“Yes!” Her fists punched the air. Then she released a massive exhale and waved a hand over her face. “End scene and goodnight.” She bowed dramatically. Then she skipped over to the bench where I’d started the whole mess and picked up her bag. As she skipped back by she hissed, “You might be Lord of the Lips, Holden. But I will always win.Always.”And she cackled like a witch as she kept on skipping toward the exit.
As the doors slid open, she paused and spun on her heel, aiming her words right at me. “Oh, and the varsity girls lost their game after you left. And JV and varsity both lost on Thursday. I’m sure Anna told you.” She shot me with double-finger pistols. “I blameyou.And as payback, you’re going to help me coach until you find a new job. The girls are ‘hyped’ to have the guy whose ‘grin is fire’ as their coach.” She made quotation marks with her fingers and rolled her eyes. Then she wiggled all ten fingers. “See you at the game tomorrow, Coach Dupree.” Without waiting for my response, she spun and skipped out into the night.
And I just watched her go, speechless at how she’d just outplayed this player.
Silas studied me too closely. “She really does need help coaching. Byrd is out for the rest of the season. They thoughthe just had bad food poisoning. Turns out he had a duodenal ulcer. He came close to bleeding to death and won’t be able to work for two months. Maybe longer.”
I whistled. “That sucks. But why don’t you help her?”
He looked at me like I’d fallen into a vat of bright green dye. “I just got married, I’m running a new business”—he waved at the room—“and a farm, and I’ve got a full-time job. What are you doing?”
Well, when he put it that way. “I’m busy searching for a new firm.” It sounded incredibly selfish. Even to me.
He cocked his head, his eyes questioning. “So why not help out while you look? Mom said you’re begging for stuff to do. You even cleaned out all the horse stalls without asking. If that’s true, I don’t even know who you are.”
I blew out my breath, let two heartbeats pass, and spit out, “Amber Taylor was at Anna’s game the other night.”
He sunk in his boots a bit. “You gotta let it go. That was almost a decade ago. It’s way over.”
I shook my head. “Man, I’m not so sure. She was eyeing me like she hoped we met in a dark alley somewhere.” I hated that she still had me under her thumb even after all this time.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Holden. You weren’t guilty. Of anything. Stop torturing yourself.”
I grunted and kicked at the floor with the toe of my tennis shoe.
“Look, man,” he said. “The best way to show her that she doesn’t have any power over you is to live your life fearlessly. Don’t hold back because of what she did.”
I nodded. “Yeah. You’re right.” But it wasn’t that easy. I’d been trying for the last ten years.
I glanced at the exit, hoping to change the topic. “What the freak is wrong with Christy Did you see her dance out of here like a devious little pixie? Is she always like that—trying to niggle at you until you give her what she wants?” Thememory of her backside skipping into the dark churned my insides in the best way. Everything about her made me want to eat her up, just put my lips all over her out-of-this-world, gorgeous face.
“Yeah. She’ll push till she gets her way. But only with people she feels safe with.” He chuckled. “But don’t tell her she’s like a pixie. Her ex used to call her Tink. It was cool until it wasn’t.”
I scowled. Well, that explained why she’d almost cried when I said she was like a cute little fairy.
“What did she want?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“You said she niggles at you until you give her what she wants. And it sounded like you just agreed to do something you didn’t want to.”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Just a stupid conversation.”
Silas’s forehead furrowed like he didn’t believe me. “Were you two on a gym date?”
I rubbed the back of my neck, which was suddenly boiling. “No. We just ended up here at the same time.”
“So if I go watch the security footage I’m not going to see you making out?”
I forced a laugh. “No. We just happened to be here at the same time. You can ask that one chick who was here earlier. The one with the tat sleeves.” I was protesting too much. If anyone knew what guilty looked like, it was an attorney. And it looked exactly like this.Get it together, moron. Change the subject.I eyed his outfit. “What’re you doing here this time of night? You look ridiculous, Gomer.”
He grinned and did a little jig in his boots. “You’re just jealous you can’t pull this off.”
I snorted. “Shouldn’t you be at home in bed with your wife?”
“I was.” His brows flicked up and he grinned sowide it was just mean. “Dumb thermostat app went off saying the heat in Downward is eighty-seven degrees. If I’d known you were here I’d have asked you to go check it and stayed right where I was.”
“We’ve all been telling you to use the Find My Friends app.”
