Page 3 of Dominate
I take a deep breath and reply, “I don’t want to hear a lovely story about Dad right now. I’m cross at him.”
“You’re not cross, Gareth.” She drops her chin to look at me sitting on a stool beside her.
“I am too cross. He’s so mean. He’s been shouting at everybody all week.”
“We’ve had a tough couple of days.”
“I know. He keeps dragging you to the doctors. I told him you don’t want to go, but he says you have to. Why do you have to, Mum?”
She smiles a sad smile and takes a deep breath. “Daddy is trying to help me feel better.”
“But you always look worse after you get back from the hospital. They aren’t helping. They’re hurting.”
“I know, my sweet, wonderful boy. But this is what your daddy has to do to make sure he’s done everything he can to help.”
“Doesn’t mean he has to be such a meanie.”
Her chin wobbles, and the sad expression on her face has my stomach doing somersaults. I don’t want my mummy to feel worse. I want her to feel better. That’s my job. To make her feel better. “Tell me about when you fell in love with Daddy.”
She smiles. I can tell that made her feel better, which makes me feel better, too.
“Well, we had just met the night before at a pub in London, and he claimed to be in love with me.”
“The first time you met him, he loved you?” I ask.
“Yes,” she replies with a giggle. A small tear slides down her cheek, but it doesn’t seem like a sad tear. “He was crazy. I thought he was just a naughty footballer trying to…” Her voice trails off and she clears her throat. “…have a laugh. Anyway, I didn’t believe him. Then he started going on about how he wanted me to go to his game in Manchester the next day.”
“Exciting!” I reply, enjoying this part of the story.
“Most would think so, but I’m not like most girls. I didn’t want to go to Manchester. I was having fun in London with my friends. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He even offered my girlfriends tickets to the match. Then he booked us a private plane. He was completely mental.”
“What did you do?”
“Well, I went. He wanted me there no matter what, and I would have been a fool to not accept a trip of a lifetime. The whole way there, I thought he was just a silly footballer with no sense about him. But that was all forgotten when I saw him play.”
“He was quite good, right?” I ask, remembering the games I’d been to with Mum before Dad quit playing and moved us all back here to London.
“He was like a dream, Gareth. His movements on the pitch were as if he was doing exactly what he was meant to do in life. He had this glow about him that I had never seen on a man before. And I knew that a man living with joy like that would have appreciation for a great many things in life.”
“Do you think I could be good at football, Mum?” I ask, my mind having a think on how I could impress my mum like Dad did.
“I think you can be good at anything you want, my boy. It doesn’t have to be football. It just has to ignite joy and passion. And you have to want to bleed for it because you believe in it so fully. Something that you refuse to surrender to until you dominate it in every possible way. Do you understand?”
I nod, my forehead wrinkled as I think on the words she’s saying to me. They seem important. More important than I can understand. But I want Mummy to be happy, so I’ll say whatever I can to make her feel better. “I understand, Mum.”
She smiles and I feel happy. I think I’m helping. I think it would help even more if I play football like Dad. I think that would make her smile forever.
So I decide right then and there that I’m going to play football. And I’ll be even better than my dad.
THE BEEP OF THE HOSPITALmonitor is like a ticking time bomb. With every chirp, it grows impossibly louder. With every moment that passes without a word, my anxiety grows more and more intense.
What the hell happened tonight? How did we even get here? One moment I’m in Gareth’s arms, wrapping my brain around everything that’s about to change between us. The next, I’m on the floor and he’s right beside me, blood pouring out of the side of his head.
My face crumples as I stare at the red stain seeping through the bandage around Gareth’s forehead. He looks so weak in the hospital bed. So broken. So frail. Nothing like the powerful man who promised to claim me in ways no man has ever claimed me before.
My phone vibrates in my hand, and I swallow the knot in my throat to answer. “Freya, hi,” I croak, my voice raw and worn out.
“How are you?” she asks.
