Page 5 of One Last Try (Try for Love #1)

Owen

I still check both ways before crossing, then cut over the cottage’s gravel drive, up the few steps, and along the path to Fernbank’s porch.

Daisy, Molly, and I had revamped the entire place a few months ago.

We painted the front door a pretty sage green and the two bay tree plant pots a dusky rose pink.

The girls had promised me those colours would be complementary together, and well, they’d been right.

The house looks charming. Idyllic. I feel a pang of something in my chest. Nostalgia maybe, but .

. . harsher, sharper, more painful. Like I’m holding back an emotion.

I shake the thought, balance the tray in the crook of my arm, and knock on the door.

There’s a deep rumbling sound—Mathias’s voice no doubt—which stops the instant my hand leaves the knocker. Then nothing but silence. I knock again, and then a few seconds later, once more.

“No one’s home,” a voice calls out. A South Welsh accented voice. I pretend my heart doesn’t flip-flop at his use of the word home.

“Your pie’s getting cold,” I reply.

There’s a pause—not long—and when the door squeaks open a crack, Mathias’s face presses into the gap half a foot above my own face. “Owen Bosley.”

He doesn’t say anything else, just my full name. I don’t fill the silence either. We simply stare at each other.

Mathias is tall . . . really tall. So tall in fact, that one of his nicknames is The Giant. He’s six-five, six-six, and has the lean, muscular frame of a twenty-nine-year-old fly-half. He’s still wearing his “slutty little shorts,” and I try not to let my gaze drift down to his thighs.

Mathias has propped the door open with his knee, so I can only see a sliver of him, but the sliver I can see is .

. . well, it’s very pleasing to look at.

Rewarding even. He has dark, richly tanned skin thanks to his Spanish heritage, black hair that falls in haphazard curls over his forehead, and the deepest, most luxurious, most lose-yourself-in-them brown eyes known to man.

They’re framed by ludicrously thick feminine lashes, and topped by the frowniest pair of brows I’ve ever seen .

Still Mathias says nothing. I hold the tray higher, hoping some of that good meaty pie stink wafts his way. It must do, because the next second the door opens all the way, and he turns back inside the house.

I follow him and set the food down in the dining room. Fetch him some cutlery.

“I’m looking for somewhere else to live,” he says, hovering beside the table. The stark break in the silence causes me to drop the knife onto the tray. “I was just on the phone to my agent—fuck! My agent . . .”

Mathias runs to the front porch where he’d left his phone on the spindly antique table next to the door.

He looks at the screen and then brings it to his ear.

“Sim? Sim? You still there? You still—oh, sorry. Owen Bosley came round with pie and chips. I’ll call you back in a .

. . No, he’s just come over . . . Yes, from the pub .

. . No, I gotta go . . . Okay, bye.” He hangs up the phone as he’s walking through the living room and tosses it onto the sofa.

Hmm, he moved them. Put the big sofa under the window and the smaller one opposite the fireplace.

Feels off somehow.

“Don’t leave.” The words drop from my mouth, ungainly and bordering on begging.

I won’t beg, but I need him to stay. Need the property occupied.

Actually, fuck it, I’m not above begging. I turn away from him, focus my attention on the condensation building along the plastic dome covering his food. “Please.”

Mathias stops in his tracks. I don’t look at him—can’t bear to. Instead, I sit down at the table and stare steadfastly at the tray. I can feel his hesitancy and I can’t blame him. Imagine having the guy whose leg was broken during your tackle beg you to stay in a property he used to live in.

Cringe, as Daisy would put it. So fucking cringe.

Eventually Mathias sits opposite me, spares one longing glance for his food, and then spears me with his gaze, the “Why not? Why shouldn’t I leave?” evident in the upward tick of his brows and the pout of his lips .

I force myself not to stare at them, at their fullness, and I decide to be honest. “Listen, I know we have some . . . history.” History’s not the right word, but I’ll be fucked if I can find the right word. “I . . .” Shit, this is harder than I first assumed. “You’re my wild card.”

He snorts. If Mathias had been eating his pie already, I’d have been wearing it. “I’m your what now?”

My laughter is forced, nervous. “You know, like when all other options don’t work, try something completely different.”

“Believe it or not, I’m familiar with the concept of wild cards.”

Okay, here goes nothing. “After I left the Cents, I bought the pub across the road, which at the time seemed super fucking idyllic and cute, and yeah, it was—is, to be honest. It is cute, and I love it, but . . . the pub needs some work done. A new thatched roof, actually. Complete replacement, and at about forty grand . . . that’s not money I have lying around.

I’ve tried a few other ways to raise the funds.

Went to the bank, but I already remortgaged once to buy The Little Thatch .

. . they won’t let me do it again. And I guess the other loan companies don’t want to take that kind of gamble on me.

“Someone suggested I needed a wild card. I needed to rent out Fernbank Cottage to contribute towards the roof money.” I realise I’ve said all of this to his food, and finally lift my gaze to him.

Pity. That’s what I see in his eyes, and I’m instantly transported to that night. That one fateful match. Lying on my back on the pitch, Mathias hovering above me, hands on hips, his mouth moving with words I couldn’t hear, but read on his lips nonetheless.

“What the fuck have I done?”

He’s quiet for a few moments. Processing, no doubt. “I can’t stay here, though. I can’t . . . be your wild card. You’re . . . you’re . . .” He shakes his head. “I’ve signed a six-month lease on this place so I will still pay your rent, but I can’t stay . . .”

I nod. Don’t need him to explain why. No concept had ever been more relatable. If our positions were switched, I’d feel exactly the same.

It doesn’t stop the weird pang of disappointment .

“Eat,” I say instead, and Mathias obediently picks up his cutlery. I lift the lid off the dish and set it aside, upside down to avoid the moisture pooling on the table.

He stabs three fat chips with his fork and shovels them into his mouth, groaning.

Of course my cock responds to his moan. I ignore it.

“How much do I owe you?” Mathias points towards the food with his knife. “For the pie and chips.”

“It’s on your tab,” I reply.

He’s already scooped nearly a quarter of the pie into his mouth so I can see his half-chewed food as he says, “But I’m not staying.”

The father in me should be annoyed at his table manners, but secretly I’m flattered. “Well, when you leave, you can pay up then.”

He considers me for a moment. Another quarter of his pie disappears between his lips. “Sure.”

“It could be weeks yet before you find a new place. What are you gonna do, get a Premier Inn until then?”

Mathias looks up from his food. Stops chewing. He says nothing, but the answer’s written in the set of his jaw, the line of his brow.

As professional sportsmen, we’ve all spent ungodly amounts of time living out of hotel rooms while we travelled back and forth between games, training, tournaments, et cetera. It’s fine, is what it is and all that, but it’s not the same as going home after a match.

When your muscles are screaming at you, when there’s mud in your ass crack, when you can’t shower properly because you’re busy doing post-game interviews and the rest of the team steals all the hot water, when you’ve been sitting in the same position on a coach for seven hours and even your pins and needles have pins and needles, there is nothing like the feeling of getting home.

Where your bath tub lives. Where your favourite comfort foods lie in the fridge.

Where your own bed is, with your own mattress, and your duvet whose covers you washed before you left so they’d be soft and clean and awaiting your homecoming .

Where your family is. Your friends, your neighbours, your local pub.

Hotel rooms don’t come anywhere near that.

But then, Mathias has none of those comforts here. All his family are no doubt back in Wales. He hasn’t even spent a single night in Mudford-upon-Hooke yet.

What if he hates his new mattress? What if he doesn’t like the way the sun blasts through the east-facing window in the master bedroom every morning? Or the noisy as fuck wood pigeon in the tree outside his new room? What if he wants furniture that hasn’t been half destroyed by my daughters?

Still neither of us says anything. Mathias’s gaze bounces around the tiny dining space, into the living room, to the door frame that had caused me more than one forehead egg.

Perhaps he’s imagining waking up in a sterile, over air-conditioned, impersonal hotel suite.

Maybe he’s already decided he’d prefer a Holiday Inn over this.

Over Fernbank Cottage. My family home.

Subtly, I move my forearm to hide the MOLLY STINKS , etched into the wood by a peeved Daisy with the pointy end of a school compass.

Mathias tracks the movement. “Who’s Molly?”

I remove my elbow. “Daisy’s older sister. My other daughter. She’s in Canterbury studying engineering. It’s her final year. She has her exams soon.”

He nods, his expression vacant of any emotion. “When did you move here?”

Okay, good, a bit of conversation is good.

“Ooh, must’ve been . . .” I puff out a breath as I let my brain locate the info.

“Summer of twenty twelve. It was just after my split with Kirsty. Molly was seven, almost eight, and Daisy was five . . . That’s right, I ordered a sofa but it took months to arrive, so we spent the entire school holidays sitting on bean bags watching the Olympics. ”

That was the year Molly had decided she wanted to become a rower.

In fact, the rowing club at the University of Canterbury was one of her main reasons for studying there.

That was also the summer we raced sunflowers up the front wall of the cottage for the first time.

Daisy’s always won. No idea how she managed it every year, but I suspect there was some degree of sabotage involved .

“When do you start training?” I ask Mathias, halting my mind before it ventured fully into nostalgia-land.

“Not till Monday,” he replies. “Thought I’d . . . settle in first.”

I don’t know why his words leave a hollow ache in my chest.

“If you decide you’d rather stay here, Thursday night is quiz night over at The Thatch. Not blowing my own trumpet or anything, but I’m a pretty fantastic quiz master.”

At this, he smiles. Well, I guess it could be described as a smile. One corner of his mouth ticks up and his eyes crinkle a little at the edges. Not enough to disrupt his infallible pissed-off expression, but I catch it nonetheless. It vanishes a second later.

“And Fridays are fish Fridays. There’s a guy that comes up from Newlyn—that’s in Cornwall—every week to supply the Michelin star restaurant in Hookborough.

But he always stops by us too. We never know what we’re getting.

Could be pollock, plaice, mackerel. Could be crabs.

One time we had lobster. Do you like seafood? ”

Mathias hmms, his way of saying, “Yes, I do, but I won’t be eating any of it at your pub.”

“And of course,” I continue. “On weekends we watch the rugby. Sunday mornings we play sevens in the field behind the pub. You’re welcome to join us. The old boys are getting a bit lazy these days. We could do with having a pro around to light a fire under their asses.”

He still doesn’t respond, so I take it as my cue to leave him the fuck alone. He needs time to process everything, make some decisions.

I get to my feet. “I’ll be off, then. Daze will be over tomorrow for your empty dishes.” I head back through the living room, but pause before I get to the porch. “You know, you can stay here as long as you like. You’ll always be welcome here.”

“Thank you,” he says, so quietly I’m not sure I heard him correctly. “For the food . . . and the welcome. And for not . . .” He doesn’t finish his thought.

It’s not until I get back to the pub that I realise I should have said something about the accident. I don’t blame him, or harbour any grudges—and he should already know this; I’ve said it often enough in interviews—but perhaps I ought to tell him to his face.

Maybe I’ll send myself and not my daughter around tomorrow to collect his tray.