Chapter Twenty-Six
Hunter
Pressure squeezed me from all sides as the scrum engaged, my muscles burning as nearly nine hundred kilograms of front row collided with each other.
My head was buried between Jaden’s and West’s hips, my shoulders pressing into their arses, with my left arm threaded through Jaden’s legs in front of me to grasp the waistband of his shorts, locking myself into position, and my right arm across Gabriel’s back where he was wedged in beside me, helping to hold him steady.
Hot, sweaty, stinking air filled my lungs as I fought to stay stable against the immense forces trying to crush me. I heaved forwards, pushing against Jaden and West as our opponents tried to send us backwards, to make us give way, bend and collapse onto the ground in a heap.
The sound of the crowd had all but vanished, replaced by grunting and groaning as we strained together.
“Come on. Heave,” West said, his voice rough and broken. The match had been a brutal one, with Exeter pushing us from the first minute, and all of us were on the verge of breaking. But that didn’t matter. There was no room in the scrum for exhaustion.
My feet dug into the turf as I threw my weight forwards again, sucking more sweaty air into my mouth. Jaden needed to lay off the fucking Lynx Africa, or whatever other god-awful deodorant he was using, because it tasted rank and smelt worse.
The pressure eased with a sudden jolt as the scrum disintegrated, all of us sinking to our knees and gasping in air. But there was no time to rest. Exeter were already up, their scrum-half passing the ball to a winger, who tore off down the pitch. Thank fuck we had people ready to stop him.
Or try, at least.
The bugger was fast and wiggly, sliding through holes in our defence like a hamster in a maze.
Exeter knew all our weaknesses and had seemingly set out to test them one by one, breaking through the cracks in our play faster than we could close them up.
It wasn’t just physically exhausting; it was mentally draining too.
And now we were twenty points down and trying to play catch-up.
Part of me hoped I’d be subbed out, but I knew deep down it wasn’t going to happen.
We needed fresh legs at the front of the scrum and more energy in the backs if we wanted to have a shot at evening the score.
I was going to have to tough it out on shaking legs and burning lungs, bruises already forming on my ribs and blood crusting on my cheek from a brush with a boot.
This was rugby at its toughest.
But that was what I’d trained for.
Now was the time to dig deep and fuel myself with my desire to win and my love of the game. To channel my resilience and push until the final whistle. There was no time to think about anything else, especially not how bloody miserable I’d been since Aiden had left last week.
That could wait until afterwards.
Although at this rate I’d have two things to mope about.
“On your feet,” West said, grabbing my hand and pulling me up. He was equally battered, a spectacular cheek bruise starting to form and Steri-Strips across his eyebrow where it’d been split open in the first half. “Ten minutes to go.”
“Thank fuck,” I said.
“Don’t thank me yet.” He glanced across at the edge of the pitch where one of the officials was holding up a board with substitutions. West’s number was on it, as were Jaden’s, Danny’s, and Bailey’s.
“See you later,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder and wincing as something pulled in my own shoulder. I was going to be sore tomorrow. And the day after. I was almost looking forward to an ice bath and a sports massage.
Almost.
“You’ve fucking got this,” West said. “Hold the fucking line.”
“I’ll try.” I didn’t think it was going to be possible, but we’d do our best. As I watched the four of them jog off the pitch, I noticed Bailey was limping slightly and I grimaced.
That was all I bloody needed. Bailey was a fucking nightmare when he was injured, and getting him to sit still and rest was an extreme test of patience.
I’d have to find some rope and tie him to the fucking sofa.
Maybe Aiden would have some in his toy box. It was worth asking. Then he’d have to come and see us again.
The last ten minutes ticked by agonisingly slowly, every second feeling like a year and every minute like an eternity. By the time the final whistle blew, all I wanted was to lie down.
We lost by seventeen in the end, with Devon kicking a penalty in the seventy-eighth minute to shave a fraction off our deficit. It wasn’t much of a consolation prize.
Bailey was already sitting on the bench in the changing room when we all trooped in.
He had an ice pack on his ankle and was eating a fried chicken wrap, sweet chilli sauce dripping down his fingers.
He offered me a tired smile as I sat down next to him, groaning as I finally took the weight off my feet.
“Fucking hell,” I said, ignoring the random pings of pain and discomfort that were starting to register. They could take a number and join the fucking queue. “That was a shitshow.”
“Such a fucking mess,” Bailey said. “That wasn’t just brutal. That was clinical.”
“Agreed.” I sighed and leant forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
I knew I’d need to get up and grab something to eat to start refuelling my body.
Then I’d need to get myself checked out by the team doctor, or at least one of the physios, and shower.
But all of that felt like an exhausting prospect.
“Want me to get you a couple of wraps?” Bailey asked. “There’s a good selection today: fried chicken, hoisin duck, halloumi and roasted veg, and chicken, bacon, and avocado.”
“Did Chef know we were going to get our arses kicked and want to make us feel better?”
“Feels like it.”
“You know what I really want?”
“What?”
“A fucking cookie,” I said. “One of the white chocolate ones. With sprinkles. So many fucking sprinkles.”
Bailey let out a soft hum of agreement. “All the fucking sprinkles. More sprinkles than chocolate chips. No wait, an equal amount of both. But twice as many as usual. Maybe just two cookies. Sandwiched together with ice cream.”
“That does actually sound good.” I wasn’t usually a fan of puddings, and I didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but with how tired and miserable I was, Bailey’s suggestion did sound appealing.
Bailey reached into his locker and pulled out his phone, checked the screen, sighed, and threw it back again.
“Nothing?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.
“Nothing.”
I huffed, then groaned as my thigh muscles twinged.
In the ten days since Aiden had gone back to Leicester, his communication had gotten sparser and sparser.
I knew he was busy with everything, the pictures he’d sent of the kitchen and the five-minute ranting voice note about the state of the situation making that clear.
But he still seemed to think if he dropped off the face of the earth, we wouldn’t notice. Or wouldn’t care.
His messages came often enough to suggest he was trying to keep us at arm’s length while also hoping it was enough to stop us going to Leicester.
He was a man of infinite contradictions, but mostly it seemed like he was so in his own fucking head that he couldn’t let go and admit what he really wanted.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. We’d already discussed options. Our patience with Aiden had run out, so now we were going to do things our way. Communication might never have been our style, but there came a time when it was necessary. And that time was now. Whether Aiden liked it or not.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” Bailey said. “Assuming we can get out of bed.”
“Have an ice bath. You’ll be fine.”
“God, that should not sound like a good option.”
“I know.” I managed a wry smile, although it made my face ache.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Despite telling Aiden we knew there was a pub in his neck of the woods we should visit, we didn’t actually know where it was.
My suggestion was to pull up a list of Leicester’s dodgiest pubs and drive around until we found Bacon’s, but that wasn’t exactly a solid plan.
We didn’t even know what Bacon looked like.
“No fucking clue,” Bailey said.
“Think we can ask Jonny?”
“It’s probably our only option unless we want to spend tomorrow driving around and sticking our nose in every pub we can find.”
“At least I had an idea,” I said. I was trying to go for pointed, but it came out sounding petulant.
“Well done, do you want a fucking sticker?”
I snorted. When Bailey was tired, he turned into such a sarcastic bastard. “Have you got one?”
“No.”
“Then why offer me one?”
“Don’t be a twat. I’m too tired for this. And my ankle hurts.”
“What did you do to it?” I asked, glancing down at his foot. “Do you need to elevate it?”
“Yeah, I should. And it’s nothing serious, just twisted it colliding with one of their centres.”
“Hey, don’t dismiss a twisted ankle. My great-granny died of a twisted ankle.”
“Fuck off, she did not,” Bailey said.
“She did! That’s what the death record said anyway,” I argued.
My mum was massively into family history and had spent the past five years researching all our relatives and building a big family tree.
It meant I knew the most random things about some of my distant relatives, although ironically, I hadn’t seen my cousins in a decade.
“Something else had to be involved too, though, right?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I said. I prodded his thigh, right below the hem of his shorts. “Put your ankle on the bench.”
“Fine, but can I have some wraps, please? I’m hungry.” He didn’t usually ask me to fetch him food, but I’d do it if it meant he sat still. I’d need him up and mobile tomorrow if we were going on a wild goose chase around Leicester.
“Sure, any preference?”
“No, just food, please.”
I resisted the urge to press a kiss to the top of his head as I stood.
I still hadn’t really talked to Bailey about my feelings for him and I needed to.
We’d talked about how we felt about Aiden and that we wanted to be together as a throuple, but I hadn’t told Bailey how much he meant to me. That was just as important.
The dressing room wasn’t the place for that conversation, though.
I walked over to the middle of the room where the catering staff had laid out our post-match refuel. Jonny was already there, stood next to West, the pair of them chatting quietly as they grabbed handfuls of food.
“How’re you doing?” West asked.
“Fucking knackered. You?”
“About the same. That was not good.”
“Understatement of the year,” Jonny said, putting wraps on a plate.
“We can take it apart next week,” West said. “I think Clive and Tommy are already making plans.”
“Oh fun, PowerPoints,” Jonny said. I chuckled. Tommy, the assistant head coach, loved a fucking PowerPoint, usually with diagrams to highlight every single one of our mistakes.
“Can’t wait,” I said as I grabbed a plate of my own and began to carefully stack wraps on it, getting Bailey one of each flavour.
I stuck to the chicken, bacon, and avocado and the hoisin duck as I still struggled with anything breaded or fried.
With the exception of potato wedges, because I liked those.
“By the way, check your phone when you get home,” Jonny said under his breath.
“Any reason?”
He shrugged. “We’ve got a day off tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m guessing you don’t have plans?”
“Er, not really.”
“Thought so. In that case, I know a good pub you should go to. It’s a bit of a trek, but it’ll be worth it.” He shot me a pointed look and I nodded. “I’ll send you the address.”
“Sounds great, thanks,” I said, giving him the tiniest smile.
“Good. Let me know how you get on.” He clapped me on the shoulder and walked away.
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a wild goose chase after all.