Ten
“ARE YOU HITTING the court today?” Miles asked, striding into my apartment without bothering to knock.
Before I finished, Miles was shaking his head. “No. Don’t call him.”
“Why not?”
He fiddled with the ends of his bracelet, looking sidelong at me through the fall of his hair like he needed a shield from my reaction. “I want to try something.”
“A tennis something, or . . .?”
“Yes, a tennis something!” He laughed. “I don’t have an entirely one-track mind despite how hot you are.”
I tried to suppress a grin at his compliment and failed. “Noted. I still need time with my coach though.”
“Tomorrow. Today, I want to be your coach.”
“You want to be my coach?”
“Just for one afternoon!” He held up placating hands, his expression almost imploring. “I want to see if we can cut through the overthinking. Find the old Matteo.”
It wasn’t one of his challenges. It might have been easier if it had been, because if the last few days had proven anything, it was that I would never back down from one of those.
Perhaps he knew that though, knew this was too big a deal to force my hand with a sparkling look. He was asking me to take a risk.
Danny’s warning echoed through my head. There was no way Miles truly wanted the old Matteo Russo back on tour, yet I wanted to trust him, wanted to trust this man with his dark gaze and his gentle hands, who took my every ridiculous crisis in his stride like it was the easiest thing in the world.
“All right,” I said with a faint shrug, keeping the words light. “Let’s do it.”
Because putting Danny off another day wouldn’t change anything, but choosing to believe in myself might.
THE STRING OF fine weather had given way to an overcast day, the sort that kept threatening rain but never actually getting around to it. Despite that, it was oppressively warm, even the walk to the courts enough to make sweat dampen my brow.
“Right,” he said as we set down our bags. “Let’s warm-up and have a hit to start. Nothing fancy.”
“Yes, sir, Mr Coach,” I said in an attempt to ease the tension that felt like elastic wrapped around my every limb. It didn’t help. Neither did his grin, though he seemed to enjoy the title.
When we took to the court, we started with a hit that should have loosened me up but only wound my tension tighter. It was no different to how we’d hit two days earlier, yet this time I felt like I was being tested and could so easily be found wanting.
“Relax!” Miles called when I pounded a fourth ball into the net.
“You say that like it’s easy!”
“It is! I’m not your damn gym teacher.”
“It’s P.E.”
He bunted a fresh ball into play. “Yeah, we call it that too. You can’t always catch me out with your Australianisms.”
“All right, what about ‘stop carrying on like a pork chop’?” I said, hitting it back.
“That sounds fucking dumb.”
“You sound fucking dumb!” I laughed, and ripped the next shot past him right down the line.
Miles set his hands on his hips, turning to look at the ball as it bounced off the fence and rolled away. “Is that the secret to getting you to relax? Insult Australian culture?”
“I’m sure you could get me arced up other ways.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“You lot don’t say arced up?” I shook my head. “Look, I’m not angry, just disappointed.”
Like someone had hit pause, he suddenly stilled, staring at me from the opposite baseline. “Angry,” he said, racquet hanging forgotten in his hand. “That’s what you said. About that second set at the French. You said you got angry and careless and lucky.”
“Yeah. It works sometimes, just not for long. Unless it’s the right kind of angry.”
Miles strode toward the net, gaze cutting into me. “What do you mean ‘the right kind of angry’?”
“Just that . . .” I looked away through the wire diamonds of the fence, preferring the safety of the overgrown garden with its gently waving greenery. “Anger and fear are too closely linked, I think. For me, I mean. Since the accident.”
“So you mean anger at a partisan French crowd is safe, but anger at me telling you I’m the better player isn’t.”
“Something like that. How’d you know about the crowd?”
He shrugged, staring past me. “Told you I watched your first-round match. They were really against you.”
“The joy of French crowds,” I muttered, but he didn’t seem to hear.
A frown was slowly gathering between his brows, and I fought the urge to ask why he was bothering with my problems at all.
He had his own shit to deal with, his own loss to look at, but then perhaps that was why he wanted the distraction.
“All right, challenge time,” Miles said abruptly, setting his racquet down so he could adjust his sweatband.
“I’m going to serve, and you’re going to break me.
Six games, changing ends after three, minimal time between points.
This is going to be high intensity, high pressure, right?
See if we can switch off your brain for a bit.
And if you break my serve, your prize is getting to have me in whatever way you want. Anything at all.”
I laughed, the sound tight. “If you don’t want to fuck again later, you can just say so.”
“No, none of that bullshit. I want you to wreck me after and I wouldn’t make that conditional if I didn’t think you could do this. Belief, yeah?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, the words ‘wreck me’ tingling their way down my libido. “But even on my best days, you’re still Miles Callahan, current world number four. I can’t just . . . believe that away. Playing you is hard. Breaking you is harder.”
The net cord creaked as Miles leaned his weight on it. “You don’t need to. Look, when I’m switched on, I play like a freight train, right? That’s what everyone says. I just keep going, and if you don’t find a way to knock me off my stride, then I’m going to win.”
“Right, so what the fuck do you expect me to do about it?”
He clapped his hands to my cheeks, tilting my face up to meet his fierce gaze. “Play like the Matteo Russo I used to hate. Rip up my fucking tracks.”
Before I could answer or think or even breathe, he let me go and stepped back, picking up his racquet. “Six games,” he repeated as he walked toward the baseline. “You’ve got this, Russo.”
He was good to his word and left hardly any time between points once we began.
Catching my breath became hard, thinking even harder, yet in the first service game he still wiped the court with me.
In the second I put up more of a fight, and for a moment thought maybe I would find my swing.
But by the third that brief hope had soured into embarrassment at my own na?veté.
We paused at our bags as we changed ends, taking a moment to catch our breath and rehydrate. Miles was frowning.
“I assure you, I do want to win your arse,” I said, attempting an apologetic laugh. “I guess belief just isn’t enough.”
“Not if I’m the only one believing. It’s not enough for me to believe in you. You have to believe in you.”
I puffed out a heavy breath, frustration cracking through.
“You say that like it’s so easy! I’ve spent four years failing, Miles.
What reason do I have to believe in myself now?
You tell me I should play like I used to, like that’s some tap I can just turn on, but besides getting angry sometimes, I don’t know how! ”
Leaning down to look right into my eyes, Miles set his hands on my shoulders like he’d done that first day at the laundromat.
“Listen to me,” he said. “Danny is wrong. Or maybe you’re wrong, I don’t know which and I don’t care.
Tennis isn’t a chess game – not for you.
For you, it’s a boxing match, it’s not slowly working your opponent into the corner so you can hit a winner, it’s knocking them the fuck out at the first opportunity.
It’s going for every opening because you can hit shots other people only dream about, you hit them harder than anyone else would dare, and even when you miss, its confidence-crushing for us to see them get even close. ”
My heart thumped so hard I felt ill, every reply catching like a sticky clump on my tongue.
“You don’t believe me?” he said when my silence stretched into the grey afternoon.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just . . .” I lifted my arms and let them fall. “I’m not that player any—”
“Bullshit! Don’t give me that, Mat. I stood across the net from you at the French and thought I was going to lose.”
“Right. Now who’s talking bullshit.”
With a scowl, he dropped his hands from my shoulders.
“It’s not bullshit. I don’t need to stroke your ego just so I can stroke your cock; I’ve got that one covered.
But that passing shot in the fifth game?
That volley? Unless you’re telling me some ghost from the past swooped in and broke my serve, that was you.
” He jabbed me in the chest with a finger.
“The old Matteo isn’t trapped in there somewhere, he’s just you and he always has been. ”
His words were slowly filling my chest like air I’d forgotten how to breathe, the feeling one I didn’t know what to do with. “Me,” I whispered.
“Yes, you.” He set his hands back on my shoulders, giving me a shake.
“You with your ridiculous shots and your nasty serve. Your fearless, daredevil attitude and your knock-out punches. You, the only junior I could never beat. Always tripping me up and ruining all my plans – my unpredictable, impossible Matteo.” He’d gripped fistfuls of my shirt, his eyes all I could see as they bored into me.
And like a green shoot breaking through frozen earth, a hint of self-belief dared to swell my chest. I wasn’t the same Matteo Russo anymore, but maybe that didn’t have to mean what I’d made it mean for years.
Didn’t have to mean I’d lost everything.
With a final shake, Miles let me go. “Nothing important has changed,” he said as though he could read my mind. “Now, let’s go. Three more games.”