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He inhales slowly. “And you were alone with all of that.”
That isn’t a question.
“I wasn’t alone. I had my family.”
Here’s proof that Luke has done his research. “I meant alone after you lost your father.” He winces while repeating how I’d described Dad to him outside the chapel. “Your number one supporter. Your first and best coach. Someone who almost made it himself and who got a second shot through you.” He apologises right away, then adds, “I didn’t realise you lost him only months after joining the soccer academy. And of course his passing meant your stepmother must have been distracted with your sisters?—”
“It was nothing to do with her,” I snap. “Or them,” I say more softly, and I can only guess my face shows some of the storm we all went through. I hear the same thunder that hammered in my head and heart during academy practice sessions when succeeding became even more vital.
For them.For the girls and Kirsty.
Luke quickly holds a hand up in another don’t-shoot gesture, so I focus on that image of a boulder because here’s the thing: I don’t remember my birth mother at all, but my stepmum? Kirsty is the living and breathing reason why that wordstepgets attached to mother or father. She stepped up for all of us—held up a boulder of her own after losing Dad—so I settle for saying, “She was under a lot of pressure.”
And what does pressure make?
The best and the brightest diamonds.
That means this emerges with a hard edge. “She absolutely would have been there for me if…”
“You’d told her what was happening to you?” He pauses. “If you’d shared how you were being guided? Moulded? Shaped into an elite player, no matter how?” Luke lowers his hands, his voice equally low. “That’s what I meant by asking who let you down, Hayden. All five of you. Because it sounds as if you and your family weren’t supported. Where were your new coaches in that bereavement process?”
He wants me to tell him everything.
To speak up about something I’ve done my best to forget.
He waits while my pause extends, his question still unanswered, so he rephrases again. “You were in pain?”
“Yeah.” This is so, so raspy. “I played through it.”
“Someone...” His next word choice feels careful. Testing, and quietly worried. “Someoneencouragedyou to do that, Hayden? To play even when you were hurting and showed you how?”
I nod, just barely, althoughencourageddoesn’t feel quite right for being faced with a team of coaches and club doctors. For being backed into a room with them. For having no one in my corner when the choices were made so simple.
Do what it takes to play or lose your shot forever.
Today I settle for repeating the motto painted on every surface at the academy. “No grass stains, no glory. No bruises, no story. Right?”
“So they encouraged you to…”
Bruise.
This pause is even longer. I still can’t fill it by speaking.
Because bruise doesn’t even come close, does it?
Luke inhales and exhales slowly. Does it again, his next exhale louder, and it takes me a moment to realise he’s reminding me to breathe along with him. Finally he says, “I’m sorry any of that happened to you.”
I can’t shake my head, or nod, or answer.
I’d had a chance most kids would kill for, a golden ticket to play a game I loved almost as much as Dad did. I was excellent at something physical and competitive that used to make me stretch myself to my limits and enjoy it.
Describing how quickly that went to shit is too much of a stretch for me now, and Luke sits in silence with that. And with me.
He finally breaks that silence by closing the book and touching the highest star that sparkles on its cover. “I’m guessing your father would be so proud of you.”
I only wish I could believe that.
And this.
