3. Xander
XANDER
I hadn’t slept. Not even close.
I’d spent the entire night on the penthouse balcony, watching the city’s lights flicker and fade as dawn crept over the Atlantic. My hand throbbed under the bandage—a tiny, persistent drumbeat. She’s here. She’s here. She’s here.
I knocked back another gulp of whisky. The bottle was nearly empty now. I should’ve felt something—drunk, numb, anything—but my body had long ago built up a tolerance that would impress medical students. The alcohol just sat there, burning my throat, doing jack shit for the chaos in my head.
Last night played on an endless loop: Hank’s smug welcome, the champagne glass shattering in my grip, the crowd’s murmurs. But mostly Tara’s eyes. Those weren’t the eyes of a girl anymore. They were assured. Determined. Hungry.
I flexed my bandaged hand, feeling the cut beneath the gauze stretch and burn. Her fingers had been so careful wrapping it. But I’d felt it—the tiny hesitations, the barely noticeable pressure changes. She’d enjoyed it. Enjoyed touching me.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I muttered, tipping my head back against the lounge chair. The sky turned that peculiar pre-dawn gray, the color of indecision.
Jimmy was six months older than me and would have been thirty by now. Would have had a career, maybe a family. Instead, he was dust and memory, and his sister—his baby sister—was all grown up and armed with medical credentials.
The sliding door behind me whispered open. Leo. Always Leo.
“You look like absolute shite,” he said, settling into the chair beside me. He was already dressed in pressed chinos and a polo, looking every inch the professional assistant, despite the early hour. “Didn’t sleep?”
I raised the nearly empty whisky bottle in silent answer.
Leo sighed. “Give me that.” He plucked it from my hand and set it on the small table between us. “We’ve got the facility tour in an hour. You need to shower and look less like you’re auditioning for ‘Intervention.’”
“Cancel the tour.”
“Can’t. Owner’s orders.” Leo’s voice was casual, but I caught the slight edge. He’d been watching me like a hawk since the party, his usual easygoing front slipping to reveal something more urgent. “Apparently, Hank Swanson is very excited to show off his new toy.”
“Me or the facility?” My laugh was brittle.
“Both, probably.” Leo stood, stretching his arms above his head. “Come on. Shower. Coffee. Advil. In that order.”
I didn’t move. “She’s his daughter.”
Leo paused mid-stretch. “Aye, I gathered that from the matching surnames and the whole ‘let me introduce my daughter’ carry on.”
“Not just his daughter. She’s Jimmy’s sister.”
Leo’s arms lowered slowly. In the years we’d been friends, I’d mentioned Jimmy’s name exactly twice. Once, blackout drunk in Glasgow, sobbing on a bathroom floor. The second time, in London, after I’d gotten the tattoo: his initials and the date.
“Jimmy,” Leo repeated carefully. “Your friend from California. The one who died.”
I nodded, eyes fixed on the horizon where the first golden rays of sun were spilling over the ocean. “Car accident.”
Leo was quiet for a long moment as he connected the dots. “And the lass—Dr. Swanson—she was his sister.”
“Yeah, Tara.” Her name felt strange in my mouth after so long. “She was sixteen when it happened.”
Leo’s expression shifted. “When what happened, exactly?”
I stood abruptly, the chair scraping against the balcony floor. “I need that shower.”
I brushed past him, ignoring the question. Leo knew the broad strokes of my past—driving accident, best friend dead, guilt and exile—but not the details.
Some shame cuts too deep to share, even with the person who’s seen you at your worst.
The hot water hammered my shoulders without mercy, but my brain kept right on playing the greatest hits of my fucked-up past. I slapped my palms against the fancy slate tile, dropping my head under the spray like I might drown the thoughts if I tried hard enough.
My bandaged hand was turning into soggy gauze origami—perfect ammunition for Dr. Tara’s next round of “how to take care of yourself, dumbass.”
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I turned the water to cold, gasping as it hit my skin. Better. Pain was clarifying. It reminded me I was still alive, still paying for what had happened that night.
By the time I emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around my waist, Leo had coffee and Advil waiting. He handed me both without comment. We’d perfected this dance over the years—his quiet efficiency managing my self-destruction, neither of us acknowledging the codependency of it all.
“Car’s downstairs in fifteen,” he said, scrolling through his phone. “The team facility is about twenty minutes away, traffic permitting.”
I swallowed the pills dry, chasing them with scalding coffee. “What’s the dress code for these things?”
“Athletic casual. I laid something out.” He nodded toward the bed, where a pair of designer joggers and a fitted team polo waited. Of course, he had. Leo always thought of everything.
I yanked on the clothes like a zombie, my brain stuck in rewind mode. The polo squeezed my shoulders too damn tight, with that team logo sitting over my heart like I’d been cattle-branded.
Congratulations! You now belong to Hank Swanson.
Leo hovered by the door, jingling keys and thumbing through emails. He looked up as I shuffled over, his face giving away exactly nothing.
“Ready?”
“Not even close,” I admitted. “But since when has that stopped the world from kicking my ass, anyway?”
The Miami training facility was a glass-and-steel middle finger to fiscal responsibility. The team’s logo dominated the facade in letters big enough to be seen from space, practically screaming, “We have more money than we know what to do with.”
“Fuckin’ hell,” Leo whispered as we pulled into VIP parking. “They’re no’ messin’ aboot. Chelsea’s digs look like a wee YMCA compared to this.”
Our coach named Wilkes waited for us in the lobby. His expression said, plain as day, “I’d rather be getting a root canal.”
“McCrae,” he greeted, extending his hand. “Welcome to the facility.”
His grip was firm, yet his eyes betrayed a different truth—the judgment of a man who’d already decided who I was based on tabloid headlines and social media threads.
“This is Leo Martin, my assistant,” I said. Leo, ever the charmer, quickly engaged Wilkes, offering me a much-needed reprieve.
The tour was exactly what I expected: a blur of state-of-the-art bullshit designed to impress players and justify exorbitant contracts.
Hydrotherapy pools with underwater treadmills.
Anti-gravity training machines that looked like something out of a sci-fi film.
A nutrition bar that served protein shakes with ingredients I couldn’t pronounce.
I nodded with the right intervals, made vague sounds of appreciation, and tried to ignore the pounding in my temples. The Advil was barely touching the hangover, and every bright light and nerve-grating sound in the cavernous facility felt like a personal attack.
“The locker room’s through here,” Wilkes was saying, leading us down yet another pristine corridor. “You’ve got a permanent spot with your name already on it. Owner’s orders.”
Of course.
We rounded a corner, and my eyes caught on a sign: SPORTS MEDICINE WING. My steps faltered.
“Medical facilities are top of the line,” Wilkes continued, not noticing my hesitation. “MRI, X-ray, the works. Dr. Swanson built quite the department.”
We passed an open door, and I glimpsed a series of examination rooms. At the end of the hallway was a larger office, a plaque beside the door: DR. TARA SWANSON, HEAD OF SPORTS MEDICINE. The letters seemed to burn into my vision, each one pulsing in time with the throbbing in my head.
“Speaking of Dr. Swanson,” Wilkes said, checking his watch, “you’re scheduled for your physical assessment at noon. Standard procedure for all new players.”
My stomach twisted. “Today?”
“Owner’s orders,” Wilkes repeated, the phrase becoming an ominous mantra. “He wants you cleared ASAP so you can start training with the team tomorrow.”
Well, shit.
The waiting room of the medical wing was quiet. I’d been sitting here for twenty-three minutes. I knew because I’d been counting the seconds, watching the digital clock on the wall tick forward like a sadistic tortoise on Xanax.
Leo had abandoned me after the tour, claiming he needed to “sort out some contract rider details” with management. The betrayal pissed me off more than it should have. I was a grown man, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t need a babysitter for a routine physical.
Except this wasn’t routine. Nothing about this situation was routine.
I could hear her voice through the closed door of an examination room, calmly discussing another player’s recovery protocol. It was the voice of a stranger, not the girl I remembered. That girl had been all raw emotion and wide eyes.
This woman sounded controlled.
Dangerous .
The door to the examination room opened, and a young midfielder limped out. Sánchez, if I remembered correctly from the roster Leo had shown me. He looked dazed but relieved, like he’d just escaped an IRS audit with both kidneys intact.
He spotted me, a flicker of recognition in his eyes. He gave a weird, sympathetic half-smile. “Good luck in there, mate.”
What the hell does that mean?
Before I could ask, Tara appeared in the doorway. She wore fitted navy scrubs that somehow looked tailored, her dark hair pulled back in a neat ponytail.
“Mr. McCrae,” she said, her voice crisp. “Come in.”
I stood, my legs feeling strangely unsteady.
The door clicked shut behind me. The examination room smelled of antiseptic and... vanilla. The combination was dizzying, triggering a sensory memory I’d spent years trying to bury.
Her hair smelled of vanilla when I leaned in. Her face tilted up to mine, eyes wet with tears but so trusting, so open...
“McCrae,” Tara said, interrupting my thoughts. “Let’s start with that hand.”