Page 111 of Her Coach

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said back.

We sat there and finished our coffee. Outside, the backyard was gold in the morning light, the wildflowers his landscaper kept just barely in check bending a little in the early breeze. It was quiet. The kind of quiet I hadn’t had in years — not the hollow kind that came from an empty house, but the full kind. The kind that meant someone else was in it with you and that was exactly right.

“For what it’s worth,” Colton said after a while, his eyes still on the backyard, “it’s a really good photo.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “It really is.”

44

COLTON

We walked into the rink on Monday the way I said we would. Side by side. No hand-holding, I wasn’t looking to start anything, just to not hide, but close enough that nobody with half a brain was going to misread it. Brynn had her clipboard. I had mine. We talked about the team’s Tuesday practice the whole way down the hallway like it was any other morning, and it was. That was the point. That was the whole point.

The article had already started dying. Two days and no statement from either of us meant no new quotes, no new angle, nothing to keep it breathing. My agent texted me once to confirm and I ignored it. The 212 number called twice more and I let it go to voicemail both times. I knew who it was. I’d known since the morning I found the article, when I was sitting alone at that table trying to decide what kind of man I was going to be.

I hadn’t told her about that part yet.

Brynn and I stayed late after practice that Tuesday. She was helping me update the media request log that Victoria wanted sorted before the second game of the season, and I was doing absolutely nothing useful because I kept watching her work and losing track of my own notes. She had this thing she did when she was concentrating — the tip of her tongue pressed just barely behind her teeth. I’d caught it three times and written the same stat down twice.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

She didn’t look up from her laptop. “You’re going to ask regardless, so yes.”

I set my clipboard down. “If you could go anywhere. Not for someone else. Not for your mom or the job or any other reason. Just for you. Where would you go?”

That made her look up. “That’s a weird question.”

“Humor me.”

She sat back in her chair and thought about it for a real second, not just throwing out an answer. That was a Brynn thing — she never gave you the first answer that came to her. She gave you the true one. “Somewhere with a university that has a good creative writing program. A city. Somewhere with actual seasons — I’ve lived in a desert my entire life, I’d like to find out what cold actually feels like.” She paused. “But I’d want to be able to come back. Like, this would always have to be home base. My mom’s here. The team’s here. I don’t think I could ever fully leave Vegas.”

I nodded slowly.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you ask?”

I picked up my clipboard and set it back down again. Stalling. I wasn’t a man who stalled. I hated men who stalled. “When I took this job, I had a plan. Four years. Long enough to rebuild this team, prove I still had it, and use that to get back to a top franchise. A contender. That was the whole point of coming here.”

The silence was immediate and total.

“Four years,” she repeated.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t say anything for long enough that I wanted to fill the silence, which was another thing I hated doing. “And somewhere in the middle of all of that,” I continued, “I started thinking about what that looked like if you were in it. In my head I was already figuring out how to make it work — New York has universities, good ones, the kind that would want someone like you. I’d already decided you’d come with me.”

Her expression shifted. Not angry. Something quieter than that, and harder to read. “You decided.”

“I know how that sounds.”

“Do you?” She wasn’t being sharp about it. She was just asking. Which was somehow worse. “Because I just told you I can’t fully leave Vegas. My mom’s here, Colton. The team I grew up watching is here. My whole life is here, not just a job I can pack up. And you were in your head building a future where I followed you somewhere without once asking me if I wanted to go.”

I didn’t have a defense for that. Because she was right.

“Those calls,” I said. “The ones from the 212 number the morning the article broke. That was a scout. For a top-five franchise.” I watched her face. “I haven’t called back.”

She blinked. “Colton —”