The Unforgiving Minute (28 page)

“What the hell, Ryan?” Josh burst into the living room. “What the hell
happened? Are you alright? God, you look awful.”

“Thanks,” Ryan said, miffed, but Josh soothed it by perching on the arm of the chair he was in and kissing the side of his forehead that wasn’t currently sporting stitches.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he said. “You
are
okay, aren’t you?”

“I’m fine. Should be playing again in a few weeks.”

“Months!”
Danny’s voice floated through from the kitchen.

“It might be a couple of months before I can play competitively,” Ryan corrected himself with just the slightest hint of gritted teeth, “but I’ll be practicing again much sooner than that.”

“We shall see,” Stefan said from the doorway.

Ryan rolled his eyes. “Any chance I can stay at your place tonight? It’s like living with those two grumpy old guys from
The
Muppets.
”

“Hey!” Danny objected, appearing in the kitchen doorway and waving a spatula at Ryan. “If you want to eat tonight, be polite.”

The doorbell rang, causing Stefan to sigh and trudge back to the door. “Yes, yes, now I am a butler.”

They could hear the front door being opened. Before Ryan had time to react to the voice that reached his ears and hide, Elena was in the room, marching over to him. He felt Josh’s arm around his shoulders stiffen, presumably at the look on her face.

“You stupid fucking
idiot
!
What the
fuck
did you think you were doing, chasing that ball like that? It’s not like you even got it back over the fucking net!”

“At last, somebody who speaks sense,” Stefan said, before his phone rang and he answered it, disappearing in the direction of his room.

“I’m fine, thanks, Elena,” Ryan said.

She deflated suddenly. “Don’t you
dare
scare me like that again, you big lummox.”

“Sorry,” he said meekly.

She removed her gaze from him and looked at Josh. Standing up, he reached across Ryan to offer his hand. “Josh Andrews, Ms. Sanchez,” he said. “Good to meet you officially.”

“Andrews,” she said, shaking his hand briefly and looking singularly unimpressed. “I’ve heard about you.”

Josh slid back onto the arm of the chair beside Ryan, keeping Ryan between him and Elena. Ryan tried hard not to feel like he was being used as a shield.

“Okay, that chicken will be cooked in another half hour, and you’ll need to put the potatoes on in fifteen minutes time,” Danny started, coming through from the kitchen. “I wouldn’t recommend…”

But they never found out what it was he wouldn’t recommend because at that moment his eyes fell on Elena and his voice trailed away. As their eyes met, Ryan could practically hear bluebirds tweeting, while plump little cherubs showered rose petals on them. Huh. Maybe that morphine wasn’t quite out of his system yet. But still, there was definitely
something
going on between them. He steadfastly refused to look at Josh, because if he looked at Josh, he’d smirk, and if Elena saw him smirking, they would
never
find his body.

After far too long, Danny blinked and said something about having to leave, sounding as if he didn’t really mean a word of it. Elena was glaring at Ryan again—what? He hadn’t done anything—while Josh said he’d see Danny out.

As soon as the room was clear, Elena whipped out her tablet from her bag. “Your quest to destroy Chase Mitchell? It might not be going exactly how you planned it, but you are
working
it.”

His head began to hurt, the wound throbbing. “Short version, Elena,
please
.”

“When you threw yourself at the umpire’s chair like you were going to marry it, the cameras followed your giant, flailing limbs all the way. Except for one prescient, or lucky, gentleman of the press, who for some reason—my guess is his afternoon glass of Pimm’s—still had his long lens trained on Mitchell.”

She tilted the tablet to show him, just as Josh came back into the room. In the foreground of the photo that filled the screen, Ryan was on the ground, curled up in pain, but the focal point of the picture was Chase Mitchell. His left fist was clenched in victory as he looked across the court at Ryan, and the look on his face… it was triumph and satisfaction and pleasure, all rolled into one. Ryan felt sick to his stomach.

“
Motherfucker
,” Josh snarled.

Ryan reached out and grabbed his wrist, holding him there. Not that he really thought Josh would go storming off to break Mitchell’s face there and then, but he’d never heard that level of anger from Josh, so it was best to be sure.

“I’ve watched the footage and looked at a shitload of photos, and I think it was just for that instant, before he remembered he was in public. I doubt anyone else noticed because they were all too busy watching you rolling around in the dirt. It was his bad luck somebody happened to catch it on film and it’s now gone viral.”

She turned the tablet back to herself before continuing, and Ryan was thankful, because he couldn’t stand to see that loathsome expression on Mitchell’s face one second longer. “The main news outlets aren’t saying anything about it, worried about defamation suits, I guess, but lots of them are using that photo when they’re talking about your accident. It’s out there as subtext. And everyone online is talking about it and loads of people don’t believe it was an accident. They think he did it on purpose because he was losing, that he put the ball there so that with your stupid habit of chasing everything, you were bound to collide with the chair.”

“He’s not that precise under pressure,” Josh spat. “He couldn’t have done it if he’d tried.” His muscles were still rigid under Ryan’s hand, but he seemed to have gotten himself back under control.

“Agreed,” Elena said. “It was just a horrible accident, which thrilled his dirty, rotten heart to the core. But even those who think it
was
an accident are less than impressed at his failure as a human being. All except someone called Ballboy69, who I think might be Mitchell’s sock.”

Josh’s forehead furrowed as he asked, “His what?”

Elena sighed impatiently. “A fake account he’s set up so he can troll.”

The furrows in Josh’s forehead deepened.

“Honestly,” Elena said. “You
do
know what the Internet is?”

Josh nodded. “It’s for porn.”

Elena’s lips twitched briefly before she bent down and kissed Ryan’s cheek. “You, stay out of trouble.” She lowered her voice, probably unnecessarily since Josh’s cell had just rung and, with a brief word of apology, he’d moved away to take the call. “You couldn’t have done it better if you’d planned this, you know. Mitchell’s hit his own self-destruct button. It’s going to make it hurt all the more when he realizes that everyone hates him and sponsors are going to desert him not because of anything that anyone else has done, but purely because of his own mean-spiritedness.”

Straightening back up, she fixed Josh with a stare that had him stuttering into the phone, saying he’d have to call back.

“You,” she said, once he’d ended the call, “smash that fucker into the ground on Sunday. And call me Elena.”

“Uh,” Josh said. It was a pretty common response to Elena, Ryan had to admit.

“Later,” she said, and saw herself out.

“So that’s Elena,” Josh said, once the front door was safely closed behind her. Before Ryan could answer, Josh’s phone rang. “Sorry,” he said, “I need to take it. It’s my dad again.”

Ryan tried politely to block out what he could hear of the brief conversation until he became aware that Josh was holding his phone out to him, looking confused. “He wants to talk to you.”

For an instant Ryan wondered about pleading weakness from his injuries, but he had the suspicion that nothing short of having his head amputated would stop Roger Andrews, and even that would be questionable. He took the phone reluctantly. “Hello?”

“Danny told me the damage. It could have been worse.”

“I guess,” he said.

“I hope now you’ll play a bit more intelligently and not run after every ball whether you have a hope of making it or not. I’m not saying you should always play the percentages, because that’s not what your game is, I know, but some balls are just too dangerous to chase. I’m amazed this hasn’t happened to you before.”

Ryan was too confused by this point to know whether he should tell Roger Andrews to butt the hell out or whether he should apologize to the man for his poor judgment. Before he could say anything, Roger continued. “Can you walk?”

“Not so well, no.”

“I’ll have a car pick you up at one o’clock to take you to the Club on Sunday. I’ll let the stewards know you’re joining us in the player’s box so they’ll let the car go as far as it can. Someone will be on hand to help you to the box.”

Ryan goggled. There was no other word for the helpless, deer-caught-in-headlights expression that he just knew he was turning on Josh, who was gesticulating frantically at him, wanting to know what the hell was going on.

“If you want to,” Roger said, at his continued silence. And crap, that was practically as much a miracle as the parting of the Red Sea, right there: Roger Andrews thinking about someone else’s wishes.

“Thank you. I’d like that very much,” he said.

Far better than being stuck here with the TV, watching helplessly from a distance as Josh faced Mitchell again.

“Good,” Roger said and ended the call.

Ryan blinked at the phone as he handed it back to Josh.

“What did he want?” Josh demanded.

“To rip me a new one, before inviting me to the prom. Uh, sorry, to the Gentlemen’s Singles Final at Wimbledon. Do I have to wear a tux?”

Josh blinked. “He… You… Oh,” he said, as he slid back onto the arm of the chair and put his arm round Ryan’s shoulders again. “He must like you. He was the one who told Danny to go to the hospital, though I think Danny would probably have gone anyway.” His arm tightened. “Wish I could have come to the hospital to be with you. I wanted to, once they told me, but it would have caused questions and Danny said you were doing okay.”

“Have you ever considered coming out?” Ryan asked, genuinely curious.

“Not really. Don’t see how it’s anyone else’s business. They get enough of me already. Why should I give them that as well?”

Ryan’s vague fantasy about them coming out together collided suddenly with reality. Ryan coming out would cause a stir, but if Josh Andrews were to come out, the media frenzy would be beyond anything he could imagine. They already breathlessly followed Josh’s every move. The only reason he didn’t have any real problems with paparazzi was because Roger ensured he was freely available to the media. It was a trade-off that probably worked in Josh’s favor, though Ryan wondered about that sometimes, having seen the amount of press stuff he ended up having to do, the time it took, and the stupid questions he kept being asked.

Not that he was really in a place to make sanctimonious judgments, because back in the day, he’d had been one of those people who’d pushed up a magazine’s circulation if Josh Andrews was featured on the cover. When he’d been a teenager, it hadn’t mattered what magazine it was—if it had Josh Andrews in it, he’d bought it. And he’d read every single word of every single interview with him, even the ones in the women’s magazines about what he looked for in a girl (good sense of humor, and must like to travel). He’d never thought about how it might feel to be on the receiving end of those constant, intrusive questions, knowing every part of his life was being picked apart. Ryan had dealt with the press by charming them with his enthusiasm, and he was still new enough they were happy to talk about his meteoric rise without hunting for anything in his background or private life. So far, anyway. He was beginning to realize that such a happy state of affairs was unlikely to last if he continued to be a top-twenty player.

“Anyway,” Josh said, “I’d rather be remembered as the player who won fourteen Grand Slams, not the gay player.”

“Fourteen?” Ryan asked, intrigued by the very specific number.

“I figured fifteen sounded big-headed,” Josh said with a grin. He looked at Ryan. “Have you
thought about coming out?”

“Yeah,” Ryan said, mind racing over what to say and how to say it so it wouldn’t sound like he was pressuring Josh, or criticizing him for his choice, or expecting them to break up. “I guess if we weren’t together, I would.”

Josh’s face froze. “You mean I’m stopping you?”

“No,” Ryan said swiftly. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. What I meant is that while I’m happy for people to know I’m gay, and there are lots of good reasons why that should happen, what we have is between
us
. And if I came out, anyone I spent a lot of time with would be under scrutiny and the press would start rumors and I don’t want that getting between us.”

All of which was true, though Ryan didn’t have the problem Josh seemed to have with having their relationship on the front pages. A paparazzi picture of them kissing or holding hands couldn’t affect what was between
them.
But it would affect Josh, and that way it
would
end up affecting them.

Lost in his thoughts, he jumped when a buzzer sounded in the kitchen, loud and insistent.

“Damn, that’ll be the chicken,” Josh said, standing up.

“Or the potatoes. Weren’t we supposed to do something with them?”

Josh looked helplessly back at him from the kitchen doorway. “You’re asking me?”

Luckily, Danny answered his cell. Following his one-syllable instructions, they finally managed to create a meal that was edible and didn’t threaten to take them out with food poisoning.

Josh helped Ryan to bed later. The hospital had given him crutches, but they weren’t so good on the polished wooden boards of the bedroom. Also, with his injured ribs, using them hurt. Josh got into bed very carefully next to Ryan and settled beside him, not touching him but close enough to press a kiss onto his cheek. “You need anything, just wake me.” He’d been looking after Ryan all evening, keeping strictly to Danny’s timetable for ice on the ankle and painkillers. “I’m glad you’re okay. God, when I heard they’d taken you to the hospital….”