Page 42 of Her Player

“Stone?” Jett asked.

“Just do your damn workout,” I said as I started my curls.

Jett knew me well enough to drop it. That was one of the things I actually liked about him, buried underneath all the shit I had to tolerate on a daily basis. He knew when to push and when to shut his mouth, and right now he chose correctly.

The weight room settled into its rhythm. The clank of plates. The low grunt of effort. Someone had changed the music while I was in the hallway with Coach, swapping the screaming stuff for something with a bass line I didn’t recognize but could at least think over. I moved through my sets without counting them, my body on autopilot, my brain still chewing on the conversation I’d just had.

That woman has been holding this franchise together for fourteen years alone.

He wasn’t wrong. He’d never been wrong about it. But there was something about hearing it in Coach’s voice. A man who said exactly what he meant and nothing more. Who had watched Victoria for months the same way I had. Who understood the weight of what she carried in a way that most people in this building never would. That made the words sit differently.

I racked the bar and stared at the ceiling.

Three years. I’d spent three years making sure that when this happened, whenever it happened, she couldn’t point to a single decision I made that put her at risk. Not a contract dispute. Not a roster conversation. Not one situation where she could look at me afterward and wonder if I’d been playing a longer game at her expense. I kept myself out of every room where her name came up professionally. I showed up to every practice, every game, every obligation, so that no one could ever say that what I felt for her cost this team anything.

I did all of that because I knew what it would cost her if I didn’t.

Jett dropped down from the pull-up bar and grabbed his water bottle. He didn’t look at me. He took a long pull and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, casually, in the tone he used when he was being deliberate about sounding casual, “You know she’s going to make this hard on herself.”

I looked over at him.

He shrugged one shoulder. “That’s just what she does. She’ll find seventeen reasons why it’s a problem and talk herself into most of them.” He took another drink. “Doesn’t mean she’s wrong to. Means you’ve got to be patient.”

“I’ve been patient for three years, Jett.”

“Yeah, and look how that turned out.” He grinned at me sideways. “I’m just saying. Don’t get cocky because you got her to crack once. She’s going to rebuild those walls about four more times before she stops.”

I picked up the hand weights again.

He wasn’t wrong about that either. I’d known it since the estate. Since the weight room. Since the shower where she stood under the hot water and cried without apologizing for it and then looked at me like she still wasn’t sure she was allowed to. Victoria Caldwell didn’t surrender anything easily. She made you earn every single inch, and then she second-guessed whether she should’ve given it to you at all.

That was fine.

I had the time.

I finished my last set and dropped the weights back onto the rack. Rolled my neck. Grabbed my bag off the floor. Jett was already moving to the next thing, which meant he’d said what he had to say and considered the conversation closed, which I respected.

I headed for the door.

“Stone.”

I stopped with my hand on the frame.

“She’s worth it,” Jett said. Not grinning. Not performing anything. Just Jett, for once, being entirely straight with me. “That’s all. Go find her.”

I didn’t say anything.

I turned left out of the weight room.

15

VICTORIA

Seth Carver called at seven forty-three in the morning before I’d even gotten out of the car.

“The PHL office confirmed the Detroit fine,” Seth said. “Two hundred and fifty thousand. Petrov gets a three game suspension pending appeal.”

“They’ll appeal,” I said.