The Striker (Gods of the Game Book 1)

The irony of me racing to the hospital for Asher after he’d done the same for me two weeks ago wasn’t lost on me, but I didn’t dwell on the parallels of our situation.

I was too busy trying not to hyperventilate and lose my ever-loving mind.

Brooklyn floored it through the streets of central London while Carina monitored the news for any developments (none so far). They’d sprung into action immediately when they found out what happened, and I was so dazed I didn’t even have the energy to fret over Brooklyn’s driving.

My stomach sloshed with each jerk and stop. I was this close to throwing up, but if I threw up, I’d slow us down.

I couldn’t slow us down. Not when every minute counted.

The news reported which hospital Asher was at, but the articles were so light on details that my imagination grabbed the blank spaces and drenched them with gruesome images.

Asher broken. Asher burned. Asher…

My dinner resurfaced in my throat. I curled my fingers around the edge of my seat and clung on for sanity until we reached the hospital.

One. Two—A small hiccup interrupted my attempts to breathe. I clutched the seat tighter and fought another sob.

Three.

Four.

The second Brooklyn parked, I flung open the door and sprinted toward the entrance. Carina shouted something, but I couldn’t hear her over the noise.

The crowd…God, if I thought the press turnout when I left the hospital had been wild, the sheer number of paps here tonight was mind-boggling. It made what I’d had to deal with so far look like quaint family gatherings in my nan’s backyard.

“Look! It’s Scarlett!” One of them spotted me, and the rest descended like vultures on fresh spoils.

“Scarlett, do you know how Asher’s doing?”

“What are your thoughts on the crash?”

“Are his injuries serious?”

“Scarlett!”

“Scarlett!”

They closed in around me in a seething, undulating ocean of black. Cameras flashed every other second, nearly blinding me, and my nausea intensified into a form of vertigo.

“Get out of my way!” I shouted, but my voice was lost in the cacophony. I tried to push through the crowd, but there were too many of them.

Panic and claustrophobia squeezed my lungs. The world spun. I had to get through. I needed to get through before he—if he⁠—

Dots danced before my eyes.

Breathe. I need to breathe. I need to⁠—

“She said to get out of the fucking way!” Brooklyn’s audible anger swelled above the noise.

I heard several shouts of surprise followed by a pained grunt before firm hands grabbed both my arms and dragged me out of the viper’s pit.

Cool air replaced stifling heat.

The dots gradually receded, and I sucked in a gasp of fresh oxygen so quickly it devolved into a coughing fit.

We stopped inside the hospital lobby. Someone handed me a bottle of water, and I gulped half of it down gratefully.

“Better?” Carina asked when I finished and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

I nodded, too drained to scrounge up a coherent reply. “I need to find Asher.” Fresh panic swamped my temporary bout of relief.

“I’m on it.” Brooklyn released my other arm and marched straight up to the front desk. It took some convincing, but the incessant press coverage of me finally came in handy when one of the nurses recognized me as Asher’s girlfriend.

They refused to give me an update on his condition, but they allowed me to go up to the VIP floor with my friends and a security escort.

The lift seemed to take forever. No one spoke, and I couldn’t stop shaking from the arctic cold stealing through my body.

I was desperate to see Asher, but I dreaded it as well. What condition was he in? Why wouldn’t the nurse tell me? If he was fine, she would’ve told me, right?

The lights stabbed at my eyes. Why was the lift so slow? If I had to be stuck in this steel cage for another second, I was going to scream.

I jabbed at the button again and again like that would somehow make it go faster. Our security escort opened his mouth, but he closed it when Brooklyn sent a scathing glare in his direction.

Finally, blessedly, we arrived on our floor. The doors slid open, and I dashed out without waiting for him or my friends.

They could find me later. In a hospital, one second could mean the difference between life and death.

Startled nurses and staff jumped out of the way to avoid colliding with me as I raced through the hall, frantically searching for Asher’s room. Luckily, there were only a handful of suites on the VIP floor, and I found his around the corner, at the very end of the corridor.

A familiar dark-haired figure sat opposite the door.

He raised his head, his eyes widening when he saw me. He stood right as I reached him.

“Vincent.” My brother’s name fell out as a half sob, half plea. I grabbed his arm, my heart a twisted mess behind my ribcage. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. I had to prepare myself. “The nurse wouldn’t—is he⁠—”

“He’s okay. Plenty scratched up, but okay.” Vincent gently loosened my death grip and squeezed my hand, his face pale but his voice steady. “They’re still running tests on him, but he’s alive and relatively unharmed.”

My knees buckled with relief.

Alive. He’s alive. The word rang in my ears.

A small, morbid part of me had been so convinced I’d arrive and find Asher gone that Vincent’s reassurance refused to sink in. It floated around the edges of my consciousness, suspended by an irrational fear that my brother had somehow gotten it wrong and Asher was actually steps away from death.

“They wouldn’t allow all the guys in here, so I offered to stay and keep everyone updated.” Vincent scrubbed a hand over his face. Exhaustion smudged the skin beneath his eyes. “I should’ve called you earlier, but I lost my phone on the way to the hospital. Once I got here, things were so chaotic that it slipped my mind. I was just catching my breath when you showed up.”

“You were with him when it happened?” My lower lip trembled. “What exactly happened?”

Had Vincent been in the passenger seat? If so, why was he completely unharmed while Asher was “plenty scratched up”? Asher hadn’t told me what the team was doing for its guys’ night out, but alcohol, testosterone, and cars were often a volatile mix. Had he been driving drunk?

A wisp of unease ate away at my relief.

Vincent hesitated. “You should talk to him when the doctors are done.” He glanced over my shoulder, and I turned to see Carina, Brooklyn, and my security escort speeding toward us.

Our escort stopped at the end of the hall when he saw I was with Vincent. My friends came up beside me and said hi to my brother, their voices muted.

Meanwhile, I stared at the closed door to Asher’s hospital room, willing it to open.

If I could only see him, I’d put my pesky worries to rest. Vincent said he was fine, so he was fine. His well-being was the most important thing, not the cause of the crash.

Still, the unease lingered until the doctor and nurse finally stepped out and gave me the all clear to see him.

“We’ll be here if you need us,” Carina said, squeezing my arm.

I nodded, my heart wobbling as I walked into the hospital suite.

I’d seen the inside of a hospital more times in the past four months than I had in years, and I was sick of it. Sick of the smell, sick of the way the nurses’ shoes squeaked against the linoleum floors, sick of the oppressive cloud of anticipatory dread that drifted through the hallways like a deathly specter.

However, any negative feelings I had toward the space vanished at the sight of Asher sitting, alive and whole, less than five feet away. Like Vincent warned, he was scratched up with cuts and bruises, but he was there.

Tears stung the backs of my eyes.

“Hi, darling.” His mouth tipped up at the corner. “I wish you would’ve called and told me you were coming first. I’m not looking my best at the moment.”

The tears spilled down my cheeks as I choked out a noise of half anger, half amusement. “Asher Donovan, now is not the time to make jokes.”

His face softened. “I know. I’m sorry.” He opened his arms. “Come here.”

He didn’t have to ask twice. I was by his side in an instant, my face pressed into his neck while he held me tight. Sobs wracked my body as the tears fell in a constant rain.

BREAKING: Asher Donovan rushed to hospital after car crash in north London.

I didn’t have proper words to describe the emotions that engulfed me when I first saw the headline. I’d never experienced such cold, visceral terror, not even when I sat in the back of a taxi and saw another car barreling toward me at sixty miles an hour.

If I died, I had the relief of oblivion. I wouldn’t experience pain or sadness; I would simply be gone.

But if someone I loved died, I’d have to live without them forever. The pain of that would eclipse anything else I’d ever felt—especially if that someone was Asher.

Because I didn’t just love him; I was in love with him. I was so in love with him that the thought of him dying made me want to die.

The realization struck me with the force of a bullet, and the sentiment was so foreign, so all-consuming, that I had no idea how to handle it.

So I let the excess emotion pour out through my eyes and throat, filling the room with the intensity of my sobs.

“Don’t cry.” Asher kissed the top of my head, his voice strained. “It’s okay, darling. I’m okay.”

“Did the doctors…can you…”

“I can still play football.” He picked up on my unfinished question. Short of death, his worst nightmare would’ve been a career-ending injury. “I have a concussion, multiple lacerations, and a sprained ankle, so I’ll have to sit out a couple of matches. They’re still waiting on some test results, but the doctor is confident I’ll be fully healed in a few weeks.”

I finally gathered enough composure to straighten and lift my head. I sniffled and swiped at my swollen eyes. I must have looked like a mess, but I didn’t care. I was beyond the point of embarrassment.

“Good. I’m glad you’re okay because I thought…there was a moment when…” My voice caught.

Asher’s eyes softened further. “I’m okay,” he repeated. “I promise.”

I nodded and wiped my cheeks again. “What happened?” I hiccupped. “Did someone hit you?”

I wished I could spend the entirety of our time hugging and kissing and ignoring the events of the night, but until I knew what caused the crash, my imagination would continue running wild.

Asher hesitated. “In a way, yes,” he said. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

The human brain hated ambiguity. It was designed to fill in the blanks, and his vague answer gave it ample room to spin wild theories.

Was he the one who hit the other car? Were its occupants lying somewhere else in the building, grievously injured?

Something thick and ugly oozed through my veins. No. I refused to doubt him. Asher was a careful driver when he wasn’t racing, and if he had harmed someone else, he would be sick over it. He wouldn’t be this calm.

Nevertheless, the mere prospect ripped open a portal in my imagination and tossed me back in time.

One second, I was in the hospital with Asher. The next, I was transported back to five years ago, when I awoke in a room very similar to this one and heard a faint murmur of voices discussing my situation.

Punctured lungs, broken ribs, shattered pelvis.

She might never dance again. Not even recreationally.

Her injuries are severe, but she’s lucky…could’ve died…

The world swung sideways as past and present blended into a nauseating stew.

Did someone hit you?

In a way, yes.

I placed a hand atop a nearby machine, steadying myself. “What do you mean, ‘in a way?’”

The answer was probably innocuous. When it came to cars, there were many technicalities that prevented accidents from being black and white.

However, I recognized the emotion seeping into Asher’s expression. It wasn’t innocuous.

It was guilt.

Why would he feel…

The breath stalled in my lungs. He hadn’t hit someone else’s car. I sensed it in my gut.

But if he hadn’t done that, then there was only one reason for the guilt shining in his eyes.

Icy talons raked down my spine. Don’t say it, I silently begged. Please don’t say it.

“I was racing,” he said quietly. “Against someone from my old team. He was behind, but halfway through the race, when we were rounding a bend, he purposely rammed into me. My car went over the guardrail and crashed through a fence.”

My nausea returned with a vengeance.

I was racing.

The confession clattered to the floor and rolled to my feet like a live grenade. My earlier relief exploded into fragments of images—Asher behind the wheel, two sports cars hurtling through the dark streets with reckless abandon, the impact of one slamming into the other the way a car had slammed into my taxi half a decade ago. Only this time, it wasn’t an accident; it was planned. Malicious.

The fragments splintered further, detailing the flip of the car as it careened over the railing and the scrape of twisted metal against its hood.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

“I didn’t do it for the thrill.” Asher’s voice hoarsened, turning the sentiment into an excuse rather than an explanation.

He told me about what Holchester did to his favorite car and how he confronted them at the Angry Boar. He told me about Bocci’s racing proposal and how he’d promised they would let bygones be bygones if Asher won.

Technically, I heard what he was saying. Part of me even understood his reasoning. But the actual words took a backseat to the phantom screech of tires and promises from the past.

I won’t race anymore. I promise.

Memories of my accident mixed with Asher’s crash and our first night in Japan. They twisted and turned, drilling into my brain with ruthless determination.

“It was my one chance to put the bad blood with Holchester to rest.” Asher’s voice sounded as if it was coming from underwater. “I didn’t…”

The rest of his sentence was eclipsed by the war raging inside me.

I knew he had a history of racing. I knew he’d crashed cars before. I even knew he’d raced right before we got together because he told me he had. That was what’d led to our conversation and his promise in Japan in the first place.

But the knowledge and the terror that came with it had always seemed abstract, like a parent worrying about someone kidnapping their child or a surfer worrying about a shark attack. The threat was present, but it wasn’t there because I’d never witnessed the consequences.

Now I had.

Asher was lucky enough to have escaped serious injury, but it could’ve easily gone the other way. I could be in a morgue right now instead of the hospital, and the realization that he’d put himself in this situation when he was fully aware of the danger made me go cold all over.

“You promised you wouldn’t race again.” The words came out thick and swollen, like I’d tried to pack a lifetime’s worth of emotion into nine syllables.

The beeps from the monitor thundered in the ensuing silence.

Asher’s hands fisted the sheets, his face leached of color. “I know.”

The soft acknowledgment shattered something deep inside me.

I should be grateful he was alive—and I was. No matter how many promises he broke, there would never be a version of me that didn’t care whether he lived or died.

But I couldn’t look at him without imagining what could’ve happened, and I couldn’t imagine what could’ve happened without feeling sick.

This was about more than the race or even a broken promise. It was about who Asher was at his core. He was a good person, and I loved who he was, but he also possessed a streak of impulsive recklessness that verged on self-destructive.

If he destroyed himself, he destroyed me, and once upon a time, I’d vowed never to put myself in a position where a man would have that type of power over me ever again.

Except I had, and he did, and that was on me.

“I’m so sorry, Scarlett.” Asher’s eyes were bleak beneath the fluorescent lights. “I swear, I didn’t mean to break my promise. The last time I saw Bocci, he challenged me to a race, and I refused. Today…” He swallowed. “My emotions got the better of me. But it was going to be—it is—the last time. I’ll never race again.”

I wanted to believe him so badly that I ached with it, but he’d said the same thing once before, and here we were.

However, this wasn’t the place or time for this conversation. He was injured, the paparazzi were frothing at the mouth downstairs, and our friends were right outside in the hall. Plus, I was exhausted from tonight’s wild swings in emotion. I couldn’t think clearly, and I didn’t have the bandwidth to sort through my muddled thoughts.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. A weight pressed on my chest and strangled my supply of oxygen. “Really, I am. But I can’t—I need—” His face blurred as the weight pressed harder.

I wanted to spend the night by his side and pretend everything was okay until we could have a proper conversation. But because of the paps, I had to “pretend” every time I stepped out the door, and I couldn’t do it tonight—not with Asher, the only person I’d never had to put on a fake face for.

I wouldn’t be of any consolation to him in my current state anyway. The specter of his race would hang over us, casting a shadow over everything we said and did.

I tried to put my thoughts into words, but nothing came out. There was only the sound of my breaths and the monitors beeping.

I took a small step back without thinking.

“Scarlett.” I felt Asher’s agony more than I heard it. It traveled through my entire body and reverberated in my bones, making them ache worse than any flare-up.

I hated that I was the cause of it when he’d been hurt enough that night, and I hated that I couldn’t comfort him even more.

We all have ugly feelings sometimes. It’s a part of human nature. But it’s what we do with them that counts.

I was drowning in those ugly feelings, and I needed to get out of here before I said or did something I regretted.

“I need air.” I turned so I didn’t have to see the devastation etched into his face. “I’m sorry. I have to—I just need some space. To breathe.”

I ducked my head and rushed out, the world a blur of pale linoleum and alarmed voices as I barreled past my brother and friends.

I couldn’t draw in air fast enough or deep enough to sate the strain in my lungs. I hadn’t had a full-blown panic attack in years, but I was on the verge of relapsing.

However, I still possessed enough presence of mind not to rush downstairs and straight into the arms of the paps, so I rushed to the nearest lavatory and locked myself into the corner cubicle.

I made it just in time for my earlier nausea to overtake me.

I fell to my knees, leaned over the toilet, and threw up the entirety of that day’s meals. Tears pooled in my eyes as the gag-inducing sound of my own retching filled the empty room.

My throat burned so terribly I was sure I wouldn’t be able to speak after this. Even so, a tiny voice inside my head tried to convince me I was overreacting. It was one race. One promise he’d broken out of the dozens he’d kept.

But every chain reaction started somewhere, and I worried tonight was only the beginning.

I was in love with someone who didn’t love himself, and I didn’t know where that left me. Where that left us.

I kneeled there in the restroom, vomiting until I was empty and out of tears to cry. I heard people come and go, but the memory of Asher’s confession was my only consistent company.

I was racing.

I knew three words would have the power to change our relationship.

I just hadn’t expected it to be those three.