Chapter Twenty #2
I can’t bring myself to blink, scared I’ll miss it when he gets up, my body tight with tension.
Get up.
Please get up.
Oscar starts running towards him and one of the De Montfort players is nearby with both hands on his head, while the referee blows his whistle and waves towards the sideline.
I start to feel an intense wave of panic. “Why isn’t he getting up?”
“I don’t know.”
“Emma.”
“I don’t know, Rubes.” It doesn’t help that she sounds just as panicked as me.
The physio starts across the pitch, but Josh stays where he landed and the distance between him and help suddenly feels enormous.
Oscar reaches him first, dropping down beside him and saying something, lips moving furiously, and only then does Josh drag the hand out from beneath himself and press it against the grass.
I breathe easier. “Oh, thank God.”
He rolls onto his back and lifts a hand towards the side of his head, his face screwed up while Oscar leans over him.
“He hit his head,” I fight to keep my voice level, gripping Emma harder. “He hit it really fucking hard.”
Josh starts trying to sit up and my whole chest feels like it’s being clawed at. “No, don’t fucking do that.”
Time seems to stand still and I don’t understand my reaction at all. Oscar has gone down plenty and it’s never felt like this.
“Why is he getting up? Why won’t he wait for the physio to check him first?”
“Because he’s stupid?” Emma offers.
“That isn’t funny,” I snap, unable to look away from the car crash in front of me.
“I wasn’t joking.”
Josh pushes himself onto one knee, stays there while the physio talks at him, then gets one foot underneath himself and stands. Oscar stays right beside him, and I watch Josh’s face, looking for the smallest sign that he’s confused or dizzy or about to fall flat on his ass.
He puts weight through the injured leg, shifts it, rolls his ankle against the grass and waves the physio away.
“Don’t you dare,” I hiss out, as if he can hear me from over here.
But he does.
He jogs back into position.
I keep watching the way he runs, checking every stride for a hitch or a stumble because I don’t trust for a second that Josh would willingly walk away from something he’s committed himself to, even if he has a fucking concussion or fractured ankle, or is in any kind of pain.
“Ruby…” Emma starts to slowly say, she pauses and rolls her lips together. “Do you always get this worked up at a game? Is it like this when Oscar goes down?”
My eyes stay on Josh, his mouth has gone tight and it looks like he’s in pain and trying to mask it. “No.” I honestly tell her. “It isn’t like this when Oscar goes down.”
She doesn’t push, but she doesn’t pull away either, and when my fingers tighten around her arm, she gives them a small, comforting squeeze of her own.
The ref whistles, and the game continues.
It gets scrappier after that. De Montfort start dropping back whenever we get the ball, crowding around their own end and making it harder for us to get through, while Oscar gets increasingly wound up and starts shouting everyone forward.
Cam nearly gets himself booked, our keeper spends so long screaming at the right-back that the referee eventually turns around and tells him to shut up.
Josh keeps moving infield because the guy marking him has practically attached himself to his side like a barnacle… or a wart.
Oscar keeps looking for Josh across the field and I find it odd.
My brother has always been greedy when he doesn’t trust the people around him. Mum used to scream at him to pass when we were kids and he’d come off insisting there was no point because nobody else had made the right run. Sometimes he was right. Most of the time he was being a little prick.
But he keeps looking for Josh. Passing to Josh.
My God.
He trusts Josh.
I realise I want Oscar to like him.
I want Josh to like Oscar.
Shit.
The half-time whistle goes before I can spend too long thinking about why that matters to me, and the players start making their way towards the changing rooms. Oscar spends most of the walk arguing with Cam, who keeps nodding with the grave expression of someone being briefed for war, while Josh trails behind them with his hands resting on his hips and his breathing still heavy from the first half.
He reaches for the bottom of his shirt and pulls it up over his face.
I get a brief flash of hard stomach, ribs and the dark trail of hair disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts before he drops it again.
Bloody hell.
I turn towards Emma, but she is already looking at me with a knowing little smile on her face.
“What?” I feel my cheeks burn.
She nudges her shoulder with mine. “I won’t tell Oscar, don’t worry.”
“There’s nothing to tell!”
She laughs and I duck my head, trying to hide.
Her and Oscar tell each other everything, which means by the end of the day my brother is probably going to know something I still don’t really want to admit to myself.
This has gone way past a little crush. I care about Josh.
Probably more than he cares about me, and if I keep seeing him every day, keep sleeping beside him, keep letting him touch me and making myself over think every tiny thing he says, I’m going to fall in love with him.
I know I am.
The second half starts with De Montfort scoring.
It happens so quickly that I barely register the build-up before their striker gets through and sends the ball past our keeper, and the handful of people standing further down the touchline start cheering while Oscar stands bang in the middle of the pitch looking murderous.
“Oops,” Emma shrugs.
“Don’t say oops.”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know. Something supportive?”
“Go Lincoln?”
“Terrible.”
She laughs, but Oscar clearly has no intention of letting the score stand because the next twenty minutes turn into him trying to drag everyone towards their goal through sheer force of personality.
He’s everywhere, yelling at Cam, calling for the ball, clapping at the defenders to move up, and when the equaliser finally comes it’s Oscar himself who gets on the end of a loose ball and smashes it in.