Page 25 of Poke the Bear

“What?” Rage, hopelessness, fear, but mostly white-hot anger, that’s what I got down the line. “What did you do?”

“I marked her, claimed her.” The bear roared inside me right then, both glorying in that fact, and insisting we go and find Freya now. “Before I could explain anything.”

“Fuck…”

Kaine shouted at me, no doubt waking up Mum and the dads, because I could hear muffled voices in the background. It didn’t stop him though. Every shitty thing he could think of, he brought up, listing all my failings. From the moment I fucked my brand new bike, playing the fool with my mates, before colliding with a car. I broke my bloody arm and my mother’s heart that day. Then there were the assignments I spaced on, that time I got pass-out drunk and the bear nearly came to the fore and…

“I know,” I said quietly, a weird kind of stillness settling over me. I looked down at the shoe I held cradled in the crook of my arm. I held it like a baby, staring at the cute little graphics that had been painstakingly painted on the canvas part of the Converse shoe.

“So what the fuck do we do about this then?” Kaine asked me, like he’d let me have a say over the situation, but… This time he’d have to. I turned around and walked back into Jack’s, ignoring her muttering as I told her what needed to happen.

“We need to set up a press conference,” I told her.

“Already on that shit,” she said, sitting down in front of her laptop and looking so tired. “I was organising that last night when you didn’t make it back for the announcement that you’d won that damn medal.” Her eyes narrowed. “The two of you couldn’t have just had a quickie, take the edge off and then come back down a little flushed and sit through the rest of that interminably boring ceremony? Fuck, Adam…”

“No.” I shook my head, then let out a sigh. “She was it for me. I wanted that medal so fucking much I could taste it, but not then. It was Freya, all Freya.”

“Then sit down, shithead,” she said, gesturing to the other seat at her table, “because we’re gonna have to find a way to spin this shit so the city doesn’t hate on you.”

Which was how, some hours later, I came to be standing before a small gathering of the local press.

I was neat, tidy, having gone home to shower and get dressed in clothes Jack approved of, before stepping up to the mic.

“Hey,” I said, hearing my voice echoing around the room via the microphone and wincing, before forging on. “I’m Adam Farrelly, proud winner of this year’s Magarey medal” When I held it up, flashes burst in a flurry, all of the photographers getting their shot. “I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to say this last night, but I’m bloody proud to have been this year’s winner. I feel like I’ve been working towards this moment my whole life…” My voice trailed away, because right now, winning seemed so fucking hollow without her. “And honestly, I can’t believe I’m standing here before you wearing it.”

I swallowed hard then, knowing I was about to go off script and Jack was gonna kill me for it. Maybe even the team manager too. But I had to use the platform I had to try and fix this shit.

“I couldn’t attend the final part of the ceremony because I ended up on my knees, praying to Huey.” There was an involuntary chuckle from the press gallery. “I had bacon and eggs for breakfast yesterday morning and didn’t bother to check the use-by date. They went down easy and came up just as quick. I’m sorry I let the fans down, my family and my club. I wanted to be there to claim the medal, but luckily for me, I had someone by my side to help me through my… gastrointestinal distress.”

Jack’s eyes widened and she shook her head sharply as I pulled the Converse out of the kit bag I was carrying and put it on the podium. What had come before was a stock standard mea culpa, as Jack called it, and I didn’t really have the press’ full attention until I did this.

“The lady in question left a shoe behind. Probably because I threw up over it. She gave it a good clean, but must’ve left it behind when she left me to sleep the horror off. I just want to get it back to her, so Freya.” I stared straight into the camera then, as if my gaze would somehow connect with hers. “I just want to get what’s yours back to you. Reach out and I’ll return it, all of it.”

The press was like an animal on a hunt, knowing there was a story there, but before I could answer a question, Jack stepped in.

“Adam’s still not feeling quite right,” she said, shooting me daggers. “So we’re going to have to leave that there for now. Thanks everyone for coming.” But afterwards she marched me back inside the club building, hand tucked into the crook of my arm, almost hauling me forward. “You really aren’t right, are you?”

She stabbed her finger into the air between us.

“We talked about this. We agreed on what was going to be said. You can’t use your platform to coerce Freya into a relationship with you.”

“Everything I said was true,” I said, holding up the shoe, then jerking it out of her reach as she lunged for it. “I just want to return what belongs to her.”

Including me. Heart, body and soul, that’s what carried me forward as I walked out of the club building and into a waiting car.

“You better not have fucked this up for us,” Kaine said, the minute I got in the passenger side seat. “This better work or—”

“She’s the one?”

River was a massive guy, something that helped him on the building site, because he didn’t say much. His shaggy black hair was falling in his face, but I saw the gleam in those grey eyes, right before he worked hard to hide it. I turned around and met his gaze.

“She’s the one. I had her once, so we can have her again. We’ll fix this, find her.” I glanced at my brother, sighing at the stiff set of his shoulders. “She’ll be ours.”

Because like it or not, Freya was already mine.

Chapter 14

Freya

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