Floored - Karla Sorensen Page 0,35

for the club." I nodded, then started edging toward the door of the room. "Thanks."

He wanted to ask more, it was obvious, but honestly, I wasn't much in the mood for talking.

It was a shit game in shit weather, and all I wanted to do was take a hot shower.

Everything had set up perfectly in the eighty-ninth minute when I got the ball and had a free stretch to run.

But instead of a win, instead of a draw, we went in the wrong direction. That Bethnal Green keeper was a lucky bastard because the one finger he'd gotten on the ball was enough to keep us from a draw. They got three points and moved ahead of Arsenal on the table. We stayed where we were. Like a bloody car that couldn't get out of neutral.

I left the press room and hooked a right toward the showers. One of my newer teammates, an acquisition from Paris St Germain, murmured something in French as he passed. It sounded an awful lot like he was calling me a name that I never would've dared to repeat in front of Mrs. Atkinson. Declan exited another press area and lifted his chin.

"You looked like shit today, McAllister."

I gave him a look. "How in the bloody hell they decided you should be captain is beyond me."

"Because I'm not going to tiptoe around your ego to make you feel better." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I can admit where I fucked up today. Can you?" When I didn't answer, he lowered his voice. "You had someone right behind you who could've taken the ball, could've come at the goal from the side, and instead, you went for the glory shot. It's not always your job to save the day just because you're trying to prove you can still play."

"I'll remember that the next time I get a perfect shot," I said dryly.

"If you get the shot, then take it. But that wasn't it. You were too far away from the goal, you didn't have the right angle, and you were running too fast to bend it the way you would've needed. But if you'd passed to Sebastien, he would've had it."

Pride had me wanting to defend myself, and I fairly choked on the words as I swallowed them back down. "Is that why he's calling me names?"

"Probably." His eyes never wavered. "Pull your head out of your arse, Jude. I mean it."

His words rang in my head while I showered and changed. None of my teammates talked to me, all murmuring quietly after the dejection of another loss when we really needed a win.

In the quiet of the locker room, the heavy weight of a loss felt like all the balls I'd kept juggled in the air were falling one by one.

Maybe it was like this for other players, but I'd never ask. For me, losing felt like unleashing a screaming banshee that tailed behind me until our next game. All I could hear were the things my parents had warned me about when I was an eighteen-year-old, giving up my life to play in Germany.

Why can't you just be content with a normal life?

Why can't you be proud of the work we do and help us contribute in a way that means something?

It's vain. Frivolous.

Playing games doesn't keep the world turning.

Every single time we lost, every single time someone hinted that I wasn't valuable anymore, I felt like my parents were watching, nodding their heads because they were right all along.

I sighed. Most games, I never even thought about looking up in the stands, even on the odd game that Lewis came to, because it was simply another reminder of how my family didn't understand me, didn't see exactly what I had accomplished in my life. Those empty seats in my mind lit every fire underneath me. And today, they hadn't all been empty.

Not once, in all my years of playing, had I walked out of a loss with someone waiting for me. There was no telling how she'd react or try to handle me, so I braced myself for whatever it might be. I braced myself to see how she'd react, this girl I was supposed to be getting to know.

When I left the room, I stopped short in the doorway, because across the hallway was Lia, waiting for me with a smile and beautifully flushed face.

"Hi." I sounded like an idiot.

Her smile spread even further. "That was so freaking fun."

My head