A few girls laughed, tension easing instantly.
“We’re here because someone once did this for us.” She continued. “And it mattered more than we knew at the time.”
A hand lifted near the back, and the girl attached to it couldn’t have been more than fourteen. Her boots were scuffed to hell, laces mismatched, her shoulders drawn in.
“How do you deal with it?” she asked. “When people don’t think you’re good enough?”
Teddy paused because, wow, we were really diving into the hard stuff straight away. Her shoulders rose slightly with a deep breath.
“You keep turning up,” she said with a decisive nod. “You work. You learn. And you don’t let anyone else decide where you belong.” Teddy paced a few steps left, then stopped. “Being a woman in a male-dominated field means we are the rule setters because very few came before us. When the world talks about you it’s because you raise the standard. You are all here to earn a seat at the table by redefining the game being played.”
This was the part I’d never been able to articulate, probably because I was a man. But there was something niggling at the back of my mind as I took it all in.
Teddy was the epitome of earned leadership. I was the embodiment of inherited privilege. We were polar opposites in a lot of ways yet watching her all there was a pull that went beyond my attraction to her. It was rerouting itself, away from surface-level heat and into something deeper. Something that didn’t feellike a spark so much as it was anchoring inside me, bursting into more. I wasn’t going to scare her off by admitting that, so I’d keep it to myself for now.
Someone closer to the back spoke up next, arms folded tight across her chest. “What if you love it,” she asked, “but you’re not the best one?”
Teddy’s mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “Then you decide whether you’re willing to work harder than the ones who are,” she said. “Talent gets you noticed. Effort keeps you here.”
A girl with her hair braided tight spoke next. “Did you ever want to quit?”
Teddy nodded. “More than once.” She huffed a laugh. “Usually on days when quitting would’ve been easier than staying. But the thing about quitting is that it’s a temporary freedom. You have to choose your hard. Is it harder to lose something you love, or is it harder to work every day to keep it? That’s up to you.”
A girl at the back straightened, chin lifting. Teddy answered every question without rushing, without dressing it up, meeting each girl where she was. And seeing her like this, in her element, speaking out on something she was living, it was a high I had no idea I craved.
27
Teddy
Leaving the girls’ school, my body felt alive with untouched adrenaline. A different kind of high rushing through my veins. It wasn’t the same as game day, and it wasn’t the same as a great gym session. It was because I’d left that room changed in some small, important way.
I also was grateful for how, even when the girls asked questions for Connor, he redirected them to me in some way. He really did mean it when he said he was there to support me.
I slid into the passenger seat, still caught up in it, my mind racing ahead to the next time I might be able to visit—planning a proper session, drills I could run, pointers I could give, ways to make them feel stronger and more certain of themselves—and then Connor leaned over me, pulling the seatbelt from beside my shoulder, and I swear I stopped breathing.
His presence was everywhere, his face dangerously close to mine. Warm breath brushed my cheek, the world narrowing to him and the solid line of his shoulder in my peripheral vision.The scent of him filled the air, his body curving instinctively around mine but didn’t quite press into me.
My thoughts scattered, the giddiness in my chest amping up, sending my pulse soaring.
“Wh-what are you doing?”
“You didn’t hear me tell you to buckle up,” he said, his voice gruff and right beside my ear as he drew the belt smoothly across my body and clicked it into place. The noise echoed in the small car, and even once the sound faded, somehow it lingered like a vibration, pulsing between us. As he pulled back and drew his tongue over his lower lip, I almost felt it against mine.
And then he was gone.
Still, the warmth from him beside me was a soothing balm to my frayed nerves. The way his forearm rested loose near the center console made my shoulders drop. The faint scent of soap and clean cotton filled my senses and made me dizzy.
Connor didn’t say anything more. He kept his eyes on the road, hands steady on the wheel. The normalcy of it only made me more aware of how off-balance I felt. My pulse hadn’t slowed. If anything, it had picked up again, reacting to something entirely different.
I shifted in my seat, tried to take a deep breath, but my body didn’t buy the act. There was nowhere to put this excess energy, nowhere to burn it off. I was hyperaware of myself—of how contained the car felt, how little room there was to breathe without brushing against him, how every small movement seemed amplified.
“You were really good in there,” he said after a moment.
I swallowed. “Thanks. So were you.”
He glanced over briefly, something unreadable flickering across his expression before he looked back to the road. “I was happy to sit back and let you lead today. I’m glad you took center stage with them.”
I looked out the window, watched the houses pass, because if I looked at him, I wasn’t sure what would spill out instead.
