Ted Lasso fic: Tightrope
Story Title: Tightrope
Fandom(s): Ted Lasso
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,186
Summary: Alarmed, she takes in the blotchy pallor of his skin, the tight, brittle set of his mouth, his body wound taut as a string. It all combines to open up a black hole in the pit of her stomach - she’s seen a similar look on him before. It scared her a year and a half ago in Jamie’s stark white kitchen, and it scares her now.
Author’s Notes: Throwing my hat in the ring of fics dealing with the aftermath of Man City that we should’ve gotten but didn’t.
The match is a shitshow. A slaughter. A catastrophe.
Sam had a good defensive maneuver in the first half and Jamie had a decent chance on goal in the second, but she’d barely call those bright spots, and would struggle mightily to say there were any others. If she is feeling gutted by the loss, she can’t fathom how Roy and the rest of the team must be feeling. To lose is one thing, to lose big is another, but to lose big at Wembley in the FA Cup, to Jamie’s former team no less, is in a league of its own.
Rebecca joins her down at the exit to the dressing rooms, for moral support more than anything else. Keeley scans each somber player that passes through the doors, frown deepening the longer she doesn’t see Roy. She doesn’t see Beard either, but his absence she at least gets an answer for: An uncharacteristically distracted Ted informs one of the assistant coaches that he’s taking a walk, or so she overhears.
Her frown deepens when Isaac, the last straggler, walks up to her, hands stuffed in the pockets of his zip-up and a dark, acidic glower on his face. “Roy wanted me to ask if you could get a lift home with Rebecca. He wants to take the car.”
“Why?” Roy is no stranger to seething after a bad loss, but he’s never avoided it, let alone with her. On the contrary, usually he has plenty of things to say.
“Dunno,” says Isaac, in the kind of tone that tells her he knows exactly why. He glances over his shoulder at the bus. “I should get back to the team.”
Keeley nods. As much as her curiosity and dread are rising, she trusts that once Roy gets home, he’ll fill her in. “All right. Thank you, Isaac.”
She considers offering some condolences, but refrains. She doubts any of the players would take that to heart, and Isaac more than anyone feels the weight of losses. As captain, it’s his responsibility to feel such things. As a firebrand, he would feel them anyway.
Rebecca obliges her the lift, and it’s only once they’re on the motorway that Keeley realizes there’s one other person she hadn’t seen: Jamie.
She gets an explanatory text ten minutes later - at least, as explanatory as Roy’s texts ever are.
jamie’s with me. talk later
Keeley reads the message four times, trying and failing to make sense of it.
“Everything all right?” Rebecca prompts.
“Not sure. Roy says he’s got Jamie with him.”
Rebecca blinks. “He’s got who with him?”
“Jamie,” she repeats. “Something must’ve happened in the dressing room.”
“Like what?”
“No idea. I’ll text you when I figure that out.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Rebecca says. “Really, anything.”
“I will - oh!” Keeley exclaims, remembering there is some other business that is very much unfinished, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your date.”
She can’t quite tell in the dimness of the car, but she’s pretty sure Rebecca blushes. “You’ve got more important things to worry about now. That can wait.”
“Not for long,” Keeley warns, leveling Rebecca with a glare. “You’re going to spill whether you want to or not.”
It isn’t that far from Wembley to her house, in the grand scheme of things. But when one is waiting for something, an hour can feel like a lifetime. No further text comes from Roy, leaving her mind to run rampant with possibilities. Worse still is when Rebecca’s driver finally does make it to the house, because it means Keeley has to wait - and wait, and wait - for Roy and Jamie to come back, with not so much as a recounting of Rebecca’s date to pull her focus.
Which means her nerves and curiosity are just about shot by the time they do arrive, the headlights of Roy’s car shining into the living room as they’ve done a million times before. When she opens the front door, Roy looks more or less as he always does: cross, with a side of impatience.
But Jamie …
Alarmed, she takes in the blotchy pallor of his skin, the tight, brittle set of his mouth, his body wound taut as a string. It all combines to open up a black hole in the pit of her stomach - she’s seen a similar look on him before. Only once, but there’s no doubt in her mind as to why it’s there.
It scared her a year and a half ago in his stark white kitchen, and it scares her now.
Her voice comes out almost shrill. “Hi! Guest room is -”
“Upstairs to the right,” Jamie fills in dully. “I remember.”
She waits for him to pad miserably in that direction and turn the shower on, then asks Roy, “It’s his dad, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” he replies with a humorless laugh. “How’d you know?”
The hole widens. She’d hoped she was wrong. “Lucky guess.”
Roy tilts his head in interest. “Have you met him?”
“No, I haven’t even seen a picture. I’d said once that since I’d met his mum I should meet his dad, too, and he just … lost it.” A chill washes over her at the memory. “He’d never snapped at me like that before. Or since.”
“He did what?”
“Not like that,” she assures. “He wasn’t angry, he was … scared.”
More like fucking terrified.
She hadn’t wanted to think too hard back then about what it meant that Jamie reacted so strongly to the mere possibility of her meeting his dad. She hadn’t had the bandwidth to deal with it. She doesn’t have to think about it now either - Roy’s face says it all.
She steps forward to wrap her arms around him; whatever had gone on, it had clearly rattled him, too. He slowly relaxes into the hug, muscles unwinding. After several minutes, the sound of running water shuts off, and Roy pulls back. He seems less primed for a fight, which she considers a win.
Gesturing upstairs, she says, “I should probably check on him. See where his head’s at.”
“Good luck.” Roy’s brow is furrowed in concern she wouldn’t have thought in a million years would be for Jamie, of all people. “I’ll make some tea.”
She doubts Jamie will want tea, but she knows Roy needs to feel useful, so she gives him what smile she can muster and pecks his cheek in acknowledgement. As he steps into the kitchen, Keeley heads up the stairs to the guest room.
“Jamie?” she calls, rapping on the door. “Can I come in?”
“It’s your house.” He sounds spent.
He looks it, too. Despite being freshly showered, his eyes are red and his knees are drawn up to his chest as he leans against the bed’s headboard. She takes a seat next to him, only now noticing the awkward way his hand rests on the comforter, fingers half-curled. Gingerly, she picks it up to examine. His knuckles are abraded and swollen, and when she brushes her thumb across them, he lets out a sharp yelp, reflexively jerking his arm back. She hopes he’d had it X-rayed before they left Wembley - Roy’s knee is proof enough of what happens when an injury goes ignored.
“We should put some ice on that. It’ll be worse if we don’t.”
Jamie bristles. “’M fine, Keeley. I ain’t a fucking child.”
He grabs his mobile from the bedside table to mindlessly, masochistically cycle through half a dozen social media apps, all of which seem to have as many posts about him specifically - rather, his performance - as the team itself. It pains her to see him like this, to think of the calamitous circumstances that had to occur to make him this way.
She plucks the phone from him and pokes him in the ribs. “Stop that. You are not fine. And you don’t have to be.”
“Yeah, I do. I should be.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
Jamie drops his eyes, but not quickly enough to hide the fresh tears that well there, nor the wet hiccup dragged from his chest.
Keeley squeezes his knee. “Hey. You don’t have to pretend, Jamie. Not with me.”
“I know.”
“Good. Do you want me to give you some space?”
Jamie takes a shuddering breath, holds it, then lets it back out. “No, not really.”
She thought as much. A fool could see he’s currently holding himself together with string and sellotape. If her company can provide him some small bit of solace, she’s not about to refuse it.
Jamie eases himself down with his back to her, grunting a little in pain at the movement. She places her hand on his side and lets the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest remind her that he’s alive, he’s safe. For tonight, at least, James can no longer reach him.
Roy passes the room once, peering inside with a cup of tea as promised, the concerned frown still on his face. She mouths, “In a minute,” and he dutifully steps out of the doorframe and down the hall to her bedroom.
When finally the stiff tension leeches from Jamie’s body as he slips into well-deserved sleep, she carefully wriggles free of him. She winces as the mattress shifts beneath her, but Jamie doesn’t stir. It’s no wonder, she thinks; between the match and the confrontation, he must be exhausted. She grabs some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, fills a glass of water, and places both on the bedside table.
At the lightswitch, she pauses. It had always caught her off-guard how young he looked when he slept, his face smoothed of a smirk or worry or fatigue or a chip on his shoulder. So does it now - like this, he’s just a boy from North Manchester with the world at his feet.
Roy glances up from the latest novel he’s a decade too late to when she makes her way to the bedroom, though by the expression on his face and the page to which the book is opened, she doesn’t think he’s actually read much of it in the past hour.
“How is he?” Roy asks.
“Sleeping.” Keeley closes the door. “So, what happened? Jamie wasn’t exactly forthcoming on details.”
“Don’t know what he thought would fucking happen, getting his dad tickets and letting him in the dressing room like that.” Roy snaps the book shut and tosses it aside with a thump. “Little prick never stood a chance, did he? You should’ve seen him. Just shut down, let himself be torn apart. The shit his father was saying to him, it …”
Roy doesn’t finish his sentence, clenching his jaw so hard she can hear the grinding of his teeth.
“Jamie … doesn’t do well with conflict.” She thinks about how he’d reacted to the texts James had sent, how he’d flinched when the mugs broke. “His dad turns him into a kid again.”
“Looked like he was fucking twelve.”
“I saw his hand,” she says. “Is that what ended things?”
“Yeah. Piece of shit took a shot at the team, and Jamie popped him.” A hint of a smile quirks Roy’s lips. “Couldn’t’ve done it better myself.”
Maybe she should feel proud, or relieved, but all she feels is sorrow. For Jamie to reach such a breaking point as to hit anyone, let alone his own father, no wonder he looked like he’d been put through a meat grinder.
“I should’ve known,” Roy murmurs. “I’m his coach. I was his captain. How did I not notice?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” she admits. “I dated him for six months and he never let on. I figured his dad was a dick, but not like this. Jamie hid it from everyone, even me.”
Worry and doubt pass over Roy’s face in equal measure. “Think he’ll be okay?”
“Eventually. He’s resilient, that one.”
Roy takes a beat. All the compassion, sadness, and satisfaction that had colored his voice in turn during their conversation vanish, leaving only ice. “If I ever see that man again, I’ll kill him, Keeley. I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill him.”
She wakes before Roy’s alarm goes off, as ever unable to make her brain realize that it’s a Sunday and she can have a lie-in. She doesn’t have to get out of bed just yet, at least; Roy, however, has an unpleasant day ahead of watching game film from last night’s disaster. Keeley offers him a sympathetic peck as he heads out, not particularly envying him having to go back and analyze everything that went wrong.
The door to the guest bedroom remains shut half an hour later when she ambles downstairs to put on a pot of coffee, which is a surprise. Rarely a deep sleeper to begin with, Jamie had always roused at the crack of dawn. She could probably count on one hand the number of times he even made it to seven thirty. Yet the door is closed, with no sign it had ever been opened at all.
While the coffee percolates, she pulls out her mobile and types out a text to Rebecca with the promised explanation.
So, last night: I don’t know all the details, but there was a confrontation with Jamie’s dad in the dressing room. It was pretty bad.
The reply is as instantaneous as it is succinct.
Leave it to me. This will not happen again.
Keeley exhales. She doesn’t know exactly what Rebecca plans to do, but if Rebecca says it’ll be taken care of, then it will.
As though aware he’s become the topic of conversation, Jamie promptly wanders into the kitchen. “Morning,” she greets, stowing her mobile. “I made some coffee. Do you want any?”
He looks only marginally less wrecked than he did last night, but that’s better than the alternative. “Sure.”
She obliges, pulling down from the cabinet the mug adorned with foul-mouthed songbirds that once had all but had his name on it. She scrunches up her nose as she pours in coffee and nothing else; she’s never understood how he can enjoy it black. “How’d you sleep?”
“Yeah, good. Fine.”
As he brings the mug up to take a sip, she catches sight of his hand. Unlike his face, it looks far worse than it did last night, his knuckles now mottled blue and purple. It may well be too late, but she quickly goes to the freezer, withdraws a bag of peas, and wraps it in a towel.
“Put this on your hand,” she orders.
“I don’t -”
“Do not argue with me.”
He reluctantly does as he’s bid, wincing at the pressure and the cold. He meets her eyes for just a moment when she joins him at the table before averting them. “Listen, I, uh. I wanted to say thanks. For … y’know.”
“It’s the least I could do.” She gauges his expression, then ventures, “Why didn’t you tell me, Jamie? All that time and I never knew.”
Jamie’s fingers tense around his mug. “Why would I?”
“So you wouldn’t have to deal with it by yourself, obviously.”
“I deserved to.”
With great difficulty, she refrains from voicing any objection to that. He wouldn’t take it well, and the last thing she wants to do right now is have him put his guard up.
“You still should have told me.”
He stares down into the black depths of his coffee. “You were the only thing in my life he hadn’t touched, Keeley. I couldn’t keep him away from me, or Mum, or football, but I could keep him the fuck away from you.”
“I could’ve handled it.”
“I know. But I couldn’t. And I didn’t want you to treat me like you are now.”
“How am I treating you?”
“With fucking … pity.”
“Okay, first of all, I am not. As for last night, anyone would’ve reacted the way you did. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She reaches across the table to hold his good hand in both of hers. “I mean it. It takes a lot of strength to come out the other side of something like that.”
“S’pose.” He glances around, as if only just noticing they’re the only ones in the house. “Roy here?”
“No, he’s at the club. Film day.”
“Oh, right.” He sounds relieved.
“Why, are you avoiding him?”
Color rises in Jamie’s cheeks. “Trying to. Don’t know what I’m supposed to say after - that. I bloody cried.”
“Have you met Roy?” Keeley asks. “He wouldn’t start that conversation if you paid him.”
Silence falls between them, a comfortable one, punctuated only by the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall and the birds chittering outside. She’d forgotten about this, the ease she used to feel with him when there were no cameras or fans or teammates to rile up. Not that the calm ever lasted, of course. Sooner or later, Jamie realized he was allowing his soft center to be glimpsed, and as abruptly as a spooked horse, he would pull away like it was some kind of character flaw to show vulnerability. That it was her alone to see it didn’t seem to matter.
Round and round and round it went.
For so long, she’d desperately wanted to know why he kept those walls unscalable, why he panicked at letting her in too far. Now she does, and part of her wishes she didn’t.
“So,” she says, quelling her spiral, “do you have any plans today?”
To her surprise, he smiles. “Yeah. Mum fixed it with work to come down. She texted about the loss, asked if I were free.”
The reason for the visit aside, Keeley’s glad for it. Not only that he’ll have someone to look after him, but that the rift between the two of them has continued to mend. “Tell her hi from me.”
“I will.”
She startles as the honk of a car horn outside blares into the kitchen. “Who -?”
“I called a taxi,” Jamie says. “Gotta get my car from the club.”
“You called a taxi for that? Don’t be silly, I’ll take you.”
Jamie’s good humor fades. “Had enough charity, I think.”
A lift isn’t charity, but she sees the strain in his expression, the tension beginning to seep into his shoulders, so she backs down. “All right, well … drive safe then.”
He rolls his eyes. “I can manage.”
The taxi honks again. Jamie quickly drains the rest of his coffee, sets the mug in the sink, and heads to the door. She follows, giving him a tight, brief hug. “Don’t ever forget you have people who care about you,” she says. “And don’t let your dad get in your head either, okay? He isn’t worth it.”
Jamie holds her gaze, searching for something there. Whatever it is he was looking for, he apparently finds it, for a moment later he takes a decisive step back. With that, he hoists his duffel over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.
It isn’t until she’s stripping the linens from his bed that she realizes he’d never answered.
Fandom(s): Ted Lasso
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,186
Summary: Alarmed, she takes in the blotchy pallor of his skin, the tight, brittle set of his mouth, his body wound taut as a string. It all combines to open up a black hole in the pit of her stomach - she’s seen a similar look on him before. It scared her a year and a half ago in Jamie’s stark white kitchen, and it scares her now.
Author’s Notes: Throwing my hat in the ring of fics dealing with the aftermath of Man City that we should’ve gotten but didn’t.
The match is a shitshow. A slaughter. A catastrophe.
Sam had a good defensive maneuver in the first half and Jamie had a decent chance on goal in the second, but she’d barely call those bright spots, and would struggle mightily to say there were any others. If she is feeling gutted by the loss, she can’t fathom how Roy and the rest of the team must be feeling. To lose is one thing, to lose big is another, but to lose big at Wembley in the FA Cup, to Jamie’s former team no less, is in a league of its own.
Rebecca joins her down at the exit to the dressing rooms, for moral support more than anything else. Keeley scans each somber player that passes through the doors, frown deepening the longer she doesn’t see Roy. She doesn’t see Beard either, but his absence she at least gets an answer for: An uncharacteristically distracted Ted informs one of the assistant coaches that he’s taking a walk, or so she overhears.
Her frown deepens when Isaac, the last straggler, walks up to her, hands stuffed in the pockets of his zip-up and a dark, acidic glower on his face. “Roy wanted me to ask if you could get a lift home with Rebecca. He wants to take the car.”
“Why?” Roy is no stranger to seething after a bad loss, but he’s never avoided it, let alone with her. On the contrary, usually he has plenty of things to say.
“Dunno,” says Isaac, in the kind of tone that tells her he knows exactly why. He glances over his shoulder at the bus. “I should get back to the team.”
Keeley nods. As much as her curiosity and dread are rising, she trusts that once Roy gets home, he’ll fill her in. “All right. Thank you, Isaac.”
She considers offering some condolences, but refrains. She doubts any of the players would take that to heart, and Isaac more than anyone feels the weight of losses. As captain, it’s his responsibility to feel such things. As a firebrand, he would feel them anyway.
Rebecca obliges her the lift, and it’s only once they’re on the motorway that Keeley realizes there’s one other person she hadn’t seen: Jamie.
She gets an explanatory text ten minutes later - at least, as explanatory as Roy’s texts ever are.
jamie’s with me. talk later
Keeley reads the message four times, trying and failing to make sense of it.
“Everything all right?” Rebecca prompts.
“Not sure. Roy says he’s got Jamie with him.”
Rebecca blinks. “He’s got who with him?”
“Jamie,” she repeats. “Something must’ve happened in the dressing room.”
“Like what?”
“No idea. I’ll text you when I figure that out.”
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Rebecca says. “Really, anything.”
“I will - oh!” Keeley exclaims, remembering there is some other business that is very much unfinished, “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your date.”
She can’t quite tell in the dimness of the car, but she’s pretty sure Rebecca blushes. “You’ve got more important things to worry about now. That can wait.”
“Not for long,” Keeley warns, leveling Rebecca with a glare. “You’re going to spill whether you want to or not.”
It isn’t that far from Wembley to her house, in the grand scheme of things. But when one is waiting for something, an hour can feel like a lifetime. No further text comes from Roy, leaving her mind to run rampant with possibilities. Worse still is when Rebecca’s driver finally does make it to the house, because it means Keeley has to wait - and wait, and wait - for Roy and Jamie to come back, with not so much as a recounting of Rebecca’s date to pull her focus.
Which means her nerves and curiosity are just about shot by the time they do arrive, the headlights of Roy’s car shining into the living room as they’ve done a million times before. When she opens the front door, Roy looks more or less as he always does: cross, with a side of impatience.
But Jamie …
Alarmed, she takes in the blotchy pallor of his skin, the tight, brittle set of his mouth, his body wound taut as a string. It all combines to open up a black hole in the pit of her stomach - she’s seen a similar look on him before. Only once, but there’s no doubt in her mind as to why it’s there.
It scared her a year and a half ago in his stark white kitchen, and it scares her now.
Her voice comes out almost shrill. “Hi! Guest room is -”
“Upstairs to the right,” Jamie fills in dully. “I remember.”
She waits for him to pad miserably in that direction and turn the shower on, then asks Roy, “It’s his dad, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that,” he replies with a humorless laugh. “How’d you know?”
The hole widens. She’d hoped she was wrong. “Lucky guess.”
Roy tilts his head in interest. “Have you met him?”
“No, I haven’t even seen a picture. I’d said once that since I’d met his mum I should meet his dad, too, and he just … lost it.” A chill washes over her at the memory. “He’d never snapped at me like that before. Or since.”
“He did what?”
“Not like that,” she assures. “He wasn’t angry, he was … scared.”
More like fucking terrified.
She hadn’t wanted to think too hard back then about what it meant that Jamie reacted so strongly to the mere possibility of her meeting his dad. She hadn’t had the bandwidth to deal with it. She doesn’t have to think about it now either - Roy’s face says it all.
She steps forward to wrap her arms around him; whatever had gone on, it had clearly rattled him, too. He slowly relaxes into the hug, muscles unwinding. After several minutes, the sound of running water shuts off, and Roy pulls back. He seems less primed for a fight, which she considers a win.
Gesturing upstairs, she says, “I should probably check on him. See where his head’s at.”
“Good luck.” Roy’s brow is furrowed in concern she wouldn’t have thought in a million years would be for Jamie, of all people. “I’ll make some tea.”
She doubts Jamie will want tea, but she knows Roy needs to feel useful, so she gives him what smile she can muster and pecks his cheek in acknowledgement. As he steps into the kitchen, Keeley heads up the stairs to the guest room.
“Jamie?” she calls, rapping on the door. “Can I come in?”
“It’s your house.” He sounds spent.
He looks it, too. Despite being freshly showered, his eyes are red and his knees are drawn up to his chest as he leans against the bed’s headboard. She takes a seat next to him, only now noticing the awkward way his hand rests on the comforter, fingers half-curled. Gingerly, she picks it up to examine. His knuckles are abraded and swollen, and when she brushes her thumb across them, he lets out a sharp yelp, reflexively jerking his arm back. She hopes he’d had it X-rayed before they left Wembley - Roy’s knee is proof enough of what happens when an injury goes ignored.
“We should put some ice on that. It’ll be worse if we don’t.”
Jamie bristles. “’M fine, Keeley. I ain’t a fucking child.”
He grabs his mobile from the bedside table to mindlessly, masochistically cycle through half a dozen social media apps, all of which seem to have as many posts about him specifically - rather, his performance - as the team itself. It pains her to see him like this, to think of the calamitous circumstances that had to occur to make him this way.
She plucks the phone from him and pokes him in the ribs. “Stop that. You are not fine. And you don’t have to be.”
“Yeah, I do. I should be.”
“No, you shouldn’t.”
Jamie drops his eyes, but not quickly enough to hide the fresh tears that well there, nor the wet hiccup dragged from his chest.
Keeley squeezes his knee. “Hey. You don’t have to pretend, Jamie. Not with me.”
“I know.”
“Good. Do you want me to give you some space?”
Jamie takes a shuddering breath, holds it, then lets it back out. “No, not really.”
She thought as much. A fool could see he’s currently holding himself together with string and sellotape. If her company can provide him some small bit of solace, she’s not about to refuse it.
Jamie eases himself down with his back to her, grunting a little in pain at the movement. She places her hand on his side and lets the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest remind her that he’s alive, he’s safe. For tonight, at least, James can no longer reach him.
Roy passes the room once, peering inside with a cup of tea as promised, the concerned frown still on his face. She mouths, “In a minute,” and he dutifully steps out of the doorframe and down the hall to her bedroom.
When finally the stiff tension leeches from Jamie’s body as he slips into well-deserved sleep, she carefully wriggles free of him. She winces as the mattress shifts beneath her, but Jamie doesn’t stir. It’s no wonder, she thinks; between the match and the confrontation, he must be exhausted. She grabs some ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet, fills a glass of water, and places both on the bedside table.
At the lightswitch, she pauses. It had always caught her off-guard how young he looked when he slept, his face smoothed of a smirk or worry or fatigue or a chip on his shoulder. So does it now - like this, he’s just a boy from North Manchester with the world at his feet.
Roy glances up from the latest novel he’s a decade too late to when she makes her way to the bedroom, though by the expression on his face and the page to which the book is opened, she doesn’t think he’s actually read much of it in the past hour.
“How is he?” Roy asks.
“Sleeping.” Keeley closes the door. “So, what happened? Jamie wasn’t exactly forthcoming on details.”
“Don’t know what he thought would fucking happen, getting his dad tickets and letting him in the dressing room like that.” Roy snaps the book shut and tosses it aside with a thump. “Little prick never stood a chance, did he? You should’ve seen him. Just shut down, let himself be torn apart. The shit his father was saying to him, it …”
Roy doesn’t finish his sentence, clenching his jaw so hard she can hear the grinding of his teeth.
“Jamie … doesn’t do well with conflict.” She thinks about how he’d reacted to the texts James had sent, how he’d flinched when the mugs broke. “His dad turns him into a kid again.”
“Looked like he was fucking twelve.”
“I saw his hand,” she says. “Is that what ended things?”
“Yeah. Piece of shit took a shot at the team, and Jamie popped him.” A hint of a smile quirks Roy’s lips. “Couldn’t’ve done it better myself.”
Maybe she should feel proud, or relieved, but all she feels is sorrow. For Jamie to reach such a breaking point as to hit anyone, let alone his own father, no wonder he looked like he’d been put through a meat grinder.
“I should’ve known,” Roy murmurs. “I’m his coach. I was his captain. How did I not notice?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” she admits. “I dated him for six months and he never let on. I figured his dad was a dick, but not like this. Jamie hid it from everyone, even me.”
Worry and doubt pass over Roy’s face in equal measure. “Think he’ll be okay?”
“Eventually. He’s resilient, that one.”
Roy takes a beat. All the compassion, sadness, and satisfaction that had colored his voice in turn during their conversation vanish, leaving only ice. “If I ever see that man again, I’ll kill him, Keeley. I swear to god, I’ll fucking kill him.”
She wakes before Roy’s alarm goes off, as ever unable to make her brain realize that it’s a Sunday and she can have a lie-in. She doesn’t have to get out of bed just yet, at least; Roy, however, has an unpleasant day ahead of watching game film from last night’s disaster. Keeley offers him a sympathetic peck as he heads out, not particularly envying him having to go back and analyze everything that went wrong.
The door to the guest bedroom remains shut half an hour later when she ambles downstairs to put on a pot of coffee, which is a surprise. Rarely a deep sleeper to begin with, Jamie had always roused at the crack of dawn. She could probably count on one hand the number of times he even made it to seven thirty. Yet the door is closed, with no sign it had ever been opened at all.
While the coffee percolates, she pulls out her mobile and types out a text to Rebecca with the promised explanation.
So, last night: I don’t know all the details, but there was a confrontation with Jamie’s dad in the dressing room. It was pretty bad.
The reply is as instantaneous as it is succinct.
Leave it to me. This will not happen again.
Keeley exhales. She doesn’t know exactly what Rebecca plans to do, but if Rebecca says it’ll be taken care of, then it will.
As though aware he’s become the topic of conversation, Jamie promptly wanders into the kitchen. “Morning,” she greets, stowing her mobile. “I made some coffee. Do you want any?”
He looks only marginally less wrecked than he did last night, but that’s better than the alternative. “Sure.”
She obliges, pulling down from the cabinet the mug adorned with foul-mouthed songbirds that once had all but had his name on it. She scrunches up her nose as she pours in coffee and nothing else; she’s never understood how he can enjoy it black. “How’d you sleep?”
“Yeah, good. Fine.”
As he brings the mug up to take a sip, she catches sight of his hand. Unlike his face, it looks far worse than it did last night, his knuckles now mottled blue and purple. It may well be too late, but she quickly goes to the freezer, withdraws a bag of peas, and wraps it in a towel.
“Put this on your hand,” she orders.
“I don’t -”
“Do not argue with me.”
He reluctantly does as he’s bid, wincing at the pressure and the cold. He meets her eyes for just a moment when she joins him at the table before averting them. “Listen, I, uh. I wanted to say thanks. For … y’know.”
“It’s the least I could do.” She gauges his expression, then ventures, “Why didn’t you tell me, Jamie? All that time and I never knew.”
Jamie’s fingers tense around his mug. “Why would I?”
“So you wouldn’t have to deal with it by yourself, obviously.”
“I deserved to.”
With great difficulty, she refrains from voicing any objection to that. He wouldn’t take it well, and the last thing she wants to do right now is have him put his guard up.
“You still should have told me.”
He stares down into the black depths of his coffee. “You were the only thing in my life he hadn’t touched, Keeley. I couldn’t keep him away from me, or Mum, or football, but I could keep him the fuck away from you.”
“I could’ve handled it.”
“I know. But I couldn’t. And I didn’t want you to treat me like you are now.”
“How am I treating you?”
“With fucking … pity.”
“Okay, first of all, I am not. As for last night, anyone would’ve reacted the way you did. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She reaches across the table to hold his good hand in both of hers. “I mean it. It takes a lot of strength to come out the other side of something like that.”
“S’pose.” He glances around, as if only just noticing they’re the only ones in the house. “Roy here?”
“No, he’s at the club. Film day.”
“Oh, right.” He sounds relieved.
“Why, are you avoiding him?”
Color rises in Jamie’s cheeks. “Trying to. Don’t know what I’m supposed to say after - that. I bloody cried.”
“Have you met Roy?” Keeley asks. “He wouldn’t start that conversation if you paid him.”
Silence falls between them, a comfortable one, punctuated only by the quiet ticking of the clock on the wall and the birds chittering outside. She’d forgotten about this, the ease she used to feel with him when there were no cameras or fans or teammates to rile up. Not that the calm ever lasted, of course. Sooner or later, Jamie realized he was allowing his soft center to be glimpsed, and as abruptly as a spooked horse, he would pull away like it was some kind of character flaw to show vulnerability. That it was her alone to see it didn’t seem to matter.
Round and round and round it went.
For so long, she’d desperately wanted to know why he kept those walls unscalable, why he panicked at letting her in too far. Now she does, and part of her wishes she didn’t.
“So,” she says, quelling her spiral, “do you have any plans today?”
To her surprise, he smiles. “Yeah. Mum fixed it with work to come down. She texted about the loss, asked if I were free.”
The reason for the visit aside, Keeley’s glad for it. Not only that he’ll have someone to look after him, but that the rift between the two of them has continued to mend. “Tell her hi from me.”
“I will.”
She startles as the honk of a car horn outside blares into the kitchen. “Who -?”
“I called a taxi,” Jamie says. “Gotta get my car from the club.”
“You called a taxi for that? Don’t be silly, I’ll take you.”
Jamie’s good humor fades. “Had enough charity, I think.”
A lift isn’t charity, but she sees the strain in his expression, the tension beginning to seep into his shoulders, so she backs down. “All right, well … drive safe then.”
He rolls his eyes. “I can manage.”
The taxi honks again. Jamie quickly drains the rest of his coffee, sets the mug in the sink, and heads to the door. She follows, giving him a tight, brief hug. “Don’t ever forget you have people who care about you,” she says. “And don’t let your dad get in your head either, okay? He isn’t worth it.”
Jamie holds her gaze, searching for something there. Whatever it is he was looking for, he apparently finds it, for a moment later he takes a decisive step back. With that, he hoists his duffel over his shoulder, and then he’s gone.
It isn’t until she’s stripping the linens from his bed that she realizes he’d never answered.