The Unforgiving Minute (27 page)

Mitchell seemed relaxed but there was no mistaking the power in his strokes. And everything—from the way he chose to serve first, to the way a few of the balls landed right at Ryan’s feet—was calculated to make a statement to Ryan. He was the alpha. He was the higher-ranked and higher-seeded player, and the match was his to take. None of it fazed Ryan. He’d played enough matches over the years to be able to face down the attitude, and to impose his own attitude right back on his opponent.

The first six games went with serve as both players tested one another out, seeking weaknesses and discovering strengths. In Mitchell’s fourth service game, he double-faulted on the first point. Scenting blood, Ryan forced him into the net on the second point and then smoked him with a passing shot.

Love-thirty.

Ryan’s concentration on Mitchell’s next serve was ferocious. This game was going to be
his.
He moved into the serve early and caught it on the rise, returning it wide and low across the court. Mitchell struck a superb forehand, but Ryan refused to be denied and delivered a low, sliced backhand that looked almost like it curved outside the net post and then back in to land on the line and out of Mitchell’s reach. The crowd roared.

Love-forty.

This time Mitchell bounced the ball four times before serving. He looked at Ryan and there was no mistaking the expression on his face. The serve was an ace, vicious and accurate.

Fifteen-forty.

There was no way this asshole was getting back into the game. No way Ryan was going to give him even a chink of a chance. His return of Mitchell’s serve was a blistering, top-spun shot that pushed Mitchell out wide enough for Ryan to come into the net and put the ball away.

Game, Betancourt. Too damn right.

Try as he might, and he did, Mitchell could not break him back. First blood, and the first set, was Ryan’s.

Sitting on his chair at the end of the set, taking some sips from his bottle of water to wash down the banana he’d just eaten, Ryan felt good. Mitchell was a good player—there was no way he could have made it to the ranking he had without being very good indeed at what he did—but he didn’t like it when his opponent forced him to come into the net. He preferred to trade long blows from the baseline. He disliked low backhands, and he absolutely hated it when his opponent lobbed. Ryan’s time spent watching his matches had paid off handsomely.

Ryan broke him again early in the second set, but then Mitchell took things up a gear and all Ryan could do was hang in there, stay with him so far as he could, and wait for his intensity to waver. It always did, sooner or later; nobody could play at that level for an entire match. Mitchell managed to keep the increased intensity long enough to take the second set, which put a suggestion of a smirk back on his stupid face, but Ryan took the third, emphatically.

At the start of the fourth set, the crowd was buzzing. While Ryan had become a favorite with them, it seemed nobody had really expected him to topple the second-seeded player. Good. It would make Mitchell’s defeat all the more notable.

Ryan broke Mitchell’s first two service games, and held his own. Mitchell was getting rattled; his shots were going wide, and when Ryan made a soft return at one point, instead of punishing Ryan for his mistake, Mitchell netted it.

As he waited to receive Mitchell’s serve, Ryan was calm and in control, his mind clearer than it had ever been. He was going to win this for Josh. He was going to leave Mitchell bruised and battered on the court, stinging from the humiliation of being defeated so easily by a younger and lower-ranked player. He’d leave him wishing he’d never gone near Josh Andrews.

Mitchell’s serve bounced awkwardly, taking it out wide. Ryan somehow got to it, before turning quickly and charging back into the court to be ready for Mitchell’s response. And he could see from where Mitchell was and the move of his racket exactly what he was about to do, slicing the ball to land just over the net and spin viciously out of play.

Hurtling across the court, Ryan managed to get his racket to the ball as it came over the net. But in his determination, he’d gone too far and too fast. He realized that at the last possible second and tried to change course, but his right ankle buckled under the impossible strain he put on it.

Ryan was already falling as he crashed into the rigid frame of the umpire’s chair.

Chapter 27

T
HE
collective, horrified gasp from the crowd might have been amusing for its absolute synchronization if Ryan hadn’t, at that very moment, been curled up, trying to breathe.
Fuck,
he hurt.

“Mr. Betancourt?
Mr. Betancourt
!” One of the officials was standing over him.

“Just give me a minute,” he got out between gritted teeth. He knew he had to move, knew that hugging the extended legs of the chair wasn’t a sustainable strategy long-term, but god
damn
, his side felt like it was on fire. And he couldn’t see too well either. He rubbed at his eyes and found wetness on his fingers. Following the trail to its source, he found that his forehead appeared to be bleeding.

“Give me a damn
minute
,” he snapped as the umpire’s accented tones reached his ears, asking him something or other. Along with the stabbing pain in his side, his ankle felt like somebody had taken a hacksaw to it before setting off fireworks inside it.

“O
H
,
MY
goodness. That looked nasty. I hope Ryan Betancourt isn’t badly hurt.”

“So do I, Claire. He hit that with full force. I’m quite surprised the umpire wasn’t catapulted out of the chair.”

“He’s moving, but he’s not getting up. Oh, there’s blood on his face too. This isn’t looking good, David.”

“I can see the umpire, Pietro Papandreou, is on the phone, presumably calling for the trainer. Thank goodness he’s on Centre, so the trainer’s close by and can get there quickly. The umpire looks like he wants to come down to see to Betancourt but doesn’t dare because he’s still all tangled up round the chair.”

“What a terrible thing to happen. The officials are standing round Ryan now, trying to give him some privacy from the crowd, who’ve been stunned to silence. And here comes the trainer, and it looks…. Yes, I think those are first aiders behind him, carrying a stretcher. Oh dear, this isn’t looking at all good for Ryan Betancourt. It seems as though his Wimbledon dream is over.”

L
ATER
, Ryan would be able to put together what happened, but for now all he was aware of was voices, and hands moving him, and then Stefan was there and he could concentrate on following his coach’s orders. The pain wasn’t getting any better but perhaps he was getting used to it because, as he was loaded into the back of an ambulance, he was functioning again. Stefan was with him, expressionless as ever but comforting in the very fact he didn’t change.

“Guess I lost,” he said, learning the hard way not to breathe too deeply as he spoke.

“This time,” Stefan said. “You played very well. Next time, you will beat him.”

“S’cuse me, mate,” the paramedic said, cheerfully shouldering Stefan aside. “Now, Ryan, we’re going to give you something to help with the pain, okay? Do you have any allergies?”

Ryan shook his head, and great, that started hurting too.

The guy was looking way too happy for somebody who seemed ready to stick Ryan with a needle.

“Ryan,” Stefan said from behind Smiler. He frowned and tried to focus on his coach. “Your footwork was getting sloppy on your backhand. That is why you lost your third service game in the second.”

Ryan frowned. “Damn,” he said. As he tried to think back to that game, everything went a little out of focus and he realized that Smiler had stuck him with that needle without him noticing.

Whatever was in it was good shit, and the doctor he saw later gave him even more of it. He was aware he was being wheeled around and x-rayed and tutted over, but nothing hurt any more, and besides, he was more interested in the way that the lights above him looked like alien space craft.

At some point Danny was there.

“Is it supper yet?” Ryan asked him.

“They have given him something for the pain,” Stefan said.

“No shit,” Danny said, sounding like he was smiling. Then he was serious again as he asked, “What’s the score?”

“Broken ribs, sprained ankle, and a minor laceration in that wooden head of his.”

“Hey Danny, is Josh here too?”

Danny’s face loomed over him suddenly, making Ryan jump. “No one’s told him yet. Roger didn’t want to interrupt his session with Carlos when we didn’t have any details. I’ll call Roger, and he’ll tell Josh as soon as he’s finished.”

“Cool,” Ryan said, just as he noticed the stain on the ceiling tiles above him. It looked like a coffee stain, except it couldn’t be because how could it have gotten up there? Unless the pipes in this place dripped coffee. Josh would like that. He’d probably want to move in if coffee came out of every tap. But, if he lived here, then he and Ryan wouldn’t be able to have sex any more, and Ryan didn’t want that to happen. He’d have to remember not to tell him.

“Ryan?” Stefan was at his bedside. “Your mother wants to talk to you, just for a minute. I told her you are making no sense because of the morphine, but even knowing that, she will not want to hear about you and Josh having sex, you understand?”

Ryan grinned at Stefan. Stefan was
awesome.
He took the phone Stefan was holding out to him, although it took him a few tries because his arm was much longer than usual. “Hi, Mom,” he said happily. He smiled even more widely at Stefan when he heard her voice. “It’s my mom.”

Stefan nodded, waited a moment, then took the phone away again and talked to Ryan’s mom a little longer before slipping his phone into his pocket. “Your mother wants you to stop chasing balls that are going out, and to tell Josh that Buddy and Sweet Pea are doing well.”

“He loves them,” Ryan said.

Danny’s face came into view, looking startled. “Who?”

“Buddy and Sweet Pea,” he said. “He loves them even though he named them after strippers. Well, not Buddy so much. Or maybe he did, because he calls him ‘big guy’ as well as Buddy, so maybe he once knew a stripper called Buddy who was a really big guy, if you know what I mean.”

“Ryan.” Danny was looking way too serious.

“Lighten up, Danny. Everything’s awesome.”

“Yeah, it is, but could you start counting sheep for a while, just while the nurses finish what they have to with you?”

“Nurses?” Ryan looked round. “Oh, hey, look, nurses. Hi, nurses. This is so cool. Why do I want to count sheep when I could be counting nurses?”

“Do you have anything you could give him that might stop him from speaking?” Stefan asked.

That really wasn’t very nice at all. Ryan started to pout, but then a yawn took him. And another. That wasn’t good, going to sleep before he got home. How would Josh know where he was?

“We’ll take you home as soon as the docs say, okay?” Danny said.

“Like you, Danny. Always liked you. Like your food too.” And with that, things got a little fuzzy and he couldn’t remember anything further.

Chapter 28

S
TEFAN
and Danny had only just gotten Ryan set up in the big armchair in the living room, his foot resting on another chair, when there was a pounding on the front door.

“Give you one guess who that is,” Danny said to Stefan.

“It does not take a rocket scientist,” Stefan pointed out, somewhat acerbically, on his way to answer the door as Danny disappeared through the doorway that led to the kitchen. Ryan had no way of knowing if Stefan and Danny had known one another before today, but from what he’d seen since the morphine had been replaced by another painkiller and his brain had come back online, they seemed to hit it off frighteningly well. Danny had been talking as if he would be involved in Ryan’s recovery physical therapy, and Stefan had agreed with almost all of his suggestions.