Silas rolled his eyes at her mothering.
“Oh, and I’m planning on making chicken marinara for dinner if you think you’ll be around.”
Silas’ stomach growled in response. While he only planned to stay with his parents long enough to find a place he liked enough to buy, there were definite perks to being home for the time being. “Wouldn’t dream of missing it.”
“Good.” She beamed up at him. “Your dad will be home around five-thirty. I’ll have food on the table then.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’ll see you later.”
Silas gave her one last smile and headed to the gym. If he hadn’t been such an idiot two years ago, he would already have a house, and it would have been Miriam making him dinner.
But his mom’s chicken marinara wasn’t too bad, either.
He was onlyfive minutes late to Big Results Gym, but apparently that was late enough that his teammates had started without him.
They were all in the back room, the one sometimes used for line dancing and yoga, working on agility drills. There were a couple of metal benches set up around the room, and everyone had already gathered around Finn as he started demonstrating the first drill. Silas tried to come in quietly and stood next to Grant.
“Okay, with this one, you want to make sure you have full control over your movements. Start with ten reps slow and steady, they try ten at a faster pace like this.”
Finn jumped up putting one foot on the bench, he crossed the other foot in front of it, and then landed on the other side. Once both feet were planted on the ground, he repeated the motion in the opposite direction. He was slow at first, counting to ten, then he picked up the pace. To an observer, it might have looked easy, but Silas still remembered how sore he’d been when he started doing this kind of training.
When Finn was done with his demonstration, the players closest to the benches started in on the new drill.
“Wasn’t sure if you would show today,” Grant said somewhat distracted as he watched the other guys hop over the benches.
Silas bristled. “Why wouldn’t I come?”
Grant shrugged. “I just heard Finn and Bastian talking in the locker room the other day. They said they weren’t sure why you were here.”
Silas took a deep, steadying breath. Grant was new to the team—and young. It wasn’t his fault that Silas had given everyone something to talk about. He could have gone into a long explanation of all the reasons there was tension between him and some of the other guys, but he decided to keep it simple. “I’m here to play. I’m here to win.”
It must have been enough for the rookie because he answered with an equally simple, “cool.”
They stood in an easy silence as they waited for a chance at the new drill.
Eventually, Grant spoke again. “Does that mean you’re going to The Sports Emporium tomorrow?”
The Sports Emporium?
There was only one reason Grant would be asking that, and that meant there was a meet and greet. Silasknewthat with only a couple of weeks until the home opener that the team would be out making appearances. It just turned out that the community outreach manager had conveniently forgotten to invite Silas to those events.
He fought to keep his face neutral and his voice even as he said, “Yeah, of course.” He paused. “What time is it again?”
“Eleven to three.”
“That’s right.” Silas nodded. “I forgot, but when I went to text Miriam, I realized I lost her number.”
More like deleted it when he signed for the Wolves so he wouldn’t be tempted to call her and make things harder for the both of them. But Grant didn’t need to know any of that.
“I’ve got it. Just a sec.” Grant pulled his phone out of the pocket of his athletic shorts and rattled off the number.
“Thanks, man.”
“No problem.”
Silas opened his mouth to ask Grant if there were any other events coming up that Miriam had “forgotten” to tell him, but Vinny fell off the bench making a loud crashing noise. Everybody stopped what they were doing to see if he was okay.
Vinny stood up and soon was in Finn’s face cussing him out. His words came in a continuous stream of creative swears guaranteed to make the seasoned sailor blush. The entire team watched in silence to see what Finn was going to do.
