Page 24 of The Thing About My Rival

Denial. I’m sure that’s the coping mechanism every good psychologist would recommend.

CHAPTER NINE

HUGO

My God, this city can feel like sitting in a bucket of sweat some mornings.

And given that no one’s shown up to training yet, I might as well have stayed inside enjoying the air-con.

Where the fuck is everyone, anyway?

There’s just me and the intern—I keep forgetting his name—who’s getting out the balls and the rest of the gear.

I’ve been standing on this sideline for twenty minutes without a sign of a single player turning up for practice.

Wilcox isn’t here either. Thank God. Best she keeps her widely spaced cones, fine arse, and sharing circles as far away from me as possible.

Sharing circles.

Jesus.

I’ve been standing here for so long my bad knee’s aching from inactivity. As sticky and humid as it is, I’m going to have to go for a bit of a jog to loosen it and stop it from seizing up.

I’ve already been to the gym this morning. Training before breakfast is a lifelong habit broken only during those first dark your-career-is-over days last year. And I’m never going back to that hellhole in my mind.

I head toward the north goal of the training field, away from the intern who’s now passing the time by kicking balls into an open net—badly.

Can’t remember the last time I ran around a pitch on my own. Probably not since I was a kid at Man United and would show up before anyone else. I was so in awe of even being allowed into the training ground that I wanted to spend as much time there as I possibly could. It was the stuff of dreams.

And it was nowhere near as bloody hot as here.

But still, there’s something magical about an empty pitch. Whether it’s a giant, glossy international venue or the slightly grotty training field next to the Commoners’ slightly grotty stadium. It’s like you’re one of the privileged few granted permission to be here when no one else is. All quiet and peaceful. Can even hear the birds singing. It’s almost meditative.

Christ, now I’m starting to sound likeher.

Wilcox has been taking up way more of my head space than I’d like. And not just because of this whole job fiasco.

No matter how much I’ve tried to rack my brains I cannot, for the life of me, remember exactly what happened in that cleaning closet in Paris. And that is one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever known—other than Wilcox herself, of course.

I remember chatting up a woman, who I now know was her, on the dance floor. And kissing her. But it’s driving me nuts that I don’t remember what itfeltlike. She does havepretty nice lips, so it might have been good. Why I’m so desperate to recall what it was like to have my tongue inside the mouth of the most irritating person I can imagine, whose methods are the exact opposite of mine, I have no idea.

But still, it would be nice to know.

It would be even nicer to know exactly what the fuck happened in that cupboard.

It’s so hard to stop thinking about how I’ve had my hands and mouth all over the woman I have to work with every day, the woman I have to beat to keep this job. Hell, it’s even possible Mr. Happy was inside her.

It’d be a damn shame if that’s what happened and my memory’s blanked it out.

Not because I want to shag her now. God, no. It’s just that if that’s what happened, it would be a terrible waste to not know what it felt like.

Did I hold onto those curved hips? Or have my mouth on that cloverleaf birthmark below her left ear?

I reach the goal, turn, and head back toward the other end. Still not a player in sight.

I gaze up at the vibrant, cloudless sky.

Maybe I took a bit too much of my frustration out on her over that whole circle situation yesterday.

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