So yes, it is rubbish that we have to continue with university courses while we are stuck in the academy.
But today, my mind is elsewhere anyway … even from this conversation, the thousandth we’ve had on the subject of schooling after the age of eighteen.
No, my thoughts are occupied by a certain Clavering blonde who ghosted me a week ago. Ever since I almost got her involved in a traffic violation that, if it had been any other person in the driver’s seat other than England’s resident football bad boy would have landed her in custody.
“Hey, how was London, anyway?” Vance practically reads my mind.
“And how come you didn’t tell us you were taking the sexy sew house girl? When did you finally land that hard-to-get bird? Lucky bastard, she’s smoking.” Kingston hits me in the arm.
I flip open a notebook and begin to write down the film I want to view in the athletic facility’s small theater later today. The entire match from Saturday, that’s for sure. I want to watch what the opposing team’s forward did on a penalty kick that netted them a goal against us. The little flip of the ball with the toe of his boot was interesting—
“Earth to Jude? The sew house girl?” Kingston interrupts my thought.
“How did you wankers find out about that?” The idea flicks me in the temple like a sharp rock thrown at my head.
“Vance found some pictures of you and Celine on Twitter from Saturday night. Sew house girl was in the corner of them. At first, I thought it was some photoshop joke, but then I thought, ‘No one knows who that babe is so ….’” Kingston shrugs, looking for me to fill in the blank.
“That babe’s name is Aria, and she was there as my … assistant.” I shoot my best friends an annoyed look.
“You have an assistant now? For what? Schlepping your luggage whenever Niles sends you back down?” Vance snorts, looking down at his own notebook.
The middle finger on my right hand flips straight up toward him.
“Fuck off. She … she intrigues me. Only way she’d get near me was if I offered to hire her.” I hold up a hand as soon as Kingston starts to speak. “Not like that, you twit. Aria is not like the girls we normally encounter, and she certainly wants nothing to do with me besides a professional relationship. To be honest, I only asked her because I wanted to shag her … but it’s not going to happen.”
“Damn, well, I guess you found us the answer we’ve been searching for the last six months.” Kingston squeezes my shoulder in a conciliatory gesture.
There has been a running bet between some of the older academy players about who would get Aria between the sheets first. Needless to say, we are a bunch of randy young men who attended an all-male school and get off on speculating about such juvenile things.
Except now I know that no one will ever win it. Well … except maybe me. There was a moment there, in the dark corner of the back hallway in Jet Lounge, where I could have done anything to her. I could have bent down and tasted her lips, I could have suggested we go back to the hotel.
I’d felt it after her performance at the open mic night, too. The one that a low-level A&R man had been attending, seen me, and asked who Aria was. Not that I’ve been able to tell her this past week … she has been avoiding me like the plague. I can easily get her phone number, it is in the employee file Barry secured for me when I decided to take her to London.
But, Aria needs time to cool off, that much I know. If I wait for the precise moment when she is weakest, I could exploit it to my advantage and cull out that wild streak I’d seen in her.
That is the girl I want to know more of. She is the one who would have let me fuck her next to the loo entrance in a VIP club.
There is more to it than that, even if my wicked heart keeps on denying it. I want to make her wild, yes. It’s the unanswered questions that nag at me worse than the need to corrupt her, though.
Why do I get the feeling she’s never been on a stage before?
Why has she never traveled to London before?
Who is in Clavering that she needed to get back to attend to?
Why was a pretty nineteen-year-old slaving away at Rogue Academy?
The mystery that is Aria Lloyd has me intrigued. For the first time ever, I want to know just as much about what is going on in a woman’s head as what is going on beneath the zipper of her trousers.
13
Aria
In the week since I came back from London in the middle of the night, life has returned to its normal, torturous monotony.
No exclusive clubs, celebrities, fast cars, or dangerously hot villainous men to be seen. Just my grueling hours of work, followed by grueling hours of home care and dad’s treatment schedule.
The reason I never do anything for myself, like sing in front of crowds or allow a crush to sprout hope in my chest? Because when they’re stolen back, taken by the cold, clutching fingers of fate, it’s that much more disappointing. It causes that much more heartbreak.
I’ve been allowed to see how the other half lives. What it feels like to view money as no object, and how it is to live freely, wildly. Not even before my father’s diagnosis was I allowed to gallivant throughout my days so carefree. I have a mother who left me; I have an invisible pain in every fiber of my being.
Maybe I knew once what it was like to have the possibility of a regular life, one with friends and school and a job you picked because you sort of fancied it … but that option is gone.
It had only been foolish and masochistic of me to dip my toe in Jude Davies’ pond.
Once again, I’m back in the men’s locker room, scrubbing it down after an already long day. One made longer because of the routes I had to take all over campus to avoid seeing said villainous man.
The bloke is too good looking for his own good, or anyone else’s. I have to stop thinking about him, and fast. Each time his face pops into my mind’s eye, my heart skips a beat. Which is daft and girlish and makes me feel like a bloody idiot.
“Shite, I wanted to get here first!”
The deep voice makes me jump, even over the sound of Alicia Keys singing “Fallin’.”
Standing in front of me is Jude, dressed in jeans and a plain white tee too scandalous for public wear, but only on him. How did he manage to make working man’s clothes look like an ad for some sexy, sexed up, sex club?
“What are you doing here?” I click off my music, furiously pulling the earbud from my right ear.
“I’m here to apologize. See, I even kept my clothes on to make you feel more comfortable.” He waves his hand down his body.
As if the clothing covering all of his beautiful bits makes me less immune to the godly body he possesses.
“Not bloody likely …” I mutter to myself more than him.
Jude tilts his head. “You’d rather me disrobe? That would make you more comfortable? Okay …”
He shrugs and lifts his T-shirt up a fraction, revealing olive-toned skin stretched over washboard abs.
“NO! No, please keep your clothes on, thank you!” My voice is squeaky and frantic.
All I wanted tonight was to be alone and get this done quickly. And now the one person I never wanted to see again is here. Realistically, I know working at Rogue Academy, I am bound see him. I’m not completely mental. But Jude will someday soon be gone to London for good, and I’ll be here, in Clavering, surviving. It stands to reason nothing good can come from this flirtatious dance we are doing. Teasing your hand over the flame, nine times out of ten, will leave you burned.
“Okay, don’t get your knickers in a twist. Or do.” Jude winks those gorgeous green eyes and I frown. Even when he claims to be apologizing, he’s a hornball. “I’m here to say sorry. And the best way I know how to do that is to help … so let me help.”
I stare at his open hand, wondering what he wants me to do. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m a big girl and have work to do. So, could you leave me to it? Thanks.”
“Aria, I’m going to help you. So that you
can finish faster.”
His words aren’t an innuendo but with the way my core flushes, they might as well have been.
My brows raise. “Do you even know how to handle a mop? Or a broom? Or wipe down toilets?”
Jude scuffs one sneaker against the other. “Well … not technically. But I’m an excellent student.”
Again, why do I have the feeling we’re not talking about cleaning a loo? Still, I can’t deny that it would be nice if he cut even five minutes off my chores down here. Five more minutes I could spend sleeping or writing those new lyrics that have been floating around my head for three days.
“Fine. Take this mop and start over near the sinks.” I relent, shoving it into his hands.
We work in silence for the next fifteen minutes; me working as efficiently as possible, and Jude trying to cover every minuscule centimeter of the floor with polish. No wonder the man is a football player, he probably wouldn’t make it in the real world.
“I really am sorry, Aria. I never meant to get you into trouble or take risks with you as you called it. The only thing I was trying to show you was a good time. Which I think you were having before the Bobbies showed up?”
His question hangs in the air as I contemplate his apology. “It doesn’t matter, anyhow. I told you, I don’t really have time for all of that. There are more important things I need to tend to.”
“Why did you even agree to accompany me to London? You knew I was only asking as a tease. You knew that I was trying to bed you, and yet, you still went.”
And this is the vital difference between us. He’s so wealthy, so revered and rewarded for athletic talents that were ingrained in him the minute he was born—say what you want about hard work, you can’t teach the kind of talent Jude Davies has—that he doesn’t even register how much ten thousand pounds means to someone like me. Where he doesn’t even bat an eye, that kind of bankroll could help us eat and live for the next half a year.
“My father was diagnosed with lung cancer almost two years ago.”
Speaking the words out loud feels like thousands of tiny glass shards working their way out of my throat.
Jude’s hands stop maneuvering the mop, but he doesn’t look at me. “And that’s why you take on extra shifts?”
I nod, even if he can’t see it. His back is still toward me. “We need the money. I’d work day and night if it meant I could keep him comfortable enough to fight admirably.”
“Is he on government wages?”
“He wasn’t working at the time of his diagnosis, so the government has been less than helpful.” The steely tone to my voice is directed at the local officials and his former employer who’ve tried everything to screw an honest man out of financial help.
“And your mum? Does she work?”
When I stay quiet for too long, Jude finally turns to face me. He looks … angry. I’m not sure why, but the expression on his face could scare Godzilla.
“My mum left us when I was ten. Decided she’d had enough, walked out in the middle of the night, and we haven’t heard from her since.”
“Bitch,” he mutters under his breath.
I shrug. “While that may be, dwelling on it isn’t going to save my father’s life. The only thing that will is chemotherapy, and me keeping our household afloat while my father isn’t able to work. So, that’s why I agreed to go to London. I needed those ten thousand pounds.”
Jude is silent for a moment, and I see the shift in his eyes as it happens.
“I know what it feels like to be the sole earner in your family … even as a teenager. When I was ten, I signed my first contract with the academy. It was amateur, and obviously nowhere near the amount of money I stand to make when I turn pro.”
I don’t interrupt to ask when he’ll stop cocking up so that he can turn pro, but I think it. Someday, if I’m brave enough, I should confess how daft I think he is for spoiling so many chances to get out of Clavering and stepping onto the world stage.
“But the pounds laid out at the bottom of the sheet they had me sign? I remember my mum crying at the conference room table. It was more money than she and my dad made in a year, combined. And that was per quarter. At the time, I barely had an idea of what that meant. I didn’t realize I was helping to clothe, feed, and shelter my family. It never dawned on me that because I was given a mythical right foot and a good work ethic, that my family could stop living paycheck to paycheck. At least, not until I began to age up. And then, after the accident …”
This bold, cocky, sensitive man trails off, and I know he’s thinking about his parents.
Then the walls come back up, he puts on the showman’s facade and brushes it all away. “Anyway, I won’t ask you to have fun again. You can count on that. I wanted to say sorry. I hope I’ve shaved some time off of your shift.”
He hands me the mop and walks out of the locker room.
I’m left standing there, wondering how the roles have just been completely reversed. Because now, I’m thinking I should go track Jude down and comfort him.
14
Jude
Two days later, the conversation I had with Aria in the locker room still haunts me.
I don’t talk about my parents, not even to Kingston and Vance. Their deaths made me an adult in the way only the status of orphan being painted on you can. From the moment the passenger train they were on derailed, killing a dozen and wounding hundreds more, my life took a sharp left and veered down a track I’d never realized was there.
The academy had come calling when I was seven, and I’d lived there for seven years already when the headmaster and two of my coaches came to tell me that my mum and dad were dead. I remember thinking it was some kind of joke, that they were talking rubbish. I didn’t break down until ten minutes later when one of them had to pull up the news story online to show me the photos of the crash. And my parents’ photos beside pictures of the wreckage, listing them as two of the dead.
From that moment on, there was only life before their deaths and life after. We’d grown up middle class, and while I’d still lived at home, we’d never struggled too much. My brother Paul was born six years after I was, and Charles followed two years after him. Rowdy, incorrigible boys, our parents loved and scolded us equally. When Dad discovered I was more than decent with a football, he signed me up for lessons. I caught the eye of a scout not a month later.
School was paid for, as was a stipend the club sent to my parents in good faith of my future success. To an outsider, the whole process probably looks like some kind of child trafficking scheme, but this is how players are bred. My parents knew that, and I never complained about how hard I was pushed or how difficult being a young child in the academy was. I craved the life more than anyone … I wanted to grow up and be the next international football legend.
But when my parents died, all of that changed. It wasn’t exactly something I had to do for myself, but my career and path became about supporting my two younger brothers. Luckily, my mother’s sister and her husband took Paul and Charlie in to care for them day-to-day. I, though, felt the need to provide financially. Half of every paycheck I received from the amateur contract I’d signed went to my brothers. When I eventually signed my multi-million-pound deal to go pro, I set up trusts in their names so that they’d be set for life.
Our parent’s deaths may have hit me the hardest, as I’d spent the most time as their son, but my brothers had been with them every day. They were only babies when they died, had no experience out in the real world like I did.
So, it’s no wonder that after talking to Aria about them, I am all cocked up in the head.
And drowning my sorrows in loads of alcohol.
“That wanker!” Kingston storms into our dorm and throws his knapsack across the room.
“Hello to you, too.” I nod, lifting up my beer in welcome.
It might be a Tuesday night, but I am halfway through a six-pack and have some gin in the freezer that is calling my name.
&nbs
p; Alcohol loves misery, after all.
“What are you yelling about?” Vance comes out of his room in nothing but boxers, rubbing his eyes.
“Were you asleep in there? I had no idea!” I chuckle, half-pissed already.
“Are you drunk?” His sleep haze has him looking confused.
“Headmaster Darnot is a complete and total wanker!” Kingston is still yelling, which apparently, my sloshed-self thinks is hilarious.
Vance crashes down on the sofa beside me. “Are you drunk?” Then to Kingston, “What did he do now?”
“The bastard gave my parents an ‘update’ on me.” Kingston throws his tatted arms up, the exact reason his parents keep such a close eye on him literally painted on his skin.
Kingston is one of the football world’s golden children. I literally mean precisely that, because he is the offspring of the former England keeper who won them a World Cup, and a Swedish woman footballer who brought back Olympic gold to her country. The Phillipses are a football dynasty, and their son had no other choice but to follow in their footsteps.
Anyone would feel sorry for me, what with two dead parents, but sometimes, I almost feel worse for Kingston. I play football because there is simply nothing else I want to do. It’s in my blood, it feeds my soul. He is forced into it. Even if he loves the game, loves being out on that pitch, he was still pushed into the sport, gave no consent to having his future planned out for him.
I feel even worse, that because of who they are, his parents are granted special meetings with the headmaster to talk about Kingston’s on the field and off the field success.
“Get pissed with me!” I hold up my empty beer and venture off into the kitchen to grab another.
“Nah, I’m too angry to drink. If I have alcohol now, you’ll have a recreation of Boxing Day twenty fifteen.”
The Second Coming (Rogue Academy Book 1) Page 6
