Page 5 of Lord of the Lock

“Duty calls,” I said to Finn. I found it easier to give him a genuine smile.

“See you around, Weenie-Beanie,” he said.

* * *

Later that night, I was safely tucked up in bed and finally letting myself unwind. My father had made life difficult for Mum as soon as she got home, and I was exhausted from mediating between the two and trying to stop mum from doing absolutely everything for him.

My curiosity got the better of me, with Finn’s earlier shadiness piquing every bit of interest I had in him.

So I opened up a tab on my phone and googledFinn Wales rugby, just to see what had made him decide to put International Rugby aside and retire to this shithole when he still looked in his prime. The first thing to pop up was a full-page spread of his coming out article, as well as his full name, Finn Roberts - so that’s where I recognised him from - as well as pictures linking him with Rhys Prince and Callum Anderson’s relationship, which had started oh-so-romantically with a kiss on the rugby field.

I clicked backward out of the link. Rhys was still playing, and Callum commentating, so why had Finn given up? What had pushed him to leave rugby? And then at the bottom of the search results, a tiny line of writing informed me I would need to change my security settings to ‘off’ to access all of the results. I clicked it.

And the results changed completely.FINN ROBERTS ON HIS KNEESwas the first link that came up, linking to a site that looked halfway between news and porn. When I clicked it, I realised that the whole site was dedicated to celebrity nudes. With some trepidation, morbid curiosity and a splash of guilt, I pressed play.

The video was graphic, and had Finn on his knees in a forest, light from a torch blinding white on his face as he…as he sucked someone off, their moans barely audible over wind and crackling of leaves under Finn’s knees.

A sick, perverse part of me liked seeing Finn in that way, but I shut off the video before it could go any further and put my phone down. The poor guy had given up the world for that? I knew what it was like to be chased away because of something that wasn’t my fault. My heart ached for him.

I didn’t get much sleep that night.

3

Chapter Three - Finn

For the second day in a row I was pretending to be someone I was not. I had put on an act for my friends, put on an act to save a guy from being beaten up, and now I was putting on an act to get a job and save myself from complete boredom.

The first part of that act was a suit. I’d worn the tailored suit many times after Wales matches. Rugby players weren’t paid half as much as football players, but during the Six Nations we were paid a £20,000 bonus for a full-game appearance. So I’d bought myself a lovely suit with the proceeds after one, just to make myself look important and expensive.

I pulled on a watch that cost ten times the suit. I’d always struggled with analogue, and I didn’t even check to see if it was still keeping time. It was all about looking good.

I looked at myself in the mirror and laughed, without much humour to it. There was a half-empty beer bottle by my bed and tissues from a wank I hadn’t cleaned up. It was a miracle I could fucking fool anyone into thinking I was competent or I’d turned over a new leaf. I was a mess, a sad, sorry mess. But if I pasted on the old Finn Roberts charm for just a couple of minutes then maybe I would have something to get out of bed for in the morning.

A flash of pink seemed to shine in front of my eyes for a second, and I rolled my eyes at myself before turning away. Little twinks with hot pink hair would not —could not— be the reason I got up in the morning. No matter how precious they looked or how much I wanted to make sure they were safe. Despite falling back into old habits with laziness and alcohol, I’d been off sex completely since the video that had ruined my life. I was not about to let someone derail me so publicly again. And the thought of having sex had given me the ick ever since, anyway. I didn’t want a repeat of what had happened before.

Until… I’d helped a guy in terror escape some good old fashioned bullies. And as he steadily relaxed and got used to me, even despite being obviously scared of me for some reason, I had wanted to pull him close and tell him everything was going to be OK.

And Finn Roberts didn’t do that. I did not think sensible thoughts about men or women. My brain and cock had always directed me to sex first, emotions later. And once the sex was done, they gave up on the idea of emotions and bailed the fuck out of there.

But with Nathan…he seemed sweet, and kind, and I couldn’t imagine what someone like him could have done to deserve the treatment he’d gotten from the Pandy rugby players.

My mind had still drifted to sex later on, when I was alone with my thoughts and a bottle of beer. And I’d finished into a tissue to the vision of that bright pink hair on pale skin, and those deep grey eyes looking up at me.Pathetic.

I looked down at my Rolex. Nope, I still couldn’t tell the time on the thing. So I took my phone out instead and looked at the big, obvious numbers on the home screen. 9am. It was time to go.

My grandparents’ old house was just over the road from Pont’s ground. It was how I’d fallen in love with rugby. I crossed over the road and slipped through the turnstiles on one side of the stands. One side of the pitch was dominated by a big corrugated aluminium stand, one tier with space for about 3000. Around the edges of the pitch was more uncovered seating across a couple of rows, probably enough to seat a thousand more. It was small-fry compared to the Arms Park, but this place was where I’d fallen in love with watching rugby, and later, playing it, before making my way into Cardiff and Wales’ ranks. This place was where I’d learned to live and breathe the sport.

Coming back didn’t feel so special.

It was the off-season, and it was quiet. With players only paid part-time wages for semi-pro clubs and often having full-time jobs or school during the day, it would always be quiet in the daytime. I walked past the pitch to the squat redbrick building over in one corner of the grounds. It hadn’t changed in twenty years.

I knocked on the locked metal door and something…no…someone else who hadn’t changed for twenty-odd years greeted me. Rhod Nolan had coached Pont for over thirty years and in that time he’d just gotten a bit older, with obvious wrinkles all over his face and hair that had turned completely grey. Otherwise, he was wearing the same eighties tracksuit that he’d been wearing when he first scouted me twenty years before.

“Finn!” He held out a hand for me to shake and then pulled me in for a backslapping hug. “Glad to see you around. Come in, come in!”

I felt suddenly very stupid in my expensive suit and fancy Rolex. I might have needed them for an actual interview, but to be interviewed by Rhod? He’d much more have appreciated if I turned up in training gear and started doing push-ups.

Once we were in the building I looked around.Wow. Some things had changed. Inside, the old bare-bones equipment had been replaced by new state of the art treadmills, weights and rowing machines, and the electrics were LED, not flickery old lights that rarely worked like when I’d last trained. “Nice set up you’ve got here,” I said.

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