The Unforgiving Minute Read Online Free PDF Page B

next?”
    “Jurgen,” Mitch said before changing the subject. “Look, I wanted to see you. I shouldn’t have said so much about injuries the other day. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
    Which, until this moment, he hadn’t. Ryan had actually forgotten that side of their conversation. “You didn’t, not really,” he said, “but I appreciate you bringing it up. It’s something I should plan for.”
    “Happens to all of us at some time or another, and I just thought, with the less than graceful way you throw yourself round the court….”
    “Hey!”
    Ryan’s indignation rolled off Mitch like warm barbeque sauce. Which wasn’t at all a weird thought and had nothing to do with Ryan wondering just how Mitch’s sun-warmed arms, shown off to perfection in the faded muscle shirt he was wearing, would taste.
    “I said I’d drop by the studio,” Mitch was saying. “The commentators want me to do one of those drop-in interviews. I’ll catch you later, Ry.”
    “Later,” Ryan said. He watched Mitch walking away with a loose, easy stride that was made all the more watchable by those damn jeans that looked as if they were made for him. Given the money he’d made over the years, they might well have been, Ryan thought, but if so, it was money very well spent.

Chapter 5

    R YAN lay on his bed, curtains closed and lights off, and cursed the insistent knocking on his door. As it got louder and faster, he pushed himself off the bed, stalked over to the door, and yanked it open. “ What? ”
    Elena pushed past him, a bag in her arms that seemed to clink as she moved. “Nice to see you too, Ryan. I brought the fixings for mojitos. Where’s the damn light switch?”
    “Elena, look, I told you—”
    “You’re not in the mood, I know,” she said, dumping the bag on the desk and starting to unpack its contents. “But what are you going to do? Sit here and cry about losing a match?”
    “ Elena. ” For a moment he was torn between real anger and despair, because she just would not behave like a normal human being.
    “Look, Ryan, I get it,” she said, waving a very sharp-looking knife in his direction before thankfully returning it to the lime in front of her. “But you know how it goes—”
    “Someone’s gotta win and someone’s gotta lose. Yeah, Elena, believe it or not, I get it.”
    The edge in his voice obviously got through to her because she looked up from where she was squeezing a lime into what looked like half a pint of rum, cocked her head, and looked at him properly. “So what’s the problem?”
    “The problem is that I didn’t get beaten. I lost. ”
    “Ah,” she said. “Yeah, that makes a difference. You know why?”
    Ryan sat down on the bed again, and maybe he sighed just a little dramatically but it was allowed in the circumstances. “No idea. After he won the tiebreak at the end of the second, I lost concentration or something at the beginning of the third. I don’t even know why. I let him control the pace, and suddenly the match was over.”
    Elena sat next to him, offering him a glass, which he accepted gratefully.
    “I know you know this, and I know Stefan will have told you, but you have to learn from it and move the fuck on. If you keep thinking about it, beating yourself up, it’s going to affect your next game.”
    Ryan buried his nose in the glass and took a hefty swig. And then choked. “For God’s sake, Elena, how strong did you make these?”
    “As strong as they need to be. Now, did you hear what I just said?”
    “I heard.”
    “So?”
    “So I’m going to have more of these and cry on your shoulder, and then tomorrow I’m going to move the fuck on and beat the world.”
    Elena grinned and tipped her glass to clink against his. “That’s my boy.”
    They turned on the TV and happily insulted Australian shows while they drank more than they strictly should, given the whole elite athlete thing.
    “Mom and Dad called earlier,” Ryan said, halfway down his third