Page 106 of More Than I Can Bear

“So is he—?” I asked.

“If Adam gets this penalty kick, it’ll mean Carlton wins the fucking grand final!” Dad shouted.

After a few frantic phone calls and some big apologies to his agent, Adam was put forward for the AFL draft four years ago, and despite slim chances of being picked, he was signed by an AFL club. He’d spent a year at St Kilda, one of the smaller clubs, but his performance and some canny negotiations by his agent, had him being picked up by the Carlton Football Club. By the look on his face and Dad’s, this was a very good thing. He’d spent the last few years proving himself, dealing with injuries, exhausting training regimes and media attention, so much media attention, but that all led us to here.

“It’s all on his shoulders?” I asked, feeling a pang of fear.

Don’t be scared, River said, grabbing my hand.Adam’s got this.

“That’s right!” Dad crowed. “Kick the fucking shit out of it, mate! You can do it, Adam!”

And that’s when my focus narrowed down.

The sound of the crowd dropped away first, then the madly waving presence of all the fans. One side of the stadium was urging Adam on, and the other half was cursing his name. They didn’t matter. I sucked in a breath and then reached out, across the top of so many heads, over the field, down, down, down to where Adam was a tiny presence on the field. He tossed the ball in the air reflexively, then dropped his head down and trotted forward. I went with him.

You can do this, I whispered inside his mind.

I didn’t throw him off his game. Nothing could, because when he was like this, I felt it. An iron control, a total focus, which was usually directed at me, but now it was entirely down on the footy field. Here we needed to be the ones to carry him forward. Kaine set his beer down and leaned forward as well, River shifting closer. The three of us must’ve looked like a strange sight, but we knew what our job was today. Carlton had a secret weapon and we were it.

It felt like our feet picked up speed as Adam got closer to the line, our bodies thrummed with barely contained power and as we got closer, our eyes didn’t drop for a second from those goals. We saw it, over and over inside our minds, the ball going sailing through the air and between the goalposts, the umpire darting forward to raise both hands and indicate we’d kicked a goal. We saw it so fucking clearly, that when the ball hit Adam’s boot, it was almost an afterthought.

Except it wasn’t.

He put every single iota of power he and the bear possessed into that kick, and we could see that as it went arcing up high, so fucking high. Kaine muttered something over and over as Dad started to shout, leaping to his feet and we were there with him. We had to be in order to follow the ball, because the entire stadium was on its feet, focussed on the progress of that distinctive brick-red Sherrin. Over and over it spun, looking like it was just going to keep climbing higher, right before it came crashing down.

“He’s gonna make it…” Dad growled. “He’s gonna make it. C’mon son, I’ll letcha walk my daughter down the aisle if you can just get this bastard past the posts. C’mon, mate, c’mon… You little bewdy!”

Everyone else in the stadium went wild when the ball landed squarely between the posts, but I knew how Adam felt. Faint, lightheaded, unreal, so much so that when his teammates slammed into him he barely felt it. Nothing but this. Our bond, locked tight, had him wavering on his feet as I was on mine, but not for long. I moved, forcing my way past people on our row of seats, then down the centre aisle. I heard my name called over and over as I wove my way past cheering fans, one goal in mind. People were already throwing themselves over the barrier of the pitch, but I was forced to do the same, because I heard this.

Freya…There was something keen, desperate and completely bewildered about Adam’s voice inside my head.Freya…

I’m coming,I promised and that’s when his head whipped around. His eyes locked with mine and I started to run, stumbling over the flat ground, as per usual, but still, I was moving as fast as I could, right as a pair of arms jerked me off my feet.

You said you wanted to ride the bear up Rundle Mall, River said, throwing me on his back and then running forward.Want me to take fur right now?

Don’t you bloody dare, Kaine replied with a scowl, but he kept pace with us.

“Fuck, Freya…” Adam slammed into me like a freight train, tearing me away from River and fisting my jersey in his hands as he sank his head into my hair. “Freya, love, we did it. We fucking did it.”

His voice cracked on the words, the pain and the need and the complete shock of everything that had happened hitting the four of us, along with this.

Bliss.

Journalists moved in, photographers taking shots at a rapid rate, something Jack would take us to task about later. The media did it all the time, coming up with wild theories about the nature of our relationship, but because we didn’t talk to them, that’s how they stayed. After everything, I’d learned something important.

The opinion of people you don’t know or value doesn’t matter, and can’t be what shapes your decisions about your life. It can’t stop you from doing the things you know you have to, so I threw my arms around Adam’s neck, felt the slick of his sweat, the rapid beat of his heart and focussed on what mattered the most: us.

Kaine stepped in then, pressing his head to Adam’s.

“You did good, kid.” He ruffled his brother’s hair and then let out a wild laugh. “Fuck, Adam, you did good.”

“I did?” Adam still seemed to be in a daze, unsure of what he’d just achieved, but then he nodded. “I did, didn’t I? I did it.”

“So how long do we have to stick around here for?” River asked, eyeing the crowds with a baleful eye.

“There’s the interviews and the media scrum and the premiership cup…” Adam looked at the three of us and then grinned. “Or we could just skive off.”

“Adam…” I said, holding out my hands, as if that would stop him when his mood was up. “Adam, no! The president of the club said… We have to…”

---