“—to come along.”
I blinked at the same time my bones froze.
The short-haired man, who resembled someone in a branch of the military, shook his head, still silent.
My knees felt stiff and traitorous as I planted my feet solidly on the ground and got to my feet, thrusting a surprisingly steady hand toward the man that who shaken hands with?—
Poop. Poop, poop, poop.
Why should I care who he’d shaken hands with? I didn’t.
With a slow, quiet breath through my nose, I tipped my chin up higher, like that would help me keep my dignity intact more. And like that wasn’t enough, I blurted out another “Hi, I’m Sal Casillas, one of the forwards…?”
Was it time to shut up? Yes. Definitely.
A large, warm, masculine hand gripped mine almost immediately,and I filled my lungs with another steadying breath, smiling at the man standing on the other side of Sheena. It was a normal handshake; he wasn’t limp-fishing it, but he wasn’t trying to break my hand either. He was just a man. He was just a normal man with interesting eyes and a serious face.
“Can you tell me a little about the emails you’ve been getting?”
Drawing back the hand that had just touched Reiner Kulti, I settled my gaze on the woman next to me and nodded. I summarized the messages I’d been getting. Insults aimed at my brother, warnings that I should do everything I could to learn as much as possible from the German, and a bunch of other crap that stressed me out a whole lot.
Sheena’s cheek hitched up high, and it was easy to see on her clear dark skin that she was thinking. Then she nodded sharply. “Okay. I’ve got it?—”
“Your brother was that imbecile?” Kulti interrupted.
“That imbecile” had been the fourteen-year-old to my seven-year-old who held my hand when I crossed the street, let me tag along when he’d go play soccer with his friends even though he grumbled, kicked the ball back and forth with me in the backyard before he would go out, and he was the same person who would be on his feet in the stands, yelling at the top of his lungs, when I had a bullshit call made against me. Ilovedmy brother. Was he an arrogant jackass who thought he was gifted with a talent straight from heaven? Yes.
But he was the one who had held on to my shoulder when I’d made a horrible play in my younger years that cost my team a championship and told me that it wasn’t the end of the world. While I looked at Kulti as the type of badass I wanted to aspire to be one day, Eric had been the one to assure me I could be better.
When Kulti had broken my brother’s leg, I made my choice. I would choose my brother every single time.
Except as my lips formed the shape it took to enunciate the letter “b” for bitch, Iremembered.
I remembered what Gardner had warned us of two weeks agoduring our first Pipers meeting.IfIhearanyofyoucallhimany derogatory nicknames,you’reoutofhere.Fuck me.
Calling him a bitch wasn’t better, was it? A bag of dicks wasn’t much better either.
My lips sealed themselves together, and in response my nostrils flared.
“He isn’t an imbecile, but Ericismy brother,” I answered him carefully. My eye was starting to twitch.
From ten feet away, someone’s green-brown eyes narrowed. “What else would you call someone?—”
My eye went full speed twitching, and before I thought twice, I cut him off. “That purposely swept an opponent’s leg harder than necessary?” I shrugged. “You tell me.”
My throat clogged instantly, and the twitching in my eyelid got worse once the words were out. I’d done it. Jesus Christ. I’d insinuated he was an imbecile, but hinting at it wasn’t the same thing as outright calling him one, right?
Sheena let out a low, ringing laugh that had “awkward” written all over it. “Okay, I’m sure we can avoid the name-calling, yes?” She didn’t wait for an answer from either one of us before going on. “I have an idea, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work to calm things down a little. I spoke to Mr. Kulti’s publicist a week ago, and he made it clear to me that his party has been receiving some similar messages, but we were hoping things would calm down eventually. Since they’re not, let’s do this: Sal, we’ll release your part of the press conference we had a few weeks ago.”
My jaw dropped, and I was pretty positive that my heart skipped a single beat. I choked, loud and clear on my saliva.
The PR employee shot me a look. She’d been there. She’d seen what an ass I made of myself. “I’ll make sure it’s edited. We have videographers coming in to film some of the practices for the website, and I’m sure they can catch some footage of the two of you getting along. There are also some promo shots coming up, and with some easy placement”—she grinned and waggled her fingers like she hadn’t just spouted out one of the worst ideas I’d ever heard—“problem solved for both of you.”
I chewed on my thoughts for a minute, glancing at the German sitting four feet away and mouthing and discarding the curse words that ran through a loop in my head.
The press conference video? No. Hell no.
The filming? I glanced at Kulti again and almost snorted, remembering how he had yet to speak to anyone that wasn’t on staff besides Grace. So the likelihood of that happening? Ha.
