His to Win (The Alpha Soccer Saga #1) (6 page)

Patrick.

How’s Glasgow treating you, Ellie?”

A smile on her face and a hop to her step, Ellie read the same five words to herself over and over again.

At the midway point of Patrick’s final season under contract with London’s Chelsea Football Club, the team approached him with a one-year extension to his deal.

At age thirty-three, he’d lost a step and didn’t recover from the bumps and bruises quite as quickly as he used to, but he was still among the best central defenders in England thanks to his experience, fearlessness, physical strength, and indomitable will. He still lived up to the nickname given to him by the London tabloids, the Mad Monk. Mad, due to his blind intensity on the field and Monk, for his unrelenting devotion to bachelorhood. For several seasons the team had brought in young fullbacks who were expected to contend with Patrick for his minutes on the field and relegate him to the bench at some point, but he rebuffed each challenge.

Patrick politely declined the contract extension, thanking the team for all their continued interest in him, but it was time to leave the Premier League.

The chance to experience a different flavor of football somewhere else on the planet intrigued him, but the events of a blustery Saturday afternoon in Manchester two Novembers ago helped make the decision unlike anything else.

Chelsea was playing an important early season match against one of the other power teams in the Premier League, Manchester City.

City had a young Senegalese striker in the lineup that day named Tacko Seck. At just twenty years old and a hair under six-foot-five, Seck was all arms and legs, a lanky blur with alarming composure in front of the goal. Seck led Senegal to the U20 World Cup title game earlier that summer, and he’d scored a flurry of goals to begin his first season in England’s top flight.

“He’s a bloody flying machine, he is. We’ll be physical with him, steady him down a bit, and make him uncomfortable. We won’t have any special game plan, we’ll be organized and try to limit his touches. Same as we do with every opposing target man. He’s tall, jumps well, good in the air, everybody knows that. I’d like to think I know a thing or two about winning headers.” Patrick’s pregame quotes when asked about Seck appeared in all the papers. And appeared again the next day, although neither Patrick nor his Senegalese opponent were awake to read them.

Late in the first half, a Manchester City player dribbled into the right corner and crossed the ball into the middle. The cross was deflected by a sprawling Chelsea defender, and the ball zipped toward the goalpost, up high, near the crossbar. Patrick and Tacko both instinctively rose to meet the ball, long strides lifting them high into the air to either guide the ball into the net or deflect it harmlessly out of bounds. At the apex of their respective leaps, all four of their eyes tracking only the ball, their heads collided with a sickening crack.

Patrick landed awkwardly, hands not reacting to break his fall. Slow motion replays later confirmed that he was unconscious before he hit the ground.

Tacko Seck, on the other hand, stumbled away from the encounter. He appeared dazed, but he gave the bench and crowd a thumbs up and convinced the Manchester City medic that he was fit to continue playing.

Patrick Sievert, on the other hand, lay, unmoving, on the pitch at the City of Manchester Stadium, in a growing pool of blood. Players milled about, some daring to look, others shying away. Two Chelsea midfielders joined hands in prayer. A Manchester City defender vomited into a rubbish bin near the team bench.

The crowd was “Sixty thousand people collectively as silent as a child during Christmas Eve services at St. Paul’s Cathedral” according to a writer for one of the London dailies. After twenty minutes, Patrick was stretchered off the field, unresponsive, but no longer bleeding from the horrific gash over his left eye.

Patrick arrived at the hospital suffering from swelling on the brain, a shattered left orbital bone, a deep laceration above the left eye, and a fractured left cheekbone, among other, lesser, injuries.

Sarah Sievert, Patrick’s widowed mother, and his best mate, Shelton, both flew into Manchester, the former arriving the next morning from South Carolina, the latter that evening from Florence, where he was scoring goals for Fiorentina in Italy’s Serie A.

Sarah and Shelton spent most of the next five days at Patrick’s bedside in Manchester’s Royal Infirmary, waiting for his medically induced coma to subside. Shelton was placed on “compassionate leave” by his Italian team and permitted to miss the time, as the entire worldwide football community came together in support of a fallen warrior.

Two fallen warriors.

Tacko Seck played the remaining few minutes of the first half but was replaced at halftime. Early in the second stanza, seated behind the bench in his tracksuit with the reserves, Seck lost consciousness.

Video of the collision was ubiquitous. In a sport where goals are replayed from umpteen angles, all in high definition, cameras miss very little.

When both men leaped for the ball, Seck had a few centimeters advantage, but not enough to dissuade a defender, especially Patrick Sievert, from sticking his nose in and attacking the ball. The Senegalese youngster, however, misjudged his jump and crashed his head first into the unforgiving frame of the goal, which sent his skull snapping back into the path of Patrick’s head, the Senegalese striker’s teeth and Patrick’s own orbital bone combining to rip the defender’s forehead open.

On Thursday morning, Patrick’s eyelids fluttered open to reveal the stark white of a hospital room, the faces of his mother and Shelton quickly moving into his field of vision.

Before the nurses arrived, Patrick whispered a question that surprised nobody who knew him: “Did we win?”

Shelton laughed. “1–1 draw, hoss. Nice to see you, too.”

Sarah leaned over and hugged her only child, grateful tears streaming down her face.

In the same hospital, on the same floor, the family of Tacko Seck stood vigil. Patrick was kept through the weekend for observation, and on Saturday afternoon, with permission from the family, he went to visit the man with whom he’d be inextricably linked for the rest of his career, if not his life.

Sarah Sievert pushed her son’s wheelchair into the room in which Tacko Seck lay, and, after a moment of awkward silence, she was embraced by Tacko’s mother, Amina. The hug was powerful, two mothers sharing grief and fear, but also sharing forgiveness and love. Tacko’s father, Jawara, a tall, striking man with a regal bearing, rose and extended a hand to the bandaged Patrick, cradling the unharmed right side of his face in his large hand and looking him in the eye.

“I’m so sorry for your pain, my son. My family welcomes you and your mother as our family. We bear no grudge toward you. Tacko admired you, felt it a great blessing to have the opportunity to compete with you.” Mr. Seck, as Patrick would always call him, spoke English with a heavy French accent, but his words were clear and unmistakable. “You will always be our family, always welcome in our home, we invite you to Dakar whenever is convenient for you. There is nothing but love here.”

Patrick, understandably nervous about meeting the family of the player whose promising career his aggressiveness may have ended, was relieved wholly of the burden he’d carried since waking up and finding out the fate of Tacko Seck. Sarah held Tacko’s hand and prayed quietly over him as Patrick was hugged and had his tears wiped away by Tacko’s mother.

The competitor’s reunion was short-lived, broken up by hospital staff who needed to keep visitors to a minimum, but during the few remaining days of Patrick’s stay at the Royal Infirmary, the Seck and Sievert families were often in one another’s company.

Two days after Christmas, the decision was made to allow Tacko Seck, the only child of Jawara and Amina, to slip away from the Earthly plane and return to God.

When the news reached Patrick in London, he wept bitterly. He would not play again that season, and seriously contemplated retirement.

Upon further reflection, he decided he didn’t want his career to end lying in a pool of blood in Manchester, and he worked like a demon to get himself in pristine physical condition for one final season in Chelsea blue. The Mad Monk would return to Chelsea’s home ground, Stamford Bridge.

Glasgow is treating me swimmingly. I’m not a fan of blood pudding, but I LOVE the accents here and it’s a beautiful city. How’s everything with you?

Ellie replied to Patrick’s text message instantly, despite Meg’s voice in the back of her mind telling her how desperate it would make her appear to respond too quickly.

He texted me first, why is it a crime to reply?

Ha! Blood pudding is definitely an acquired taste. I’m bored to tears here, wish I could get away. The team doctors are putting me through my paces, agent is trying to upsell me, management is pointing out all my flaws, and hopefully they’ll wrap this up soon.

Patrick sat in the stands at Celtic Park, admiring the pristine green grass, exchanging messages with the girl he’d just met but who consumed his thoughts. He felt like he’d known her a long time. Perhaps in another life.

Flaws? What flaws?
Ellie chuckled to herself while responding.

I’m having a quick bite and then have to head back to work, I wish I had more time, hope they don’t take all afternoon listing your flaws!

Ellie hoped her sarcasm would come through via text, and was assured of as much when she read Patrick’s answer.

The way they make it sound, I’m a geezer ready for a rocking chair and a pension!

Good luck, old man!
Ellie texted him back.

As she sat and listened to the Glaswegian accent and slang in conversations all around her, Ellie’s mind raced to keep up. Just the brief textversation with Patrick had her heart again ready to burst. Finally consuming a full, leisurely meal had her energized, and the activities in her morning shower still had her tingling where it mattered most.

Amanda Eleanor Peavey couldn’t be more in love with her life.

Meanwhile, the doctors at Celtic reported back to management that Patrick was fit for duty. He’d played his final season at Chelsea without incident, his facial fractures completely healed and impairing neither his ability nor desire to stick his nose in where angels feared to tread in order to win the ball. Occasional pain in his knees was attributed to arthritis and could be corrected with cortisone injections.

Tom Borchers presented Patrick with Celtic’s final terms, a one-year deal with the club’s option to pick up a second year. The financials were satisfactory to all parties, and the manager, Garry Shearing, promised the opportunity to compete for a starting position. Opportunity was all Patrick Sievert ever asked for, the old warhorse that he was, he knew what to do when it presented itself.

Which left him in a conundrum.

He attributed his success in football to his single-minded focus. No golf, no nightclubs, no yachts, no private jets, no alcohol or drugs, no women—none of the perils that caused so many careers to veer into ruin. His vices were books and reading. If he’d spent exorbitantly on anything, it was on filling his personal library with autographed tomes, first editions, and the oldest and rarest books he could get his hands on.

He’d often been the butt of locker room jokes—no matter where he played—for always carrying a book, or books, with him everywhere. He’d more than once been the last one to leave the dressing room, even after the equipment managers, because he was rooted to his stool, absorbed in a book.

In fact, one of the reasons he’d been so eager to talk to Ellie on the flight was the fact that he’d accidentally left his book in the airport loo. He wasn’t much for e-readers, he loved the feel of the paper between his fingertips.

Not having a book to read, however, turned out to be a happy accident, having found an entirely engaging seatmate in Ellie—the rare woman in his circles who had no idea who he was—and he was smitten. The awkward, adorable, embarrassed smile with which she’d greeted him, the way she moved, the way she smelled. And for the first time since he called Crystal Carris in seventh grade to ask her to the school dance, he had butterflies in his stomach.

His father walked in while Patrick was rehearsing what he’d say if he could summon the courage to phone Crystal, and with a look of disgust, his old man asked him what he was doing, why he was so nervous.

“Dad, I want to ask this girl Crystal Carris, she’s a cheerleader . . . I want to ask her to the school dance, but I’m so nervous. I think I have butterflies in my stomach,” Patrick explained.

Levelling his gaze on the nervous boy, Benjamin Sievert gave his son a piece of advice as only he could. “Butterflies, eh? In your stomach?
Digest
them, you sissy!” With that, he turned and left the room. Patrick sat, dumbfounded, then stifled a giggle and dialed Crystal’s number.

The cheerleader and star athlete dated through junior high and into high school, but during their sophomore year at Berkeley County High the pretty redhead’s family relocated to Boise, chasing a promotion for her father. Crystal and Patrick agreed that a long distance thing could never work at their age, and they decided cold turkey was the best way to make a break from each other. The Carris family went west without leaving Patrick a forwarding address. Crystal changed her phone number and e-mail address, and the two fought off teenage hormones to stay true to their no-contact pact.

By the time college rolled around, Patrick had matured into the hunk Ellie was taken by on the plane. He took full advantage of his looks, status as a star athlete, and promiscuity of alcohol-fueled coeds to more than enjoy himself. The sex, though frequent and fantastic, got to feel repetitive and unfulfilling. Chocolate cake is delicious, but eating it for every meal ruins it rather quickly.

He’d managed to fend off the advances of women for over a decade, was first angered by and then laughed off rumors of his homosexuality in the tabloids, and eventually got on just fine alone. Football was his wife, books his mistress, his mother and Shelton his sounding boards when things got darkest. When an important match was lost, when something reminded him of his dad, when Tacko Seck was brought up by a media moron for the zillionth time, he retreated within.