I step inside.
It’s the same office as always—whiteboard, schedule, line charts, stacks of game reports. Coffee half-drunk on the desk. But the air feels heavier. He’s behind the desk in a Titans pullover, arms folded, jaw tight. He looks tired, more lines around his eyes than last week.
“Took your time,” he says. “Sit.”
I drop into the chair opposite, hands on my knees. My taped knuckles stand out against the dark fabric of my sweats—bright, incriminating.
He studies me for a long beat. I hold his gaze and try not to fidget.
“Do you know why you’re benched?” he asks.
“Yes, Coach.” My voice feels like gravel. “I put my hand on a teammate’s throat and dented a locker.”
He nods once. “That’s the surface. That’s the part everyone saw. You know what I spent the last few days doing?”
No.
“Yes, Coach,” I say anyway.
“Trying to figure out if you’re a loaded gun pointed at this team,” he says. “Or a bomb someone else lit and walked away from.”
A muscle jumps in my jaw.
He leans back, eyes sharp. “So imagine my mood when Gio came into my office yesterday and shut the door.”
Something in my chest tightens. “Gio—”
“Gio told me what Rylan said,” he cuts in. “Word for word. I confirmed it with Maya. Dante backed it. Cole backed it.” His gaze hardens. “You want to tell me why I had to hear that from them instead of from you?”
The room seems to narrow. Heat crawls up the back of my neck.
“I handled it,” I say. It sounds pathetic even to me.
“You didnothandle it,” he snaps. “You choked a kid in my locker room and left me in the dark about why.”
Because it was about your daughter.
Because I know what men like him are capable of when they decide you’re “sweet” and “quiet.”
Because the picture in my head of his hands anywhere near her made me see red.
None of that makes it past my teeth.
“He was talking about Talia,” I say instead, voice low. “Loud. Filthy. He said he wanted to ‘find out what she’s really like.’” My throat tightens around the repeat of it. “He knew exactly what he was doing.”
Coach’s jaw flexes. His knuckles go white on the arm of his chair.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” he asks. The anger is still there, but it’s shifted. Less explosion, more controlled burn.
“Because by the time I thought about it,” I say, “I already had him against the locker.”
And if I’d walked into his office and told him his daughter was a topic of locker-room commentary, I would’ve had to say her name. Out loud. Put it in his hands and watch what he did with it.
Silence stretches between us. His eyes search my face, like he’s looking for a crack he didn’t see before.
“Did you hit him?” he asks.
“No,” I say. “Just held him there.” A beat. “I wanted to.”
