Page 10 of Her Player

“Mom.” Brynn’s voice was steadier now, the way it got when she was the one holding things together. “I know. I know what you’re going to say. But I need you to not say it for five minutes. I just need to think for a second.”

“Brynn, sweetheart...”

“Five minutes, Mom. Please.”

“And who the fuck took this picture?!” Victoria exclaimed as she shoved the phone back at Coach, like this was somehow his fault.

I’d never seen Coach look so defeated. In the months he had been the head of our team, he did nothing but walk around like someone had shoved a stick up his ass. I swear, the man didn’t know how to bow his head, even if you’d stuck him in a fucking church or something. But the way I watched his shoulders slowly hunch every time Brynn drew in a breath she couldn’t quite catch, I knew it was bad.

I just didn’t know how bad it was until Coach turned the screen toward me so I could take a look at the picture. “Is that⁠—?”

“Yeah,” Coach practically growled, even with the defeated stance of his posture.

“They flew a drone up to his windows, Mom,” Brynn said, her voice tight but level. “Last night. We didn’t hear it. We didn’t see the flash. We didn’t know until I saw all of the notifications come through.”

And as I stared at the picture of Coach and Brynn embracing, captured by a drone hovering outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of Coach’s penthouse, anger flushed its way through my veins.

No one fucks with my team.

“Rhett, hit the locker room,” Coach said.

Normally, I would have taken the order without consideration. But this wasn’t a team matter. This wasn’t stadium shit. This was personal. I peered over at Victoria, who had her arm wrapped around her daughter, both of them holding it together by the skin of their teeth.

And when she nodded her head toward me, I took my cue.

“Let me know if I can help,” I said as Coach pocketed the phone.

But fucking hell, it took every ounce of strength Coach hadn’t wrung out of me in practice to force myself to walk out of that office. Because no matter how hard I tried putting it out of my head, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was supposed to be in there with them.

Comforting Victoria, the way Coach always comforted Bry.

5

VICTORIA

With every tear dropping from my daughter’s eye, my anger mounted. Now you have to understand, my daughter doesn’t cry. She was a crier as a child, but when she hit puberty? That strong-willed streak ripped through the house, and it didn’t once stop. The last time I heard my daughter crying, it was in the shower over a failed test that required her to retake a course over the summer her freshman year of college.

Freshman year.

When she was eighteen years old.

And now, as I stood there in my office holding my adult daughter together while she tried to hold herself together, I locked my eyes with Coach.

“How much of the article is truth?” I asked.

Brynn gasped as she whipped her head up from my chest. “What are you talking about, Mom?”

I tightened my grip around my daughter when Coach tried reaching for her hand. I stared him down until he put that fucking hand right back at his side where it fucking belonged.

“Answer me,” I glowered. “Is my daughter just another type to you?”

“Mom!” Brynn exclaimed.

She didn’t pull away from me, though. If she was really angry, if she was really that upset with me, she’d have pulled away. After all, she was my daughter. I knew her like the back of my hand. Maybe I hadn’t always been the best mother. Maybe I let my emotions get the better of me sometimes. Maybe I let my mind run away from me on my bad days. But I knew Brynn.

And if she wanted to really pull away, she would have.

Which meant she didn’t feel safe with the man standing in my fucking office.