Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jonny
Another Saturday, another match on a churned-up, muddy rugby pitch. But at least today it wasn’t pouring with rain, so I supposed I should have been grateful for small mercies even if I was pretty sure mud had made its way into my ass crack.
We were up by thirty-seven points to twelve and well into the second half, so it felt like we could take our foot off the pedal a little, as long as we didn’t let them pull things back and take the win out from under us. We needed the four points for the win, although we were already guaranteed a bonus point for scoring four tries in the match.
The ball was moving fast across the pitch again with us firmly in the driving seat, Devon completely controlling the flow of play. As fly-half, his role in the team was really to step up and help push us further. He was second only to Matty, although there were times when Devon would take over, and every day I saw him becoming more confident in that role.
The only problem was as fly-half, he was a walking target.
I snapped my head around as the ball came flying towards me, looking for the next pass to keep pressing further up the pitch. Coventry’s defences were crumbling again and the hunger for another try burned inside me. It wasn’t usually me who scored them, but the team was everything in rugby and our desire for more was one that united us.
Ollie was not far from me and an easy pass, but their defence were already trying to close the gaps and take down everyone who touched the ball. It was less skill and more desperation, their exhaustion wearing heavy on their bodies as they swore and shouted at each other to move, the desperate yelling of the away crowd echoing around us.
I’d barely let the ball out of my hands when two bodies slammed into me, one around my ribs and one around my thighs, sending me crashing to the floor, the ground shaking beneath us. One of their boots raked across my ankle and someone’s knee crashed into the side of my head, their leg scraping across my face as they landed on top of me.
My ear was hot and my jaw ached, and I was pretty sure I could feel blood trickling down the side of my face. I didn’t give a shit, though—it was all part of the game. As long as my ear wasn’t totally torn open, I’d live.
“You all right, mate?” someone asked as the bodies lifted off me, a hand patting my thigh to tell me it was safe to get up.
The whole thing had been barely a minute of play, but that was rugby. You passed, you ran, you hit the deck, you got up, and you kept fucking pushing until you scored or until the ref blew his whistle. It was violent and passionate and beautiful all at once, and there was nothing else like it.
As I climbed to my feet, I looked around to find out where we were and caught sight of Devon, a little further out of the pack but perfectly placed to catch the ball. And as soon as he did, he set off, hands already moving as he went to pass the ball, but all I could see was the wall of muscle moving towards him, arms outstretched.
Devon hit the floor with a crunch as muscle and bone collided, and a howl tore itself loose from my throat as I watched him go down, buried under a man mountain.
My legs carried me towards him, adrenaline pulsing through my veins as a haze descended until all I could see was red.
How dare they touch him?
“Fucking get off him,” I yelled as my fingers found the collar of someone’s shirt, hauling him up and off Devon and shoving him onto the ground. Another one of the guys who’d tackled him had already moved, but there was still one pinning Devon down, and underneath him I could see my angel sprawled out, his arm still wrapped around the ball and his head tucked in to protect his face.
“Get your ass off him,” I said with a growl as I reached for the one still on Devon’s back, fully prepared to drag him to the touchline and throw him off the pitch.
“Whoa, whoa,” Mason said, putting his hand across my chest and jolting me back to myself. “He’s okay. He’s all right.”
My breath caught in my chest, my head spinning slightly as Mason grabbed my shoulder, his fingers digging in and grounding me. The game had stopped and more people were gathering around us as the final player moved, leaving Devon alone.
At first I wasn’t sure he was even breathing, but my blood was pounding so loudly it was difficult to focus on anything else. “Dev,” I called, pulling away from Mason to drop down beside him. “You with me?”
“Yeah,” he said in a hoarse voice, lifting his head and spitting grass and mud onto the churned-up turf. “Think so. Might have cracked my ribs. Breathing hurts a bit.”
“He’ll be all right,” said someone from next to us, and I looked up to see one of the guys who’d tackled him standing there with his hands on his hips. “It was just a knock.”
“Yeah? Well, why don’t I just fucking knock you?” I asked as I rose to my feet, jabbing the smug fucker in the chest. I was a couple of inches taller than him, and I used every one of them to loom over him with a thunderous expression. “How’s it just a knock if you’ve broken his fucking ribs?”
“Fuck you, he’s fine. Look at him. He’s fucking milking it.”
“Like hell he is.” I grabbed the front of his shirt, the rest of the team closing in around me. I wasn’t going to take any of their shit and I was surprised nobody had tried to stop me.
Then again, if you insulted one of us, you insulted all of us.
Someone said something short and sharp, and it was like a match to gas. Violence sparked around us, the shrill blast of the whistle punctuating the air as the officials tried to stop us from killing each other. One of the Coventry guys tried to wrestle his friend out of my grip by grabbing me around the throat, and in return someone—West maybe—yanked his shirt to pull him off me. Someone else tried to throw a punch, but I didn’t know at who. All I knew was it clocked me around the back of the head.
It wasn’t painful, not really. I was more annoyed than anything else.
Punching someone in the back of the head was cowardly as fuck, and hitting someone you hadn’t meant to because your aim was so piss-poor was fucking wank. Seriously, these guys couldn’t fucking score, couldn’t fucking tackle, and couldn’t even hit the right person. What was the fucking point?
I spun around, dragging the wanker who’d started all of this with me as I looked for whichever twat had thrown the punch.
“Hey, hey, that’s enough!” the referee said, his voice calm but firm as he stepped into the middle of us, blowing his whistle again to get our attention. The fight was over before it had really begun but that didn’t mean that peace had been restored.
“Sorry,” I said automatically, releasing the guy in front of me with a shove. I wasn’t sorry, but getting in the ref’s good books before someone else opened their mouth was always worth it. “Someone hit me in the back of the head and this one trampled our fly-half. He broke his ribs.”
“It was number six,” West said from behind me, appearing at my shoulder like an enormous guard dog with Matty just beside him. “Their number six punched him.”
“I didn’t mean to,” the guy said as more of his team crowded around him.
“Didn’t mean to throw the punch or didn’t mean to hit me?” I growled. My eyes flicked over to Devon, who’d pulled himself into a sitting position with a couple of medics crouched down beside him. They were talking about something, but I couldn’t hear them properly and every fibre of my body was screaming at me to get over to him.
“All right, calm down, please,” the ref said, looking at the group around us. “I want all of you to walk away now, please. The only ones I want are red number six, number twelve, and your captain, please. And then blue eight, two, your captain, and”—he looked down at Devon, who was still talking to the medical team and sipping a bottle of water—“I can talk to ten too.”
There was some grumbling from people around us and I could see Mason lingering behind us. I wondered if another yellow card was coming my way, and if it was, then Clive was going to have my fucking head. Two sin bins in two games would be enough reason for him to bench me and I could probably kiss my contract renewal goodbye.
At best I’d just get my ass kicked from here to Mars or a proper bollocking for not getting my head out of my ass.
The referee was talking again but I’d switched off, my brain trying to come up with a litany of excuses as I looked at Devon. He caught me staring and shot me a little smile, a tiny wink, and a nod before one of the doctors offered him a hand. The wink made my stomach bubble and all I wanted was to close the distance between us and wrap him in my arms.
He stretched as he stood, mud clinging to his skin and staining his pale blue shirt. Whoever had thought that light blue was a good colour for a rugby kit had clearly never set foot on a pitch.
“Number eight, you with me?” the ref asked and I realised he’d been trying to get my attention.
“Yes, sorry,” I said, spitting my gumshield into my hand to make myself easier to understand. “Just making sure Dev’s back on his feet okay.”
“All good. Now, you stepped in when he’d been tackled and pulled number twelve off him.”
“Yeah, there were three of them on him. Probably just got a bit heated,” I said. “Then he said everything was fine, and then six smacked me on the back of the head when we got into things.” I’d missed out a few things, but I wasn’t about to admit more fault than I had to.
“All right, six here, please,” the ref said, pulling a yellow card out of his pocket. “You shouldn’t be hitting anyone, so that’ll be ten minutes for violent conduct, please. And the rest of you, I don’t want to see any more. I’ll not have any of you acting like that on my pitch. I know things get heated but that’s enough. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” West and I said quickly as the Coventry captain and their number six began arguing with him. I was happy to get out of dodge with only a warning.
“That was lucky,” I muttered as we made a beeline for Devon.
“Yeah, I think the fact he punched you made all the difference,” West said under his breath. “Just, don’t do something like that again, Jonny. I know he’s your boyfriend, but he’s the fly-half. He’s going to get flattened occasionally because people are bastards.”
“I know. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, though.”
“Doesn’t mean you have to get yourself binned either.”
West had a point, but I didn’t want to admit it. And being a possessive bastard wasn’t going to do me any favours if I took offence to everyone who laid a hand on my man.
I just had no idea how to get a handle on it, though.