Chapter 13
Alec excused himself and ducked out onto the back patio, one, to give his retinas a rest, and, two, because he didn’t want Marisa’s family to hear in case Brennan’s mouthiness caused him to inadvertently slip about his story.
Without his coat, his muscles felt the shock of the mid-December air in a way they did not appreciate, and boy, did they let him know.
A prickling tension seized up at the base of his neck, shooting straight into his skull and behind his eyes, a stark reminder that he’d been slacking on Dr. Campbell’s exercises and his body had earned the right to file complaints.
Bloody perfect. As if speaking to his agent alone wouldn’t have given him enough grief.
“Hey, Brennan. Are you out at the Los Angeles Sevens tourney?”
The sour Irishman’s gruff guffaw wasn’t the reception Alec expected, but he couldn’t say it was entirely surprising. After more than ten years working together, he’d learned to make peace with whatever needed to come out of Brennan’s mouth, as it usually made them both loads of money.
Until the damn fool had started bringing up Alec’s possible retirement.
“I am, and watching some smarmy bastard mangle the shit out of your routes.”
“Is Marty not playing flanker?”
“Nah. His dad took ill. It’s more serious than he thought. Had to fly home to be with his family.”
“Shit. Can Fin step in to help?”
“And who do you think’s trying to train up the other two fly-halves while also keeping our conversion numbers up?
We barely pulled out a win against Fiji yesterday, and that was because half their best players are dealing with a bout of food poisoning.
It sure as hell wasn’t because we were stopping them from scoring.
Fin’s doing more than his contract’s paying him for, I can tell you that much. And speaking of contracts . . .”
Through the patio door, the party shrank down to a speck, threatening to implode along with Alec into whatever black hole Brennan was surely about to throw his way.
Alec pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you’re going to go on about retirement again—”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not?” Alec quickly had to pull back the fight that was on the tip of his tongue.
“No.” Brennan paused for a few breaths, which would normally have been silent for anyone else, but for him, they were solid grumbling wheezes that likely portended certain doom.
“I’m talking about a trade. And before you get on my arse and protest, you owe it to yourself to at least hear me out.
I can already tell you’ve not been taking your meds, ‘cause I can practically hear your teeth grinding through the phone.”
Alec willed his jaw to unclench. “I’m taking my fucking meds, Brennan. My anger has nothing to do with my concussion, and you bloody well know it. A trade? Really?” Just saying the words left a sour stain on his tongue, to speak nothing of the sting of betrayal they left all over his heart.
“Yes, really. And once you hear what I’ve got on offer, you’ll be thanking me more than cursing me.”
“That is highly, highly unlikely.”
“Well, good, then. I’d rather have you angry than stupid. You always played better when your blood was up anyway, so here’s to hoping your emotions will finally let you hear some sense. While you’ve been recuperating, I’ve been shopping you around.”
“Shopping me around? Jesus Christ, Brennan. I’m not a fucking collegiate rookie hoping to show promise to scouts.
I’ve been team captain for more years than I wasn’t.
I trained up a good three-quarters of the mates I now play with, and they’re some of the best in the league.
And now you’re coming in here talking about shopping me around like I haven’t even broken in my mouthguard yet?
” Alec wasn’t hearing this. His brain, for all it had been through recently, knew better than to give any sort of credence to the drivel that was coming out of his agent’s mouth.
“Argentina’s interested. They’re offering a two-year contract.
The bonuses aren’t what you’re used to, but you don’t really have a lot of options, and they’re playing halfway decent this season.
Even made a few good moves for the Cup. With your help, they’re likely to make it further than they have in the past. Not to the finals, no, but enough to be encouraging for the program.
It’s a young team, and they lack veteran leadership.
It’d be a great place for you to pass on what you know, leave that legacy for the game that you’ve always wanted to. ”
Vaguely, Alec heard the rest of the pitch package, with numbers far lower than anything he’d been offered since his third or fourth year playing.
It wasn’t that he didn’t like the team. He’d played against the lads many times, and they were all a good group of players who seemed to work hard but suffered beneath the weight of an underfunded sport in a football-dominated country.
Without a large cache of wealthy patrons and a damn near perfect marketing department, no amount of training or veteran players could ever turn that team around, and both Brennan and Alec knew it.
That meant this whole trade negotiation was little more than a peace offering.
A way, on the surface at least, for Alec to go out on his terms, rather than publicly face the rejection that would come if his contract didn’t get renewed and he wasn’t picked up by another team before the new season started.
“You’re asking too much of me, Bren.”
“I’m not asking anything. I’m offering. We don’t always get the choices we want. And as your agent, who’s watched you get patched up more times than a person ought to at your age, it’s my job to give you the facts and negotiate accordingly.”
That familiar chill crept up Alec’s spine, the one that had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with his nervous system’s response that came whenever he heard Brennan use the word negotiate. “What aren’t you telling me?”
A hesitant silence hung between them before Bren cleared his throat. “I know you’re on the mend, that it’s the holidays, and you’re visiting your brother. I just didn’t want it all to come out this way.”
“Come out what way? What the hell are you keeping from me?”
“Great Britain’s recruiting flankers, all right?
Any loose forwards who are a good fit for your position are what management’s been ordering the team to go scout for.
There are always holes in the roster, but yours is a fucking massive one, and they’re not taking chances you won’t be able to perform to your fullest in the long term when you rejoin the team next month if Dr. Campbell clears you. ”
Whatever remained of Alec’s equilibrium seemed to catch the last chopper out of the battle zone. His right knee buckled slightly, but it was enough to collapse all sixteen stone of him onto a frigid Adirondack chair that took the abrupt intrusion out on his tailbone.
“They’re replacing me already? Are you fucking serious?”
“No one’s replacing you yet, Alec. You’re under contract until May.”
“Which is the end of the bloody season!”
“And Great Britain’s doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing: keeping an eye out for talent, building where they can, nurturing where they need to, and putting together a team that stands to win the Cup.
The same can be said for Argentina or Fiji or South Africa or any other Rugby Sevens team out there.
The difference is that Argentina’s asking and offering for you, whereas the others aren’t.
I’ll keep doing my part to get you the best of what’s out there, but it’ll be easier for everyone involved if you take the time you have now to reevaluate what you want, what you really want.
Invest in whatever opportunities come your way in the States, sure, but I’m asking you to focus on what your playing future looks like.
Nothing lasts forever, but you’ve at least got options on how you want your career to end.
Most of the blokes I manage don’t even get within pissing distance of such choices, so keep that in mind. ”
Alec barely managed to grunt out a goodbye before he hung up.
It was bad enough his heart threatened to explode out of his chest, which would have been a far neater experience than the soup his brain was turning into, but Argentina?
Bren wanted to trade him to fucking Argentina?
For what? So he could leave a goddamn legacy for younger lads to step off?
He didn’t give a ripe fig about legacies. Those were for men with egos so large, they thought a lifetime wasn’t enough to contain them, so they insisted on others carrying their accomplishments on their backs.
All Alec wanted was to play a game he’d always loved and had always been good at.
He wanted to go out on his terms, to shake hands with Bren after years together and say job well done.
He wanted to retire when he was ready, not because some bloody bulldozer of a man got the better of him in a tackle and knocked him unconscious for the first time in his life.
He wanted to remember what it was like to bounce back up from a fall. To imagine, just for one more day, how it felt to be infallible.
Inside, the cheerful din of the party thumped its joy through the glass slider, reminding him of everything else that insisted on passing him by that evening.
The large menorah already had a fair bit of its oil drained down from their wee cups, while several of the other candles decorating the living room had been burned down to nubs, with a few extinguished entirely.
Tragically, regardless of how beautiful the blazes were, they also had no say in their futures.
Eventually, every flame burned out, no matter how long the wick.
Next to the menorah, nursing a glass of wine with her elbow resting above her forearm across her chest, stood Marisa, talking to someone.
Among all the glittering lights, cloaked in the armor of her blue cardigan, the woman seemed like the brightest light in the room when, given the luminous power pumping out of the place, she had every reason not to be.
Still, he considered her, the way the candlelight flickered in the subtle auburn of her hair or how his hand still remembered the precise slope of her back when he’d held her close to take a photo.
It was strange, this partnership they’d somehow forged.
Strange, perhaps, because he felt wholly entitled and unentitled to her at the same time, no matter where his admiration of her led him.
Because if he played his very fucking limited cards right, it all had to lead him back to building a name for himself at the Ball and, more direly, doing what he could to impress the hell out of that Arthur bloke.
If Alec could draw a crowd that would get that man and his New York media connections interested enough to pique Bren’s notice, then his agent would have no choice but to fight for him the way he ought to, the way they’d fought together for years.
Alec pulled out his phone and smiled at the growing likes and shares his pictures of him and Marisa were getting.
If he could get that kind of response from just a single post, how much more notice could they garner for the event from a far more structured social media campaign over the next week, especially if Monica’s and Arthur’s connections were as good as they were purported to be?
“You’ve got this.” Reenergized, he slapped his knees and stood to head inside, but when he gripped the handle of the sliding glass door, Marisa shifted, and Alec got an eyeful of the man talking to her.
A man with his hand on her arm, whispering something into her ear.
The flood of feelings that roared to the surface of his mind caught him off guard like a tackle from behind. Trained to respond to trauma as he was, his body clenched tight, his fingers clutching nothing but air, the muscles in his face shutting down to absorb the shock.
But it wasn’t the sort of shock he was used to. This sort of shock had been stirred up by a hive of bees, all its inhabitants compelled to attack on instinct rather than reason.
And reason was missing from the bloody equation.
Alec had to remind himself that he had no right to stop a true romantic interest from forming between Marisa and another man if that was what she wanted.
He had no right to any of Marisa, just as he had no right to the thumbs-up her dad kept throwing him through the glass or the third plate of artfully arranged potato pancakes her mother had offered him.
They were partners. Nothing more.
Alec swiped a hand down his face and let the cold night air carry away his curses, hoping the breeze would return with something useful, some course of action he could take that didn’t involve storming back in there and—
Marisa laughed at whatever the man said, but the lines around her mouth weren’t the sort Alec earned each time he made her smile.
These were tense, short. Unwanted.
Alec considered the scope of his actions for only half a second before he moved. If he needed to be her boyfriend, then this fool and everyone else needed not to think otherwise, and there was only one way Alec knew to send such a message.
When he saw Alec coming, the man lifted his head and backed away from Marisa.
Good thing, too, because with all of Alec’s muscles in lockstep to get to Marisa, there was no one left upstairs in his brain to halt the train and tell him that grabbing her and kissing her in front of her family was a bad idea.
So he didn’t stop.