Hat Trick, page 18
But during the same year he’d played some of the best soccer of his life and in the league. His agent spent a lot of time apoplectic over his unwillingness to consider a move.
“Detroit fits me,” he’d said, eyeballing her cleavage across the desk. “We’re both fucked up beyond recognition. I don’t wanna go to some sleek, put-together city. No thanks, now how about a nice snog?”
She’d flipped him off, handed him the three amazingly generous offers from other clubs that he’d ripped in half and tossed into her trash before yanking her up out of her chair and kissing her so hard he saw stars.
Now, Declan looked up at the ceiling of the locker room, hearing the pounding and yelling and screaming above him, smiling at the memory of his agent’s stellar blow-job skills.
He stood, repeating his simple mantra: This is the only thing you’re good at. Don’t fuck it up.
He followed the team out through the tunnel and into the maw of the giant stadium. The desert heat closed in around him. Sweat beaded his brow. He grinned and looked around, sucking in huge breaths of the noise, the stench, the game.
At the half it was a nil–nil draw. Declan had been shut down by a Los Angeles team that had done their homework on him for certain. He’d sustained more cheap fouls in forty-five minutes than he had nearly the entire season and he was livid by the lack of decent officiating.
“You all right?” Metin yanked his chin up to meet his eyes right before the start of the second half.
“Fuck off. I have a job to do.” He stood, shoved his coach aside, and trotted out onto the field, taking his place across from a set of mean-spirited and determined defenders. He flipped them off when the ref wasn’t looking, then grinned, took the ball from Gabe’s long pass at mid and raced down the sidelines, the crowd’s roar filling his head and spurring him on.
He sent the ball sailing over the heads of the back line to the far corner, watched as Kago settled it, then sent it right over to Gabe, who’d moved closer to Declan’s side of the field. In a practiced move that had won them more games than he could remember, Dec traded places with Gabe, heading for the middle of the field, a few meters off dead center. When the defenders shifted to the center, he grinned, flipped them off again, and barreled straight at them, jaw set, unwilling to be stopped, not caring if he hurt them.
But just as he was about to run into them both, he pulled up, batted the ball to the left to Gabe, who took it, making the defense shift once more to cover him, typically a non-scoring, ball distributor-type midfielder. That left Declan free to trot along behind them and take Gabe’s best shot—a chip over the heads of the approaching defensive line—turn, and tuck the ball cleanly into the back of the net.
He slid to the ground with a roar of satisfaction and took the tackles of his teammates in stride. Then, when it came time to do it again, he ran to his place, ready to put these arseholes away.
“BJs! BJs! BJs!” the crowd hollered.
“Declan! Declan! Declan!”
He shut it all out and stared at the defending players, who all glared at him now with renewed purpose. Within seconds of the next play, he was flat on his back, staring up at the hot Nevada sky, trying to catch his breath. When he made it up, wincing, the official stuck a yellow card in his face. He blinked, confused.
“No! That asshole nearly knocked a hole in my fucking chest. Are you blind?”
“Don’t make this worse, Dec. I’ve let you get away with enough. Chill out or you’re gonna sit.”
“Sit?” He threw his hands up, hearing the crowd agree with him. “You are that much of a fuckwit?”
“I mean it,” the official said, making a note on his pad of paper.
Some of his teammates had gathered and were milling around, trying to get between him and the stupid fuck-faced idiot who’d just yellow carded him for no reason. As he spluttered and cursed and let them lead him away from the confrontation, he watched as if from very far away as the guy reached into his pocket, grabbed the red card and held it up, pointing straight to him.
Sounds faded. The monster emerged with a roar and he broke away from the four very strong men holding onto him. The sound of nose cartilage crunching under his fist was the most satisfying thing he’d experienced in a long time.
Chapter Eighteen
Emily
After the official had been carted off on a stretcher and Declan was sent to the locker room, she’d spent exactly five seconds deciding what to do. As she ran down the hall trying to remember where the team locker rooms were, Emily let herself relive that night—that awful, amazing, incredible, terrible night at his house. He’d been so intense and perfect, so talented and eager and angry.
She’d never forgotten it, including the moment he’d zoned out and pressed his hand to her neck, cutting off her air for a second before she’d brought him back from that edge. His ensuing year, diving deep into asshole-dom, into pretending to be this giant team slut, screwing every wife and girlfriend and wannabe he could get his hands on right after that, infuriated her. She didn’t get it, but it hurt every time she ran across a tweet or post or other rumor source talking about how amazing he was as a player and what a shit of a human being he’d become.
She wanted to talk to him, the way they used to during his trial. He was not that man, and she damn well knew it. But as the coaches and Sophie had all said to her, he seemed to be pointed down a destructive path now. As much as Emily tried, she couldn’t come up with a way to justify it on his behalf. So she let him go, and let herself relive that moment of connection with him when he’d kissed her and held onto her like a life preserver and she’d thought for a split second that they could be together.
Silly, romantic notion that had been. He’d barely looked at her, much less communicated with her, since then despite her early attempts to reach out to him, figuring she should have known. She’d convinced him to take her, to fuck her, because she’d wanted it, not because it would in any way help the man. It’d been the most godawful selfish thing and when she’d woken, wrapped up in his arms, she’d bolted, horrified at herself—acting like her own cheating husband and pretending that “just once” wouldn’t matter.
But today she had news for him. And she had been determined to get through this game, win most likely, and then break it to him afterward. She’d convinced Desmond and Sophie to let her be the one to do it, as his friend.
She found the nondescript room, thanks to the sound of Declan yelling and pounding locker doors. Setting her shoulders, determined to be that—a friend to this man, who seemed to be spiraling out of everyone’s control—she opened the door, ducking when a metal chair clattered to the wall beside her.
“Mother fucking son of a bitch, what the fuck are you doing in here? Can’t you take a hint? Jesus!” He pounded his fist into a locker door, denting it.
She stood a moment, watching the sweat drip down his skin. He’d ripped off his jersey, she noted. It lay in two strips of black and red fabric at his feet. Her phone bleeped with a message from Sophie:
You with him? Can he take this?
She frowned and studied the man in question. He had his hands propped on the locker doors now, his head drooping low. He was breathing heavy and his shoulders shook with rage.
The next message hit from Brody. Are you okay? Do you need help?
I’m good, she sent to both of them before tucking the phone into her pocket. “Dec,” she said, her voice calm and steady. “Declan, calm down.”
“Fuck. You,” he muttered, keeping his head low and hands balled into fists against the metal doors. “Go away, Em. Jesus, d’ya really think I want ya here right now?” His brogue thickened, filling her ears and making her tingly in ways she knew would not serve her well. He whirled around, and started pounding the back of his head against the doors in a steady rhythm.
She waited him out. When he stopped and opened his eyes, they were filled with tears.
Emily took the steps between them, folded his tall, sweaty body into her arms, and held on tight. He shook with the effort of not crying. She soothed him, loving his nearness too much for her own good. Finally, he pulled away and gripped her arms, pinning her with a look that made her suck in a breath.
“I love you, you know that?” He looked down at his feet then up again. “But I can’t because I’ll hurt you and I won’t allow that to happen. Oh, and that small detail of you being married.”
He let go of her and dropped onto the bench in front of the row of red-painted lockers. She crouched in front of him and put her palm on his jittery knee.
“All I do is hurt the women I love, Emily. You know that. I know that. But yet, you keep trying this…” He held out his hands wide. “This bloody ‘rescue Declan’ thing. You’re a real glutton, ya know it?”
She took a breath. “Declan, we have to go to Oregon. There’s been a car accident—Agnes is all right, but Desmond thinks we…you can get her back.”
“I mean, I turned into this arsehole who shags everything on two legs just to prove to you that I’m not to be—what did you say?” He grabbed her arms tight.
She tilted her head. He let go of her, repeating her words in a flat voice. “Agnes is okay but she was in a car accident. Is that what you said?”
“Yes. She’s really all right. But Cassandra’s lawyer had to call Desmond to let him know.”
He jumped up and started pacing, dragging his fingers through his hair. Emily sat on the bench and watched him, letting him work his way down off the ledge. Finally, he turned to her again. “Agnes. My daughter is—when are we leaving?”
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped out a quick message to Sophie. “Get a shower,” she said, leaning her head against the damaged doors. But he just stood there, staring at her with his mouth half open. “Go on, hurry up. Oh, and by the way, the Black Jacks are the new league champions.” She pointed above their heads where the noise had ramped up with the distinct sound of the BJs! BJs! chant.
He shook his head and headed into the shower room, leaving her to take long, deep breaths and wait while Sophie emailed her their flight details. As she headed out so he could get dressed in private before the team made their loud, celebratory way off the pitch, her phone buzzed. Thinking it was Sophie with the flight info, she glanced at it, her mind still half on the half-naked man she’d just been talking to, her brain registered that Marcus had sent her three texts in the last ten minutes.
Frowning, she read them, her face heating up.
He had stayed behind with Michelle, deciding that accompanying the team to Sin City was probably not the best use of a twelve-year-old girl’s time. It was audit month for the bank anyway, he’d claimed. He’d given her a huge, ostentatious kiss in the airport when he dropped her off for the flight.
The second she’d been told she and Desmond were tasked with accompanying Declan out to Oregon to help sort out the mess and hopefully rescue Agnes from her apparently still-drunk mother she’d told Marcus, not giving it a second thought. But his messages made it clear she should have.
Marcus: I can’t say I support you going out there with the lawyer. What can you possibly do to help?
His second message didn’t help the worry creeping up her spine.
Marcus: We need to talk about your level of commitment to this project. I’m starting not to be comfortable with it.
Project? Not comfortable? What kind of bullshit was this?
Shoving away the memory of her blatant cheat with Declan the year before, she glared at Marcus’s final declaration.
Marcus: What is this really about? Is it that player? If it is, you’d better just tell me now.
Unwilling to address the man’s question head on, she tapped out a quick response:
Emily: I’m an employee of the club and the general manager told me to go with him. Sorry this makes you uncomfortable. I’ll call you once we get out there. They won, btw.
Marcus didn’t respond. By the time their plane was banking, giving her a full view of the notorious Las Vegas strip in the dark, she’d decided she didn’t care if he did or not. Declan had fallen asleep within minutes of getting airborne, leaving her to flip through a magazine then give up in favor of chewing her fingernails as she studied Declan’s stubble-rough jaw, thinking long and hard about her husband’s question.
Chapter Nineteen
Declan
His dreams were a tangled mash-up of soccer, blood, screaming, car accidents, and crying babies, all overlaid with Emily Keller—always Emily. The sensation of standing around the perimeter of his own life, peeking in at various moments then sneaking off again to snigger at his stupid mistakes had consumed him so completely the past year, he no longer knew when he was acting like Declan or simply inhabiting Declan’s fit and much sought-after body. When Emily had looked him in the eye and told him that the baby girl he barely remembered, on purpose, was in danger in the hands of her volatile mother, something in him had broken off and floated away. As he’d stood under the shower, listening to the roar of the crowd and his teammates post-tournament celebrations, he’d decided to let that piece go for good.
“Time to man up,” his abusive father used to say, usually as a precursor to a beating.
“Declan, this isn’t you. Stop acting like the world’s biggest wanker,” he could imagine his mother saying.
By the time he jerked awake to the sensation of the small plane hitting the tarmac in Oregon with a firm thump, he’d broken out in a sweat and had his fingers threaded together tight. Emily was looking at him in that way she had, both soothing and irritating. He rubbed his eyes and grabbed the water bottle someone had stuck in the seat pocket. “Why did you have to come? Surely you’re needed at Casa Keller?” He drank half the bottle in a few gulps.
“I’m an employee. I go where I’m told.” She averted her gaze, blinking fast. He shrugged. One thing he had to do with haste as part of his new-and-improved-Declan—release any and all fantasies of Emily with him and not the asshole banker. The best way to do that, it seemed, would be to continue along the Declan-as-a-dick path and hope she’d stop trying to be his friend.
When he powered up his smart phone, it quickly populated with multiple texts. The ones from Traci got deleted once he detected her tone from the first one. There were others—his agent, the coaches—that with quick fingertip swipes all got relegated to the great garbage can icon in the sky, leaving him in relative peace.
He and Emily deplaned in silence, making their way into the small airport’s terminal.
“Where is she,” he finally asked once they’d made it to the taxi stand.
“I have the address,” she said, brandishing her phone and not meeting his eyes.
“Where’s my legal eagle?”
“Desmond is meeting us there.” She glanced at her watch. “In about three hours. He couldn’t get out of Detroit Metro that fast.”
“Oh,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and wishing the earringing sensation at the thought of seeing his daughter again would stop.
Emily stayed quiet as they climbed into the backseat of the cab, scooting as far from him as she could go once he took his seat. He sighed and looked down at his phone, newly repopulated with texts similar to the ones he’d ignored earlier. It took everything he had not to reach for her, to beg her to forgive him for his last year’s worth of asshole-ishness. He managed it. It had to be done. He must purge himself of anything related to Emily or of silly, romantic notions of her with him, the sooner the better.
The forty-five-minute ride through the darkened streets of whatever podunk town Cassandra had landed with Agnes in passed in agonizingly slow motion. The small hospital looked picturesque, bucolic even, but smelled like every hospital he’d ever been in—like bleach-covered piss and shit. He let Emily do the initial talking with the receptionist, figuring she might as well earn her salary as his minder-in-chief. They were ushered down a long corridor and around too many corners for him to remember. Finally, he spotted two guys in scrubs and a man in a wrinkled suit standing with their heads close together outside a closed door at the far end of the hall.
Declan frowned and stopped, his heart pounding and his head filling with something he thought might be fear. Emily made it all the way to the men before turning and glaring at him. “Come on,” she said. “This is where she is.”
He gripped the railing that ran between the doors. “I—I can’t.” Never had he spoken truer words. The last blurry year’s worth of exercise and random sex, barely sleeping, only to wake to more working out, playing, and whoring around had blunted him. Even though he got semi-regular photos of the girl, he couldn’t picture her, leaving him utterly unprepared for what he was about to see. He turned and headed the other way, deaf to anything but the sound of his heart banging around in his chest.
As he was rounding one of the many corners, a hand grabbed his sleeve. He closed his eyes and tried to pull away, going into a self-defense autopilot, seeking an exit from this horror show.
“If you walk out of here right now, Declan MacGuire, you should know that you’ll never see Agnes again. I won’t allow it.”
He blinked, then turned to stare into Emily’s green eyes. They were snapping with anger. Jerking his arm out of her grip, he spoke before letting his brain engage. “You have no say in this. You’re just the employee, remember? Now why don’t you get your sweet ass on a plane, go home to your sugar daddy, and leave me to handle my own shit-show life?”
He registered the slap as sound before actually feeling it. But the clarity it brought on the heels of the shock made his eyes widen as his ears opened up, letting in another sound—that of a crying little girl.
“Go to her, Dec,” Emily said in a whisper as a single tear slid down her cheek. “I’ll be out here.”
He nodded and ran down the hall, skidding to a stop at the door where the crying was the loudest. Registering people all around him, he focused on the metal door handle, freezing up in terror for another split second before wrenching it open and coming face to face with her—his Agnes.
