“I should get back to work,” I said. I needed to think about this some more.
“Sure.” He took another sip of coffee and walked toward the door. “Don’t think too much about it. It’s nothing.”
It didn’t sound like nothing. I’d broken or initiated an orc custom that might make Tolrek feel obligated to do something in exchange. Something…mate-like. “I’m the coach’s daughter.”
“I know who you are.”
He left without saying anything else.
I stood in the common area for a bit, staring at my coffee, before I went back to my office.
The footage was still open on my computer. I closed it and pulled up the prior end-of-the-season tape, after Tolrek had returned from his injury. His hesitation was there in everysequence. A gap in his confidence that he was still trying to play through.
I was going to sit with him at four o’clock and point out every mistake he’d made on tape, and he was going to know I’d seen him completely.
The folder I’d been pretending didn’t exist had a name now.
Tolrek.
I closed the footage and made myself work on something new.
A soft shuffling sound a bit later caught my attention, and I looked up to find Tolrek standing inside my doorway with one hand on the frame. Not coming inside.
“About the team meeting. Same time?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He knew that.
But now I knew why he was asking. Tal’haig. He was seeing me to reciprocate me seeing him. Drawing Beau, that is. Same thing.
Or was it?
I had to answer him in a normal voice while understanding that he was doing something he couldn’t help, a cultural gesture that came from a time older than both of us. He had absolutely no idea I could read it.
“Nine,” I said. “Full setup.”
He nodded and left again.
I sat there, blinking, while his footsteps faded down the corridor.
Then I made a conscious effort to return my hands to the keyboard. I opened a different player’s file and told myself I wouldn’t dwell on what I’d seen.
I thought about it anyway.
The corridor between my office and the wing where the executives had offices was narrow enough that two couldn’t pass without one of them turning sideways if one was an orc.
I held the finalized scouting package, printed and loaded on a thumb drive because my father liked having both. His office sat at the far end of the hall, past the assistant coaches’ offices and the manager’s palatial suite.
Tolrek came around the corner from the opposite direction, and I bumped into him, looking up, up, up.
The chew toy poked out of his pocket, the colorful rope bright against the dark fabric.
He saw me see it.
Neither of us stepped back.
The gap between us shrank, the corridor walls pressing in from both sides. The light overhead made everything feel too defined and clear.
