Page 60 of Her Coach

“Oh? Was it not all the way up?” I asked.

Mom smiled tensely over my shoulder. “Just another inch. You almost had it.”

My smile is easy as I smile back at her. “Thanks.”

I crossed my room and sat down at my vanity. “I’m thinking a smoky eye might be a little too heavy with this dress.”

Mom nodded as she followed me, swiveling my desk chair over to my vanity. “Most definitely. Your gold jewelry is dainty as well, so you’ll want to do a tame look with your makeup.” She picked up a rich pink lip gloss and unscrewed the top. “You could go a bit bolder with your lips, though. Keep the neutral around your eyes and⁠—”

I turned to face her. “Will you do it for me?”

The smile she gave me lightened my soul. “Sure. I can do that, honey.”

I sat there for Mom as she did my makeup for my date. Things were still tense with her shoulders, but then again, I might’ve just been reading into things. Mom was always tense. If it wasn’t from her emotions, then it was from work. And if it wasn’t from work, it was from the stadium. Or the team. Or Rhett harassing her over something.

I still didn’t understand why Rhett chirped at my mother the way he did. It wasn’t like how he chirped at Jett, which was pure chaos energy with no agenda behind it. With Mom it was different. Quieter. He knew to stop when she went still. He knew not to push past a certain point the way everyone else eventually did when they got frustrated with her walls. I’d watched him do it a dozen times, coming right up to the edge of her patience and then pulling back easy, like he’d mapped where the line was and respected it without being asked.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that Rhett Hart paid a very specific kind of attention to my mother.

I filed that thought away under things I wasn’t ready to look at directly and went back to watching Mom blend my eyeshadow.

Outside of all that, though, I couldn’t help but smile as Mom gave me soft commands.

“Close your eyes.

“Relax your mouth.

“Do a pout for me, the sides of your face are still tense.

“All right, pucker those lips and clench those teeth. We’re almost done.”

And when I came up for air, I looked in the mirror of my vanity and saw exactly the face I’d wanted to put on for my date.

“I don’t know how you do it,” I said as I leaned forward, inspecting my mother’s handiwork.

She capped off the lip gloss before she stood. But when I stood with her, I wasn’t prepared for the way she took my hand, turning me toward her, and smoothed her hands over my shoulders.

The second she drew in a deep breath, however, I felt my entire body tense. No, I wasn’t reading into the tension in her body. Something was on her mind.

“Is he pressuring you, Brynn?”

I paused, unsure of whether or not I heard her correctly. “What?”

Mom locked her gray eyes on mine. “Is he pressuring you into something?”

I ignored her question and thumbed over my shoulder. “Gold clutch or regular purse?”

“Gold clutch,” she said without hesitation. “Brynn.”

I pulled away from her grasp. “Yeah, Mom?”

She heaved a heavy sigh. “You and I are both adults. So I’m just going to come out and say it: I know what you two were doing in his office the other day. Is he pressuring you into something you don’t want?”

I took a step back, as if her words slapped me across the face. “You think I’m not capable of saying no?”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said as she continued studying me, as if she clocked my every reaction. I hated it when she did that, like she searched for a lie that wasn’t there. Did all parents do that? Or just mine? “I asked you if you were comfortable with the position he put you in.”

If she only knew how much I loved his positions. “And what if I’m the one that put him in that position?”