“I know who you are. I’m asking you what the hell you want?”
“No need to introduce myself, then,” Emma said, sotto voice.
“We’re here about Will.”
“What about him?”
“Well, he’s currently lying in a hospital bed with a broken back. I don’t know if you heard.” Micah’s last sentence was practically dripping with venom.
“I’ve heard.” And he looked like he didn’t care.
“Why haven’t you been to see him?” Emma asked. She must have thought the time for diplomacy was past. It hadn’t been a long wait.
“He made it clear he didn’t want to see me anymore when he left home.”
“Don’t you mean when you chucked him out?” Micah asked.
Deanes’s eyes narrowed as he stared at him. “He made his choice.”
“He probably wasn’t given much of one.”
“Are you his”—Deanes grimaced—“boyfriend?”
“No. I’m his friend.”
“You weren’t last year when he punched you out.”
“Things change.”
“I know that. My son changed.”
“He didn’t change,” Emma said. “He was just honest with you.”
“Well, he should have kept his mouth shut.”
“Would you rather he died in that crash?” Micah asked in disgust.
“I don’t have to justify myself to you.”
Emma grabbed Micah by the arm. “I told you this was useless.”
Micah shrugged. “I guess I thought he would man up and go and be a proper father.”
Deanes lunged for him, and had Micah up against the wall of the house before he could fight back. “Don’t you tell me how to man up. You wouldn’t know the first fucking thing.”
Even though he felt physically threatened, the toxic and oh-so-predictable response from Will’s father only made him laugh.
This infuriated Deanes even more.
“Your son is more of a man than you,” Micah said, pushing him away with ease. He really had filled out in the past couple of months. “Because he still cares about you, and after everything you’ve done he would probably still try to make a relationship work with you. And you don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve him.” He looked at Emma. “We’re done.”
Deanes remained at his front door, watching them get into the car.
“Are you okay?” Emma asked as they buckled in.
“I’m fine. Just can’t fucking believe him. You think things are getting better, but there are still people out there like that.”
“They are getting better, Micah.”
“You really believe that?”
“I have to believe that.” She started the car, and they let Will’s father fade away in the rearview mirror.
He understood her. The alternative was too awful to bear thinking about.
BUT IT didn’t lighten his mood any, and he entered the bowels of Etihad Stadium tense and snappish. In the change rooms he kept to himself, and resorted to putting on his iPod to drown out the hubbub of his teammates as they prepared for the game. The music didn’t soothe the savage beast within him, however, and by the time they took to the field Micah was baying for blood.
It was Will’s father he tackled in his first contact on the field, and he brought the opposing player down harder than he should have. He didn’t care. And it was stupid of him, because he wasn’t thinking about the game, he wasn’t thinking about his team, he was thinking about revenge by proxy.
So much so that at the end of the first quarter the captain and the coach took him aside and told him to pull his head in or else he was going to end up on a report.
After this, Micah sobered up a little. It was the one thing he could be sensible about. The rest of the world might feel like it was coming apart, but he had to hold on to his career. Without it, there was nothing.
For the remainder of the game he was the epitome of gracious sportsmanship. It didn’t do the team any good, though, as they lost by twenty-four points and fell farther down the ladder. Their chances of making any kind of preliminary final was escaping them.
“WHAT WAS wrong with you out there?” Daril demanded when they were back in the change rooms.
“Daril, leave it.” It was Sam, of course. It was always Sam to the rescue.
Daril huffed, but left them to it.
“Thanks,” Micah said. “Probably a lot of the guys are feeling that way.”
“They noticed something was… wrong when you started playing. But they know what’s going on with Will, and how it’s affected you.”
“It’s no excuse, though.”
“We’ve all had days like these on the field, Micah. The good thing was when you were told to stop it, you did.”
“So I’m not completely brain-dead,” Micah said.
Sam grinned. “Not yet, anyway. Although there was a moment when I thought you were actively seeking a brain injury trying to tackle Adams. He’s got half a foot on you.”
“I got away in time.”
“Barely!”
“And I handballed straightaway to Matthews, who then kicked a goal.”
“One of our few,” Sam said, darkly.
Micah tried to be philosophical. “They were better than us on the day. We’ll be better next week.”
“Like we were the last few games? In case you haven’t noticed it, we’re on a losing streak, mate.”
Like he didn’t know.
“Anyway,” Sam said. “We’re meeting at Sherlock’s for drinks at eight.”
“Sherlock’s?” Micah asked. It wasn’t the team’s usual Melbourne hangout.
“What, we can’t be classy and old time?”
“Whatever you say. I’ll bring my deerstalker hat, shall I?”
JUST AS he was getting out of the car and heading into his parents’ home, Micah’s mobile rang.
Henry’s name was on the screen. Micah answered it immediately, his heart thudding. “Henry? Is Will okay?”
“He’s the same,” Henry said. “But I’ve had a call from—”
“Oh.” Micah could already tell who he’d spoken to.
“Yeah, ‘oh.’ He was going feral at me, accusing me of sending you and Emma around to harass him. You can imagine my surprise at supposedly engineering something I’d never heard of until then.”
“Does Will know?”