Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2)
Read Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2) Online
Authors: Avery Cockburn
Playing to Win exclusive sneak peek - Chapter One
by Avery Cockburn
Copyright © 2015 by Avery Cockburn. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
Cover design by Damonza.
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Playing For Keeps: A Glasgow Lads Novel
Fergus Taylor is damaged goods. Reeling from a brutal breakup, he’s determined to captain his LGBT soccer team out of scandal and into a winning season. For that, he needs strict rules and careful plans. He does NOT need a brash, muscle-bound lad messing with his head and setting his body afire.
John Burns has a rule of his own: Don’t get attached. Boyfriends are for guys with nothing to hide. Nobody—not his university mates, not the men he beds—knows his family’s shame, a shame that stains all Scotland. Now his double life is starting to unravel, thanks to a certain Highlander whose storm-riddled eyes turn John inside out, who wears a kilt like he was born in it.
Fergus is the first man John wants to share his secret with—but he’s the last man who could handle it. John knows the truth would shatter Fergus’s still-fragile heart. But how can he live a lie when he’s falling in love?
To those who cross the divides, and to those who demolish them.
HAPTER
O
NE
“R
ULE
O
NE
: N
O
drama!”
Fergus Taylor felt a rush like no other as his football teammates shouted the last two words with him. They gathered close as one body, hands stretching toward the center of their circle.
“Rule Two,” he began, and together they all yelled, “Play faster!”
Fergus inhaled the heady mixture of skin, grass, and mud, all baking under an unusually bright Scottish sun. A beautiful day for the Beautiful Game.
“Rule Three: Hunt rebounds!”
Pulse pounding, he clutched the round leather ball to his hip so hard he thought it would burst.
“Rule Four: Check your shoulder!”
The players’ voices overflowed with trust in their newly elected captain. Which, incredibly, was Fergus.
They clustered in, holding tight, releasing the final collective shout. “Rule Five: NO DRAMA!” Their fists shot together toward the cloudless sky.
Then Fergus stepped back, watching his teammates greet one another, exchanging hugs and high fives as if it had been two years instead of two weeks since they’d last practiced. Maybe it was the weather imparting a feeling of newness. Only an hour before, a ten-day spell of rain had finally ended, leaving the pitch beneath their feet and the mountains to their north a bright pistachio green.
The players lined up side by side facing Fergus, looking like a mural painted to show Glasgow’s diversity of races, genders, and orientations. The Woodstoun Warriors Amateur Football Club’s eleven starters and twelve substitutes also varied greatly in size, skills, and experience. They had but one thing in common: a completely insane amount of pride.
They needed it, after the way last season had ended.
Now that the inspirational bits were over, it was time to get to work. “All right, mates,” Fergus said. “Charlotte asked me to run a training exercise while she does some club business.” As he described their manager’s new drill, Fergus tossed the ball between his hands, hoping he didn’t look as nervous as he felt. His players seemed to be watching him closely for lingering symptoms of heartbreak. It was best for everyone if Fergus pretended he was fine.
For the exercise, he divided the Warriors into smaller groups, leaving out one of their forwards, Colin MacDuff. “Come with me,” he told Colin. “I need your insights.”
“Ooh!” Colin scampered after Fergus to the side of the pitch, leaving the others behind. “Does that mean I’m to be vice-captain?”
“No, I need you to be something more important.”
“A mascot! I’ll paint my face like Braveheart and go screaming up and down the pitch during matches.” He demonstrated with bulging eyes and protruding tongue, waving his tattooed arms until the black ink blurred with his pale skin. “Aye? Put the frighteners on our opponents.”
Fergus humored him with a smile. At eighteen, Colin was the Warriors’ youngest player and most prolific scorer. But it was his manic energy that Fergus valued most. There’d been days when the forward’s antics were all that salvaged the team’s spirits. “I appreciate the offer, but you’ll scare our opponents better as our new playmaker.”
Colin’s face fell slack as he gaped up at Fergus. “I’m to take…
his
place? You’re making me the attacking midfielder?”
“Technically, Charlotte’s making you attacking midfielder.”
“Yaaaaas!” Colin punched the air and spun around, then grabbed at his mass of spiky black hair. “Wait, why am I standing here? Shouldn’t I be out there practicing my new position?”
“If you’re to control the flow of our offense, you need to see what we’ve got. Learn our players’ strengths and weaknesses.” Fergus blew the whistle to begin the drill.
He and Colin watched in worried silence. Their teammates’ focus was still in the shambles left by their former captain. It made Fergus extra grateful that they’d been willing—eager, in fact—to begin preseason training in early June, a month sooner than usual. Several had just finished university exams and would have loved a few weeks’ holiday. But they’d returned. For him.
The best way to repay their devotion was to make them champions.
“I know you telt me to watch the players,” Colin said, “but who’s that lad with Charlotte?”
Fergus shaded his eyes and peered across the pitch to see their manager standing near the bench, chatting to a boy barely taller than herself. “Must be that first-year from the Glasgow Uni LGBT group. They want us to play a friendly preseason match for charity.”
“Oh, aye, Duncan mentioned it.” Colin gestured to the Warriors’ striker, who had just paused to wave to their visitor. “His boyfriend is pals with this guy. So what’s the charity?”
“New Shores. They help asylum seekers who were persecuted in their home countries for being gay. But I’m not sure we should play the match.”
“Fuck’s sake, why not? It’s a good cause, and it’d be good practice. God knows we need it after losing—”
Fergus blew the whistle before Colin could utter the name. “Start again, mates, and this time, faster! I want to see one touch
only
before you pass!” Then he told Colin, “I’m worried this charity match could turn us into a spectacle.”
Again.
Colin snorted. “Our team’s made up of poofs, dykes, and trannies.”
“Plus Robert,” Fergus added, having long ago given up correcting Colin’s insensitive terminology.
“Plus Robert. My point is, we’re already a spectacle.”
“We’re not the only gay football club in Scotland.”
“We’re the only one with lasses—and lads who used to be lasses, and vice versa—and the only one playing in a straight league.” Colin shifted from foot to foot, discharging excess energy. “There’s naebody like us, so why not get some fuckin’ exposure and make the world a better fuckin’ place and all?”
Fergus suppressed a shudder at the word
exposure
. After recent events, it was the last thing he wanted, the last thing the team needed. “I’m sure that’s what that eager wee pup over there will say.” He shaded his eyes again to peer at their visitor. Wearing a white Oxford shirt with a dark tie and trousers, the lad looked out of place on this tattered pitch. Yet he held himself with an animated ease and confidence, as if to say,
I belong anywhere I want to be
. A smooth talker, for certain.
Colin elbowed Fergus’s side. “Charlotte wants you, ya blind bastard.”
Sure enough, their manager was waving at him. And the boy next to her had caught him staring.
As he jogged across the pitch to join them, Fergus realized: this was no boy. The stranger’s chest and shoulders were thick and broad, and the challenge in his dark gaze—combined with the disarming smile he unleashed as Fergus approached—were 100 percent grown man.
“Hiya,” he said, holding out a hand to shake. “I’m John Burns.”
That voice—deep and solid, yet strangely buoyant—made a dormant part of Fergus awaken and uncoil. His steps slowed as he concentrated on not stumbling.
“John. Yes.”
What does that mean? “Yes” what?
“Thanks for coming. Coming to the practice session, that is.” Dismayed at how this lad had already rattled him, Fergus stopped several feet away.
“Nae bother,” John said with a smirk.
“Sorry, I’d shake your hand, but I’m all sweaty.” Fergus put his hands behind his back to hide their dryness.
Charlotte gave him a
what-the-fuck?
look, then cleared her throat. “I’ll run the next drill while youse two discuss the charity match. Fergus, I’m up for it if you are.” She put her whistle in her mouth, then took it out again. “Oh, before I forget.”
From her pocket she produced a clear plastic bag. Fergus’s heart stuttered when he saw the strip of dark cloth within.
“Normally you’d wear it only during a match.” Charlotte pulled the captain’s armband from the bag and gave it to him. “But I think it’d mean a lot to your players if you wore it today.”
My
players. Not his. None of us is his now.
Fergus rubbed the rough black material between his thumb and forefinger. He remembered the times Evan had come to bed wearing nothing but the armband. How it had looked against his perpetually tanned skin. How it had felt under Fergus’s palm as they’d kissed and clutched and fucked.
The manager’s whistle snapped Fergus back to the present. He looked at John, worried he’d been caught out daydreaming, but their guest had already turned away to watch the players.
Fergus braced himself for a sales pitch. John would tell him what a brilliant opportunity the charity match was for his team, how they’d gain new supporters while helping those in need. He’d gloss over the bit where the Warriors would be put on display like circus animals.
Instead John kept his eyes on the field and said, “Tell me about your team, Fergus.”
This guy was good. By feigning interest in the Warriors, he’d gather information he could use to manipulate Fergus into agreeing to the match. It didn’t hurt that the sound of his own name rolling off John’s tongue had made Fergus’s jock strap feel suddenly tight.
He cleared his throat. “Right. Warriors belong to the Scottish Amateur Football Association. They were formed in 2005 by—”