Page 6 of Surrender
The last thing I want to do right now is see Gareth Harris. He’s the one client of mine whom I actually respect. He’s the one client who has never once looked down his nose at me or made me feel insignificant in the two years I’ve been styling him. Of all the people I’ve met in England since moving here, he’s the one I might even dare to call a friend.
But I don’t want him to see this side of me. I don’t want him to see me broken, so I will put on a professional front. I have to because soon I won’t be married anymore. Soon I’ll have to support myself and Sophia the way my mom supported me and my sisters. I won’t have access to Callum’s wealth. His mother made sure of that with our prenup.
I will need to be the single, working mother I grew up watching.
No. I need to be better.
I need to feel empowered by this new life and embrace my independence. I can do this. I can get control of my life again.
ASTIFFY PALACE.
That’s what my idiot of a brother, Tanner, calls my home.A stiffy palace. A sex mansion. A bone-a-thon fortress.I could keep going because his obnoxious phrases are endless, but repeating them might actually make me as stupid as him.
Standing in my dressing room, I drop the damp towel from around my waist and reach up to pull down a navy cotton T-shirt from a hanger. The selection disrupts the perfect rainbow of colours positioned exactly an inch apart from wooden hanger to wooden hanger, all meticulously ordered and hung with care. My closet, while obnoxiously large, is organised impeccably. It pretty much has to be considering one whole side of the wardrobe is made of clear glass that overlooks my bedroom, like a giant fishbowl.
My entire house is aquarium-like with floor-to-ceiling glass windows throughout, including my bedroom. It’s ironic considering I relocated to this secluded residence in rural Astbury to remove myself from the snow globe life I was living in Manchester. In my early twenties, I wanted to be immersed in the football scene. I lived in a posh downtown flat situated in the party district even though I rarely went out. My building had a butler and a chauffeur whom I never used. The paparazzi camped outside of my flat on a regular basis just to get a glimpse of what I ate for bloody lunch. And if it wasn’t photographers, it was fans trying to take pictures of me. I couldn’t go out for a coffee without feeling eyeballs on me.
That’s what being a Man U football player gets you. The city is obsessed with footy players. With two professional teams and the National Football Museum plopped right in the middle, the people around there eat, sleep, and breathe football. Everywhere you look, there’s someone wearing some sort of a team shirt or a street vendor selling foam fingers and flags. And it never fails that at every city park, there are a couple of old geezers on a bench, arguing over which Manchester team has more silver in their trophy cases.
It’s an odd feeling to be a part of something people are so obsessed with, but it’s the gig I signed up for. It’s the gig that’s made me millions. And it’s the sport that now holds my family together when we were once ripped apart completely.
Our father, Vaughn Harris, was a star striker for Man U back when they won the FA Cup in ‘83 and ‘85, but he quit when our mum got sick with cancer in ‘93. Without so much as a goodbye to the team, he broke his contract, sold the Manchester flat, and moved us all out to the empty mansion he owned just outside of London in Chigwell. There, our mum got sicker and sicker, and he got angrier and angrier. When she died, he became a shell of a man. He had the outward appearance of a human, but he was stone on the inside. He stayed that way for many years, and I was left to pick up the slack. To hold our family together.
It wasn’t until Bethnal Green F.C. came courting him to manage their team that he turned things around. But instead of atoning for what he’d done to all of us for so long, he simply acted like nothing happened. He started encouraging us to play football and embrace our God-given talents. My brothers were so eager and excited, I couldn’t say no to them.
So we played. We kicked a ball around and soon saw that we all had quick feet and the natural movement of footy players. It was in our blood. Dad enrolled us in the Bethnal Green Academy, so we pretty much grew up on the Tower Park pitch. Vi was there a lot, too, but never seemed interested in playing. She was on watch to make sure we all finished secondary school.
But school wasn’t something any of us spent much time on. We preferred retrieving balls and running plays with the team. Football was all Dad cared about, so it was all we did.
Essentially, our dad went from being our pathetic excuse of a father to our sports manager. We never had a say in the matter. We never even had a say in what team we played for. It was expected that we play for Bethnal. We were just players inhisgame.
I grab a pair of jeans off the shelf and slide them on, making sure to tuck every bit of me inside the denim before zipping up. Looking over my shoulder, I check the time on the large clock mounted on the wall next to three big screen TVs. A bit obnoxious for one room, but this is a bachelor pad. And with a family full of footballers, there’s usually more than one game I need to be watching at a time.
Sloan Montgomery is due to arrive any minute. Having a personal stylist is something my brothers tease me mercilessly about. But as the captain for Man U, I’m required to attend a lot of events. And the fact that I am so particular about my clothes means that having her help is a tremendous relief.
I’ve had difficulty wearing certain fabrics ever since I was a kid. Anything that feels stiff on my body—like bumpy seams or rough material—sends chills down my spine. Dad actually ordered our team football kits from a special company because of my issue.
Shopping was a nightmare, so I wore and re-wore the handful of clothes that worked for me. I’m not typically one to give a shit about gossip rags, but the papers started remarking on my appearance. So when I met Sloan at an endorsement shoot a couple of years ago and she knew exactly what was going on, it seemed like a no-brainer to hire her.
And let’s face it, between my Man U salary, product endorsements, and business investments, I have more money than I know what to do with. My empty fishbowl closet was also looking rather pathetic. Having someone fill it for me was the grown-up thing to do, even if the only other person who sees much of my home is my house manager, Dorinda.
Within a week, Sloan and her assistant flooded my closet with a whole new selection of soft shirts, pristine suits, expensive jeans, and boxers that I rarely wear. Items that don’t feel like wet polystyrene sliding against rubber. Sloan even took the time to remove the labels from the necklines. She pays attention to everything, so I never have to give clothes a second thought. I love that. The sense of confidence she has in my needs is a luxury I haven’t had too often in my life.
We’ve developed a sort of friendship over the last couple of years, which says a lot because I don’t really have friends. Sure I have teammates and my neighbour up the road, but I tend to keep everyone at arm’s length. I don’t have time for expectations. I’m also usually wary of people because, with the level of success I’ve achieved, it’s rare for me to meet someone who isn’t angling for something that’s self-serving.
Besides, if I did have free time, my siblings would most certainly find a way to consume every second of it. On any given day, I get a call from at least one of them. Often, it’s Booker checking in because he’s awkward and needy like that. Dad calls to talk football; Camden calls to talk women; and Tanner calls with a dick joke. Most of the time, it’s Vi relaying an issue that one of our fully grown, idiotic brothers is dealing with and how we’re going to handle it because handling things is what I do. I’ve been doing it since I was barely eight years old, and it’s become my lot in life.
Needless to say, I’m an extremely private person, so the fact that I connected with Sloan almost instantly when I met her wasn’t something that was easily ignored. There’s just something about her that’s easy to be around. Perhaps it was the way she instinctually knew how to touch me without me really having to tell her. It formed a bond between us.
And the views of her inside my bedroom for the past two years have been an added bonus. Looking is all I’ve ever done, though, because the rock on her finger isn’t something I would overlook. In fact, I annoyingly notice it every time she comes by. I also notice how she never speaks of her husband or her home life. She’s a stunning little untouchable mystery.
A million different scenarios have played in my mind about what Sloan’s life is like outside of my bedroom. I imagine she is unhappy in her marriage. I imagine her husband travels a lot and comes home just to fuck her. Not even asking, just taking. Constantly taking because it’s what he wants. I wonder if she ever orgasms. If she ever screams with pleasure. Or if her husband ever asks her whatshedesires. Whatheropinion is. I doubt it because the one thing I’ve learned about Sloan is that she can be a bit of a chameleon, which I find rather frustrating.
She’s been to my house numerous times for fittings and restocking my closet. Every time she arrives, she has an uncanny way of shifting her mood to what suits me. If I’m angry at my dad about something, or if we’ve lost a match and I’m in a foul state, she instinctually senses it and addresses me with care. Or if I’ve just gotten off the phone with one of my brothers, who always manage to make me laugh, she absorbs my demeanour like a sponge and projects a beaming reflection of warmth. I remember when Vi called to tell me she and her fiancé are having a girl. I was so bloody happy when Sloan showed up while I was on the phone. After I hung up, we were laughing so much, she could hardly take my measurements for the tux she was fitting me for.
I’ve never met anyone like her who is so adaptive. It makes me wonder if anyone ever alters to her mood. How much of herself does she suppress every day just to keep other people happy?
Who keeps Sloan happy?
