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The humiliation of the scene at Richmond lingers like a bruise. The yelling of the crowd, Cartrick refusing to follow directions, excited Richmond fans flooding the field as if they wanted to personally revel in Rupert’s humiliation. He goes home—not to Bones and Honey, not with Bex still a member—and stares into a half-empty bottle of bourbon. West Ham, Bex, Richmond—all of his problems trace back to Rebecca, like following a power cord back to the source.
He puts the bottle down carefully, the silence of his house like nails on a chalkboard. Retribution, it’s a delicate thing.
He can see the options unfolding like a movie. Can’t do anything to Rebecca—she’d become a martyr, and the team would rally in some sort of saccharine attempt to honor her. Lasso has announced his retirement; he’s taken himself out of play. Kent or Nathan, maybe, although he can’t imagine any of Richmond so fond of either of them that they’d do more than shrug. Bex would be satisfying on a personal level, but wouldn’t really do anything to solve the Rebecca of it all. He needs to take them all down, in one fell swoop: the team, Rebecca, the fans who dropped him after years of keeping the club afloat. West Ham doesn’t just need to win; Richmond needs to lose, in such a humiliating way that Rebecca hiring Lasso would pale in comparison.
Needs a stake in the heart of the beast.
He picks up his phone. Sometimes, the first ideas are the best.
~
Her phone shrieks at such a ridiculous hour that Keeley, for the first time in her life, actually contemplates murder.
Roy, it reads. She’s softened towards him and Jamie and their idiocy over the last week, brought on by a sincere joint apology and also lots of sweets—but if they’re calling her to tell her about a weird looking duck they saw, or that they’d had another life epiphany, or even just Roy calling to gloat he’d made Jamie throw up again, she will go to wherever they’re training just to run them over with her car.
(She had enjoyed the picture of the duck, once it was a normal hour and she was actually awake enough to appreciate it.)
“Roy,” she says when the phone doesn’t stop ringing. “Someone had actually better be dying if you ever want me to consider touching your cock again.”
There’s a hitch of breath that could almost, at a 90 degree angle, be called a laugh. Then silence, broken by the raggedness of Roy’s breathing.
“Roy?” she asks, stomach going cold. They’re running, probably, and Roy isn’t in top-of-the-Premier-League shape any more.
“Can you—” She’s never heard Roy sound like that, ever. “Can you bring me a change of clothes?”
“What?” She feels frozen, even though from a distance she can recognize she’s up and pulling on a pair of jeans. She muddles over a drawer of forgotten ex things; pulls out a hoodie she never gave back because it was so comfy, a pair of sweats that might have actually been Jamie’s. “Where are you, Roy?”
There’s a beat. “St. Anne’s.”
She swallows. “Did your sister have to go in unexpectedly?” She knows that’s not it; he would have gone to watch Phoebe at home, but she wants to live in the fantasy just a little longer.
“No. It’s, uh,” his voice hitches. “It’s Jamie.”
~
When she gets to the hospital, a nurse points her to a small waiting room tucked in a maze of hallways. Private, and Keeley knows that’s not a good sign. She passes two policemen on her way, and tries not to throw up.
Inside, Roy is slumped in an uncomfortable plastic chair, arm thrown over his eyes. He’s in a pair of scrubs, and there’s a dark stain high on his cheek. He must have managed to cut himself with his beard trimmer somehow.
He puts his arm down, and his eyes are red. She falls into the chair beside him.
At some point—she starts ticking things off her list. Makes Roy text Beard and Nate to deal with the team. Keeley calls Rebecca, Barbara. Lets them talk through a statement to put out: Jamie Tartt is in emergency surgery following a home invasion early this morning. We will provide an update as more information emerges. We ask that fans respect his family’s privacy at this time. That starts off a debate about who has to call Georgie and Simon, and Keeley draws the short straw, because she’s the only person who’s both met them and isn’t catatonic. It only lasts about five minutes, but it’s the longest phone call of Keeley’s life.
She gets the story out of Roy in bits and pieces, like pulling gravel out of a road rash. The door was wide open, and do you think his father, and the bone was sticking out, Keeley. With the last, the tears finally fall, and Keeley presses so close into his space that she isn’t sure if they’re hers or Roy’s.
There’s a knock on the door. Keeley holds her breath and squeezes Roy’s trembling hand.