Page 111 of Playing to Win

He scoffed and raised his head to glare at her. “It’s not that you weren’t here, it’s—”

“I know.” She held up a hand, shutting her eyes hard. “It was wrong of me to leave without warning. Especially on that day.”

“Then why did you?” The instant the question left his mouth, he already knew the answer:It was all too much.

“It was just…all too much for me.” She put a hand to her head. “It’s hard being in hospital, but sometimes getting out is even harder. When I’m inside, the only thing to worry about is getting well. But the moment I step outside those doors, I need to worry aboutstayingwell, and then the thousands of other…life things to manage on top of it.”

Colin swallowed. “So your family—your children—we’re just a ‘life thing’ to ‘manage’? We’re a chore?”

“I know you cannae understand.” She dropped her hand but kept her gaze down, her eyelids looking like they weighed ten pounds each. “I hope you never truly understand.”

Colin bit his upper lip hard for a moment before replying. “I understand you’ve nae energy to give us, aside from the odd appearance like today.” He took a deep breath. “I’m not saying that to be a dick. I really do get it. I get that we’re only to have a small piece of you, probably for the rest of our lives. But that means you only get a small piece of us, too.”

She nodded, head bent, hair swaying against her cheeks. “I accept that.”

“Good.” His tongue hit thedeven harder than usual. When he opened his mouth to speak again, his throat felt suddenly clogged with tears. So his words rushed out in one great torrent. “Thanks for coming to the match, but next time a wee warning, okay? Okay.”

Then he turned his back on her and walked toward the bench, where Charlotte was speaking quietly with a sullen-looking Evan. As Colin sat on the grass for his cool-down, his manager looked over and met his eyes.

Her brows rose, questioning. He gave her a quick, tight nod, then straightened and spread his legs for a hamstring stretch, setting the stress-toy football between his feet where Charlotte could see it.

Her slow smirk was all he needed to feel sane again.

= = =

Wednesday night, hours before referendum voting was to begin, Andrew declined several fashionable “Doomsday” party invitations throughout London. Instead he opted to return to his uncle’s Knightsbridge terrace home for an early bedtime with Colin.

Notliterallywith him, of course, a fact that hurt more each night they slept apart. On the plus side, it was much easier to have heart-to-heart conversations when they were separated by three hundred fifty miles rather than a couch cushion or two. Neither of them could interrupt the other with a kiss or a distracting hand on a thigh.

It meant they were finally sharing innermost secrets, ones they’d been afraid to tell—and afraid to hear.

“So why did you stop cutting?” Andrew asked Colin as he prepared a cup of chamomile tea, hoping to get a decent night’s sleep.

At the other end of the line, Colin started to answer, but then stopped. “Funny, you’re the first person ever to ask me that. Most people ask why I started.”

“I can guess why you started. Hold on a moment.” As Andrew left the empty kitchen and passed the sitting room, he waved goodnight to his cousin Karen, who was sprawled across her boyfriend’s lap in front of the television. Then he carried his tea up the carpeted spiral staircase to the guest room.

Andrew entered his guest bedroom and shut the door. “My guess is that you were in a great deal of homophobia-induced pain,” he told Colin, “but you couldn’t express it at home because your mum had so much pain of her own. You may have even thought you were protecting her by hurting yourself.”

“Erm…yeah. Pretty much bang-on there. Wow.”

“Good. My distant second guess was Borderline Personality Disorder. I’ve a mate with BPD who burns himself whenever life gets dull.” He crossed the guest room to the window overlooking a now-quiet Walton Street. “Back to my original question—why did you stop?”

“My mother found me one day in the bathroom with a razor and thought I was trying to kill myself. Of course shewouldthink that, since she’d—you know, had those thoughts herself a lot. Anyway, she took me to a therapist, who told Mum that not only was I not trying to kill myself, my cutting was helping me stay alive.”

“It was how you coped.” Sipping his tea, Andrew watched the elderly Mrs. Sturridge from across the street return from taking her trio of pugs on their nightly walk through Lennox Gardens.

“Aye. It’s funny, after that, Mum got—I don’t know, softer? More like a mother. My whole life, she jumped down my throat about every little mistake I made, but this…she didnae.”

Andrew closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the window, wishing he could make Colin understand how amazing he was. George and Elizabeth had belittled Andrew growing up, but they were merely siblings. How much worse must it be to have your ownmotherrun you down? “I’m glad she was more supportive after that,” he told Colin.

“Uh-huh. So anyway, when I mentioned in session that the worst part of being outed was having to quit football, my therapist told me about a club in North Glasgow called the Warriors.”

Andrew smiled. “And the rest is history.”

“Not exactly. I had to wait until I was sixteen to be eligible. Then I failed my first trial with Charlotte, so I joined a team in a gay football league, which was great fun but not exactly high-level play. Then on my second Warriors trial, I made the team, and the next season I was starting.”

“It must have felt good to find kindred spirits.”

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