Everything for You (Bergman Brothers #5)(42)

“You okay?” I ask.

“Nope,” he says between clenched teeth. “I think I’m about to puke up that second plate of scrambled eggs. I knew I overdid it.”

I set a hand around his neck, steadying him. “You can do this. Go puke if you have to, then come back here and say a word to the guys.”

His eyes widen. “What? But you…you normally—”

“Grunt something threatening about how I’ll knock their heads together if they don’t leave it all on the field? Yes, I do. But now you do this, too.”

He swallows thickly. “Okay, now I’m definitely gonna go puke.”

I squeeze his neck, sliding my thumb along his skin. He stares at me as I tell him, “C’mon now. You’ve got this.”

“Promise?” he says quietly.

I gently shove him away toward the toilets. “Promise.”

“What was that about?” Coach asks.

I stare after Oliver, itching to follow him, to hold his hair out of his face, to rub his back, to squeeze his neck hard in reassurance so he doesn’t start hyperventilating over a toilet. “Just fortifying our captain-ly bond.” I throw her a blank look, hiding everything.

I hope.

Coach searches my eyes for a long moment before she turns back to the team, who’re doing their normal warm-ups. A faint smile tips the corner of her mouth. “About damn time.”

While I shut my eyes and stretch all the places Dan gave me hell this morning for not stretching well enough lately, I try not to stress over Oliver, but by the time he’s jogging back my way, I’m about to shake him for taking so long and making me worry.

“Okay,” he says, smiling tightly, his skin damp from splashing it off. “Wasn’t too bad. Just a few rounds of hurling, threw some cold water on my face, and now I’m ready to go.”

“All good, fellas?” Coach asks as she joins us.

I ease upright from my stretch. “Bergman’s going to say a little something before we start,” I explain to her.

She smiles wide. “Very nice. They could use a little upgrade from ‘Don’t fuck up or I’ll knock your heads together until you forget that shit effort you had the audacity to call soccer.’”

“Hey, it worked,” Oliver says, “considering where we ended up last season.”

“Mhmm.” Coach flicks her braids over her shoulder. “Yet I’m sure Gavin would tell you that what works at one point in your career does not always work. Change is inevitable. And all good things come to an end.”

I stare at her. She throws a fleeting glance at my wrapped ankle. And knee. My back, which is still periodically spasming from electrostimulation and is wrapped beneath my jersey, too. I decide I’m going to ignore what I know she’s saying without saying.

“Oi!” I yell, calling the men in.

Once they’re gathered around, Oliver throws on his widest, most reassuring smile. A twinge of guilt hits me. His optimism, his blithe always-all-right-ness—I gave him such shit for it, called it a lie. But I realize now it isn’t a lie. It’s…coping. It’s how he survives.

I bend my knee slightly as my leg spasms, and a white-hot bolt of pain snaps up my leg. I peer down at my bandaged body, registering the aching soreness that’s only about to get much worse, focusing on that instead of this fervent rush of something I won’t name, won’t admit, softening me, drawing me closer to Oliver as he clears his throat, stands tall, and addresses the team.

“Well, folks,” he says. “This is it. We’ve got to start all over. We ended on the highest high last season. Feels pretty logical to think there’s nowhere to go from here but down.”

Coach gives him bug eyes.

He flashes her a smile. “But the truth is, we got ourselves to this highest height, and we can stay here.” Glancing around, he clears his throat, sets his hands on his hips. “Where we get hung up is when we tell ourselves that we individually aren’t at the level of play that we were last season. We fret that, personally, we aren’t what we were, as fast as we were, as sharp with our shots, as quick with our reflexes.”

Something twinges inside me. The words I confessed to him last night, my limitations, my weaknesses, it’s like he’s laying them in front of me one by one. And yet, glancing around, I’d say it looks like all of the men feel that way.

“Guess what, though?” he says. “That’s the beautiful thing about soccer. Soccer isn’t won by a ‘me.’ It’s won by an ‘us.’” He looks around. “You’ve got a weakness. Maybe a few. I know I do. But that doesn’t matter. Because what I lack, he has.” He points to me. To Ethan he says, “When you miss, who’s got your back?”

“Andre,” Ethan says.

He nods. “That’s right. Amobi—” He turns to our goalie. “When it gets by you, what does Coach say?”

“It had to get past everyone else first,” he says quietly.

“Yup.” Oliver smiles wider. “I know you’re nervous. I am. It’s hard to start at the coveted height that everyone’s hungry to get to so they can knock us off. Sports psychology tells us it’s always easier to be the underdog than to be the one who’s made it to the top and has to fight to stay there. Cool thing is, even though you’re not where you were last season, someone else on this team is, and that game out there takes all of us, with all our weaknesses and strengths, to win.” He glances around. “I have every belief we will.”