Page 6 of Playing for Keeps

Jonathan had grown up in the North Island, but he’d been happy when I decided to sign with the Marauders. We’d been together only a year, and I knew that his leaving his job in Japan to follow me home to Christchurch was a big deal.

I just hoped that my joining the Marauders was the right decision for us.

Part of the reason I’d signed with them was because they had two openly out players in their squad. And not just any players, but influential guys like Aiden Jones, one of the best in the world, and Jacob Browne, son of a New Zealand legend. I figured any homophobia within the team would have been well and truly stamped out by now.

And in the end that had outweighed the major downside of the Marauders—the fact that my former best friend was on the squad.

Besides, I was determined Ethan wouldn’t be a factor in my choices anymore.

I was over him. I was in a healthy relationship with a great guy. I was back home to make my dream of making the New Zealand rugby team come true. And Ethan wasn’t going to distract me.

Don’t think about Ethan.

It was a frequent command so my brain immediately obeyed. He was like a black hole in my mind, a dark void I’d trained my thoughts to skirt around.

Instead, I forced myself to focus on Jonathan, and how I was going to let it be known I was in a relationship with a guy. I was favoring the low-key approach—taking him to team social events, weaving photos of us together into my Instagram feed, leaving people to draw their own conclusions. I’d be the third player in the team to be in a relationship with a guy, so surely it was past the point of being a big deal.

The plane started its descent and I watched as Christchurch loomed larger and larger outside my window. Growing up in a rural town an hour away, Christchurch had always been the big smoke. But now the city of almost four hundred thousand people seemed tiny after Tokyo.

The 2011 earthquake had made vast tracts of land uninhabitable because of liquefaction, yet the city had risen from the rubble, stronger and more vibrant than ever.

There was a message for me in there, I was sure.

When Char and I were kids our mother’s favorite saying was “clean slate” whenever she wanted us to move past whatever we’d been bickering about. Char and I had teased her because it was such an old-fashioned saying, but it sprang to mind now as we grew closer to landing. A clean slate. That’s what I wanted coming home to be for me.

The plane touched down on the tarmac with a jolt.

Jonathan smiled at me. “We’re here.”

“Home sweet home,” I replied.

When we came through the arrivals gates, my family was waiting to greet us.

My parents had met Jonathan when they’d visited me in Japan, so seeing them now wasn’t awkward. But it was the first time he was meeting Char in the flesh.

I hugged my parents first, then turned to my sister. We both had dark hair and dark eyes, but there the resemblance ended. Char was tiny, barely five foot four, while I towered over her at six-three. And she’d always been skinny. In the womb I’d hogged most of the nutrients and she’d been born over a pound lighter than me. After Theo’s birth she had seemed to lose even more weight, as if he’d sucked out some of her life force.

She felt small and breakable now as I engulfed her in a hug. Technically she was my older sister by twelve minutes, but I’d always felt the need to protect her growing up.

As it turned out, I’d protected her from the wrong things.

Once I released her I looked down at Theo, who was gripping Char’s hand and huddling into her.

I guess that was fair, as he didn’t really know me. Avoiding New Zealand had made me a stranger to my nephew. I was determined to change that.

I crouched down so I could greet him at his height, and my breath whooshed out of my lungs.

Fuck.

I was sucked into the black hole vortex in my brain. Ethan, at the same age, his breath smelling like fruity bubblegum, green eyes shining with mischief, a smattering of freckles across his nose.

I blinked.

Because it wasn’t Ethan in front of me. It was Theo.

“Hey there, Theo,” I managed to choke out. “It’s weird seeing you in real life rather than on a screen.”

Theo just looked at me for a few seconds. “Hi,” he finally whispered.