Playing for Keeps (Glasgow Lads Book 2) (33 page)

“Am I being punished?”

“Not at all.” She stepped closer to him and softened her voice. “I need to knock some sense into these people and remind them that they’ve but one captain.”

He hesitated. “It’s me, right?”

“Aye. Maybe you need to be taught that as well as they do.”

She was right. A month ago Fergus had thought leadership a challenge because he needed to boost morale—first in the face of last season’s dispiriting finish, and then in the face of Colin’s injury. But those were easy tests compared to the tension caused by Evan’s return.

“That’s Rule One chucked then, aye?” Colin asked as Fergus approached the bleachers. Their injured midfielder was lounging “taps-aff,” bare-chested in honor of the warm weather and the fact he had no official responsibilities. Fergus appreciated that Colin still attended practice sessions to keep up with the team’s progress. He often made valuable observations overlooked by the others, even Charlotte.

“It’s just so strange.” Fergus sat on the lowest bleacher, next to Colin’s outstretched foot. The lad had sewn a blue Yes Scotland patch onto his hinged black knee brace, and propped in his lap was a book on Scottish independence.

“What’s strange?” Colin asked.

“Not deferring to Evan. Not letting him take care of everything like he used to.” He turned to Colin. “Do I need to be more authoritative?”

“Mate, you need to find your baws, pronto. Out there on the pitch, you gotta say what’s what, fast and loud.”

“But what if I make the wrong choice?”

“Who cares? Be wrong fast enough and loud enough, and they’ll assume you’re right.” Colin leaned back, looping his tattooed arms over the bleacher behind him to stretch his pecs.

Fergus glanced past him as a scarlet Tesla roadster came to a silent stop on the lane beside the practice pitch. “Is that an electric car?”

Colin turned his head to look. “Fuck.” His entire body tensed, as if he were about to run. Then he scowled at his injured knee and sank back into his casual pose. “It’s the Duke of Dickheadlington.”

It was indeed Lord Andrew Sunderland sauntering toward them now, carrying a brown paper package under his arm.

As he approached the bleachers, Andrew slid a bored gaze over the players on the pitch, not looking at Fergus until he was standing directly in front of him. Then he said, “You can block John’s calls and his messages, but nothing can block me.” He held out the package without leaning forward. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

Lord Andrew sighed, then spoke with patronizing enunciation. “It is a thing which John asked me to give you. Obviously.”

Fergus realized he’d no choice but to get up and take the padded envelope. “Anything else?”

“That’s the extent of my official duty.” Andrew took off his designer sunglasses. “But I will add, albeit without John’s permission, that the stains you’ll see are his blood, which was shed for you on the subway platform.”

Stains?
Fergus looked at the envelope, then at Colin, who was glaring down at his open book.

“Now,” Andrew continued, “as I am not a two-way messenger service, I shall depart. If you’ve something to say to John, tell him yourself.” He went to put his sunglasses back on but stopped when he saw Colin. It was the first he’d looked at him. “Oh.” His face and voice went suddenly soft. “I was sorry to hear of your injury,” he told Colin. “I hope—I hope you’re doing well.”

When Colin failed to glance up from his book, Andrew’s imperiousness returned tenfold. He whipped his head back to Fergus. “Good afternoon,” he snapped before marching off.

Fergus watched him go, wondering if hereditary peers learned to strut before they learned to crawl. Then he looked at Colin. “Have you two ever—”

“No.” Colin turned the page so hard, it tore in half.

“Okay.” Feeling lightheaded at this surprise from John, Fergus sat down again. He tore open the envelope, then yanked out a rolled-up white T-shirt.

“There’s a note.” Colin leaned forward to catch the small sheet of paper that had fluttered onto the bleacher. “It says, ‘This is what I planned to show them that day.’ What day’s he talking about? Show who?”

Fergus shook out the T-shirt and held it up. Slightly crooked stenciled letters formed three words in a single column:

WE

ARE

ONE

Beneath the last word was a simple line-drawing of two hands clasping each other, one painted green and the other orange.

Across it all lay a splatter of drops, in the unmistakable rusty brown of dried blood.

= = =

“My favorite!” Keith beamed at the red-and-gold-striped packet of Tunnock’s caramel wafers John had just given him. “You’re a proper star, wee man.”

“It’s the best I could do, since I cannae bake like Gran.” John sat down in the hard plastic chair across the Barlinnie visits-room table from his brother. “Gonnae no trade those biscuits for cigarettes and smack, all right?”

“Nah, these are priceless.” He peered at John. “Oi, who did that to your face? I’ll fucking kill them.”

“From in here? What, you’re a gangster now?”

“I wish.” Keith ran a tense hand over his short spikes of thick black hair, then held up the twelve-pack of caramel wafers. “Bet I could trade these for a small favor, know what I mean?” He winked, then turned serious. “So what happened?”

“Long story.” John knew better than to start a conversation with news like his. He scanned the dozen or so other tables, each seating a prisoner and a visitor. Then he edged his own chair forward an inch. “First tell me how you’re doing.”

“A wee bit better, actually, since the conviction.” Keith set down the biscuits but kept his fingertips atop the package, as if it might float away. “Got a paying job now in laundry—it’s crap money, but money all the same. And they let me take a computer course. Couldnae do either of those things on remand. Now that I’m an official criminal, it’s like I suddenly exist.”

John remembered how miserable and bored Keith had been here while awaiting trial. “Any word on when you’ll be transferred to Glenochil?”

“Soon as some poor bastard there either dies or gets released. Or maybe several poor bastards, who knows. I’m in nae rush to give up my private cell. You never know what sort of guy—” He grimaced. “Sorry, I don’t mean your sort—it’s not that—”

“I know what you mean.” John wanted to give his brother’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but their brief hug of greeting was the only physical contact allowed. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. You get on well with people.”
Except Catholics, and if any of them see your Rangers tattoo, the one I warned you not to get…

Keith gave a skeptical grunt. “So what’s this long story that’s got your face in a state?”

John took a deep breath. He’d always told Keith whatever he thought his brother wanted to hear, whatever would make him happy and win his approval. To be brutally honest with himself, John had done that with every man in his life. But now that he’d found the courage to be real with Dad, perhaps he could do the same with Keith.

“I quit the Orange Order.” John braced himself for accusations of betrayal, for a lecture on maintaining traditions and making their father proud.

Instead Keith said, “Hmph. I’m kinda surprised you lasted this long. You’re too good for them.”

John blinked at his brother. “‘Them’? Don’t you mean ‘us’?”

“No, I mean ‘them.’ I quit too, just this week.”

Relief flooded John’s veins. “Really? That’s—that’s fantastic.” He leaned forward, eager to trade stories. “Why did
you
leave?”

Keith mirrored him, bringing his face a few inches from John’s so he could whisper above the murmured conversations around them. “Here’s the thing, see. I’ve been chatting to one of the chaplains here. Not the Church of Scotland one. The priest.” He threw a nervous glance about the visits room. “I’ve not told Dad yet, but…I’m converting to Catholicism.”

John’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

Keith nodded, his dark brown eyes as solemn as a funeral. “I’ve prayed about it, on my knees every morning and every night. The Holy Spirit, it showed me I got to repent for what I did to Rory Callahan.”

It felt like John’s eyeballs were popping out of his skull. He could barely untie his tongue to form words. “Are you—are you sure about this?”

“Dead certain, John. Swear.” He crossed himself, then kissed the tip of his thumb.

“Well…” John shook his head. “Good luck, I guess?”

“Thanks, mate.” Keith locked his eyes with John’s, and as he continued to nod, those eyes began to crinkle around the edges.

John sighed. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

Keith let out a cackle. “Christ, you should’ve seen the look on your face just now. It’s like when you were five and I said you was adopted. Remember?”

“Aye, you telt me Mum and Dad found me in the sewer, suckling from the Rat Queen of Drumoyne.” Part of him wanted to kill his brother for turning John’s big confession into a joke, but part of him was grateful for the release of tension. “So you’re not leaving the Order?”

“I am. They let me resign. It was either that or get expelled for breaking my vow to ‘abstain from all uncharitable words, actions, or sentiments toward my Roman Catholic brethren.’” His voice deepened as his fingers curled into air quotes, citing the official Qualifications of an Orangeman. “I always found that vow a bit wink-wink-nudge-nudge, you know?”

John nodded. The Order forbade overt anti-Catholic words and deeds, even as it taught that Catholics were the archenemy bent on destroying individual freedom. “Still, Keith, not assaulting people isn’t exactly an unrealistic moral standard.”

“I know that!” Keith glanced at the grizzled old prisoner at the nearest table—who bore a creepy resemblance to gangster Billy Kennedy from BBC’s
River City
—then lowered his voice again. “It’s the Order’s fault I’m in this place,” he hissed. “If I’d not swallowed twenty-five years of their racist pish, I’d never have punched that Celtic fan.” Keith tilted his head. “Or at least not punched him so hard. He
was
being a wee dick, after all.”

John rolled his eyes. Keith still wouldn’t admit it was his own fault he was in prison. But at least he’d shifted a bit of the blame off his victim.

“Your turn,” Keith said. “Why’d you leave the Order?”

“I fell in love with a Catholic man.”

“Whoa.” Keith sat back in his chair, stunned speechless for a full three seconds. Then he lifted his chin. “Ahhh, that’s why you’ve not visited me in weeks. Did you think I’d disapprove of you fucking some Fenian?”

John’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t come here to condemn his brother, but that one slur,
Fenian
, unleashed a year’s worth of rage.

“I didn’t care if you approved, Keith,” he said through gritted teeth. “I just couldn’t look at you. You made me sick.”

Keith’s jaw twitched. “John, you don’t mean that,” he said with a nervous laugh.

“I do. What you did to Rory Callahan—nothing justifies it. Not his being blootered, or wearing the wrong colors, or even acting a bigoted cunt himself. You hurt him not because of what he did or said, but because of what he was.” John’s throat ached from the effort to keep his voice below a shout. “I’m glad they gave you an extra two years for the thoughts in your heart, because the thoughts in your heart were wrong. No matter who put them there, they were yours, and now you and Nicole and wee Harry are paying the price for all this hate.”

Keith’s face had turned to stone during John’s rant. “What about you?” he asked now, barely above a whisper.

“I’m paying my own price. It’s cost me everything.”

Fergus wasn’t all he’d lost, John had come to realize. Surely by now, Fergus’s friends, family, and teammates all knew what John was. About the lies he’d told, the pain he’d wrought. Even if he and Fergus somehow got back together, it would never be the same. John would always be a black sheep.

He told Keith the whole story now, ending with the fight in the subway station. By the time he finished, Keith’s head was in his hands, shaking back and forth.

“Christ…” he said when John finished. “I should’ve never let you join the Order.”

“I pretty much had to. If it weren’t for them—if it weren’t for
you
—I never would’ve survived primary school, much less high school.” John scraped his thumbnail against a crack in the table’s faux-wood surface. “You and Dad said I owed them, and you were right.”

“We were wrong. I could’ve gone on protecting you. But I wanted my wee brother to be like me. I wanted you to
want
to be like me. And then I went and almost killed a guy just like your man.” Keith pressed his hands against his temples like a vise. “You must hate me.”

“A little. But I also love you. A lot.”

Keith froze, and stayed stock still, his only movement a pair of tears that dripped from his dark lashes onto the biscuit packet.

Finally he straightened up and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Och, Johnny, what are we gonnae do?”

John could barely speak from the tightness in his throat. “Do when?”

Keith shrugged. “Forever?”

“I don’t know about forever. But I do know that for the next seven years, I’ll visit you as often as you can have me. Even when you go to Glenochil. And I’ll bring Harry when Nicky cannae manage it.”

“Why come and see me if I make you want to boak?”

“Because I’m a fucking good influence on you. Or at least I can be, now that I’m telling you the truth.” John stared at his brother’s hands, their skin cracked and peeling. “I should’ve done it sooner. You’ve always accepted me, so I don’t know why I thought you’d hate me for this.”

“Probably because I’m a prick.” Keith gave a hard sniffle. “Talking of good influences, you’re seeing to Harry, aye? He’s all right?”

John hesitated, unsure how much Nicole had told Keith about her home life. But he was done hiding bad news. “Harry seems well. But I’m worried about the situation at his other gran’s.”

“His other gran’s a fucking car crash. I wish Nic and Harry could live at our house, but I suppose we’ve no room now Mum’s there. How is Mum, by the way? I guess you’d’ve told me straightaway if she’d killed Dad.”