn’t argue.

We kiss for fucking ever, and don’t ask me how it happens, but I see heaven again when he’s on his side and I get my dick between thighs built by years of soccer practice.

I reach around him, his cock a thick handful, and I love how it fills my fist. How the skin slides. How he’s iron-hard beneath that silk, and how we fit together like this.

I can’t stop saying it, but that’s okay. He groans and his legs tense, and what was already magic gets exponentially better. I can’t stop thrusting, can’t help tightening my hold on his dick, which gets slicker, and he comes with a shudder I follow.

We breathe together, each inhale and exhale a matched pair, until he turns to face me, and if I ever need a reference image for peace, now I have it.

This murmur is so quiet. He almost whispers, “I don’t want to find out what’s going on with me without you.”

“You won’t have to.”

That acceptance does something to him. He’s choked when he asks, “You really haven’t finished drawing?”

I shrug and settle back onto the same kind of camping mat and sleeping bag arrangement I slept on for months in France. “Just didn’t feel done yet to me. I’m not going back until I’m happy with the final image.”

His head rests against my chest. “What do you want to draw for it?”

“Not sure yet.” Hayden’s arm is a welcome weight across my belly. My eyelids are equally heavy. “It needs to be a real banger. Something to make readers turn back to the first page the moment they finish.” I say this around a yawn. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

His fingers spread to span my heart. “What’s your final deadline?”

I’m pretty sure I say there’s plenty of time left.

There are days and days to go until next Friday.

But when it comes to Hayden?

I’m actually aiming for forever.