“Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I called you by accident.” Vague, right? That was good enough?
Gardner didn’t think twice about it; he simply shrugged. “I figured as much.”
Before I could ask him what he meant by that, I spotted someone lumbering across the field.
Kulti.
I swallowed, scratched at my eyebrow, and then pointed behind me. “I should get back.”
My longtime coach nodded in agreement. I got the heck out of there.
At least I tried to, but as I walked toward the group of women standing together, I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder.
Those amber-moss eyes, the ones I’d seen from across my bedroom walls for thousands of days in my childhood, were on me. On. Me. Not looking through me, not over me, but directly on me.
Though there wasn’t a slice of an expression on his features, there was no missing the intensity behind his gaze. I’d seen the intent before. Many, many times before when he played.
When he played and he was about three seconds away from losing his shit.
And…poop.
Pushing my shoulders back and taking a deep breath, I looked right back at him with a neutral face.
Had I done anything wrong? No.
I picked up a near complete stranger that was drunk, paid for a hotel room for him to stay at, drove him there, left cab money and a note. What else did he want? I hadn’t told anyone what happened, and I wouldn’t. Not even Jenny.
Okay, so I guess he didn’t know I wouldn’t tell anyone.
Sliding my gaze forward, I reminded myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I did the best I could. It also wasn’t my fault he hadn’t woken up on time. Either way, it wasn’t like I could go back in time anyway. Maybe I should have called in the morning to check on him, but obviously he was fine.
Headinthegame,Sal.Keepyourheadinthegame.Worryaboutthingswhentheyhappeninsteadofwastingyourtimeanticipating.
Right.
I focused.
Practice was fine until two hours later, when it happened. I was out of breath and grinning like an idiot as I high-fived the two girls I’d just finished playing with. It’d been a three-on-three minigame that lasted five minutes. We’d won, and after a cooldown, our practice was over.
I made it so far as to grab my stuff, walk back to my car, stash my bag in the trunk, and put my hands up over my head to stretch my shoulders when a hand gripped my elbow out of nowhere.
The last thing I expected was to look over my shoulder and see a tall figure with brown hair and lightly tanned skin. Kulti. It was so much Kulti up close again. The night before had been such a blur, the only thing I’d focused on was the size of his body and his weight, nothing else. Unlike today. In a sky blue and what I’d heard was officially called “snow mint”—it was really just a soft, calming green—training jersey, the famous pooping German had the fingers of his left hand clasped Around my elbow, and he was looking down at me.
I swallowed.
I freaked. Just a little but more than enough, even if I managed to contain it all inside.
This was no big deal. None. Poop, poop, poop.
“Say a word about yesterday, and I will make you regret it.” The low hard-edged accent whispered the declaration so low that if I hadn’t been staring at him, I wouldn’t have thought his lips moved. But they had.
Reiner Kulti was standing by my in-desperate-need-of-a-carwash Honda, saying….What?
“Umm… excuse me?” I asked slowly, carefully. I didn’t usually imagine hearing things.
“If you”—his tone sounded a little too “you’re-stupid” for my tastes—“tell anyone about yesterday, I’ll make sure you’re watching the season from the bench.”
I could count on my hand the number of times I’d gotten in trouble for something that wasn’t me playing too roughly on the field.
