The Thing About My Rival (The Boston Commoners #1)

Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

DREW

“Not like that, Wilcox.” Hugo’s voice booms across the training field, and all the players turn to look at me.

I drop the stack of orange cones onto the turf with a thud. Is he seriously going to argue about how I’m setting them out for dribble practice?

When Hugo arrived this morning, I’d hoped he might have slept on it and decided to act like an adult. Should have known better, obviously. But he was quieter, and calmer, like maybe he’d given himself a talking-to and come to terms with this unique situation.

He even managed a half smile and almost made eye contact when he came into the office to hang his track jacket on the back of the door.

But he didn’t stick around or even say a word, just dropped it on the hook and went right out again.

And when I came out for training and wanted to discuss a plan, he just said, “Let’s see how it goes. ”

But what I’ve learned in the last forty minutes is that he actually meant let’s do everything my way .

I let it go while he took the warmup, and again during sprints, then again during passing patterns. But if I let him walk over me the whole time, I’ll lose all credibility with these players in our first training session and they’ll never take me seriously.

“Not like what ?” I shout back from the middle of the pitch.

“They’re too far apart. Not challenging enough. Put them closer together.”

I am not having this debate at the top of my lungs with thirty-five yards and a soccer squad between us. Showcasing how much their two coaches can’t stand each other won’t do much for morale. And this team needs all the help it can get.

I thrust my hands into my pants pockets and stride over to him, my heart rate increasing with every step. Confrontation is never my favorite thing, but sometimes it’s necessary.

Back straight, Drew. Chin up. That’s what my dad used to tell me.

When I reach Hugo, he continues chatting with Ramon like I’m not there. He’s telling him something about running up the field like being the front of a snowplow that knocks aside everything in its way.

While it’s a more cerebral metaphor than I would have expected from Hugo, he needs to shut the fuck up and not leave me standing here like I’m his assistant—an assistant he neither likes, wants, or needs.

He’s deliberately ignoring me, trying to provoke me. And, annoyingly, it’s working. Just the right amount for me to take on that confrontation I don’t want .

“Ramon,” I butt in. “Go stretch out with the others.” I jerk my head toward the players farther down the pitch.

He looks at Hugo, who nods his approval.

That one gesture, that tiny little tip of his head, is like a lightning strike, igniting my temper. How dare they? Both of them.

It’s a struggle to keep a lid on the hot anger swelling inside me, rising from my quaking belly to my chest. I clench my jaw to stop myself speaking until I’m sure Ramon is out of earshot.

Then I step up to Hugo until just inches separate us, almost exactly like yesterday when we were toe-to-toe on either side of the ridiculous line he’d taped down the middle of the office floor.

“How dare you?” The words spit from between my teeth.

“Whoa.” Hugo’s breath bounces off my face as he holds up his hands and steps back.

“Ramon does not need your permission to follow my instructions. And you do not need to give him the impression he does.” The rage rattling around in my head and my chest must be visible on my face.

“It’s all right.” He places a condescending hand on my shoulder. “Calm down, love.”

A flame of red heat shoots through me.

But I beat it back with a fire blanket, because if he’s deliberately patronizing me to try to make me so furious that I’ll blow my stack and make a fool of myself in front of everyone, I can’t let it work.

I yank myself out from under his touch and try to keep my voice as quiet as possible. “First, I am most definitely not your love. I am Coach Wilcox. And there are no circumstances under which I ever want to hear you tell me to calm down ever again.”

He holds up his hands again and smirks. He glances over at the guys, like he’s trying to draw them in with an unspoken Women, huh, aren’t they always crazy?

Thankfully they’re absorbed in stretching, otherwise I don’t doubt there would be one or two who would agree with him.

“Okay, okay,” he says. “But it’s not my fault if they take me more seriously than they take you. I’m an athlete.”

“Not any more you’re not.” I point at his left knee. “I probably work out harder than you do these days. I’ll be in that gym every morning before training, setting a good example. Whether you realize it or not—and I suspect you do—you’re encouraging these guys to disrespect me.” I point back to where they’re tapping balls back and forth to each other, warming up. “They’ve never had a female coach in their lives. And if you don’t treat me as an equal, they will never take me, or any other female coach, seriously.”

The potential for an irritating smirk plays at one corner of his mouth. But I’m on a roll here, so I plow on. “Give me all the shit you like back there.” I point toward the offices. “But out here we have to be on the same side. Not least because a team is never going to respond to warring coaches.”

He throws his hands up to the sky. “How can I treat you as an equal when you’re my rival? My job here is to win the permanent coach position. And that means I have to beat you.”

“So you’re planning to undermine me every step of the way?”

He shrugs .

“Well, that’s not a tactic I recognize from the Hugo Powers playing days. That Hugo Powers won by using his skill and his brain and his God-given talent. Not by poking childish fun at the opposition.”

Something shifts behind his eyes. There’s no sign of the soft pools of melted chocolate I remember from Paris, now they’re more like burnt toast—dark, scratchy, and liable to rip my throat out.

Well, screw him. “If you want to keep this job, how about you win it fair and square, by actually being the better coach. Not by being the tiny little man who tells the team not to listen to the girly. You’re better than that, Hugo.” I snort. “Or maybe you’re not.”

He folds his arms and huffs. “And this is all because I asked you to move the cones?”

Here we go again with the look at the little woman overreacting attitude. I ball my fists tighter to keep from beating on his broad muscular chest in frustration. Is he deliberately being obtuse or does he really not understand?

“First.” It’s hard to talk through such firmly gritted teeth. “You didn’t ask me, you told me. Second, you shouted it in front of the players, giving them the impression you’re my boss. Which, by the way, you are not.”

Jesus, how did I get here? How am I standing on the training field fighting tooth and nail with one of the world’s biggest soccer stars for a job I never really wanted, just so I can keep a foothold at my beloved Commoners? I only ever imagined working here as owner when my dad passed it on to me someday, never as coach.

“I told you yesterday.” He sighs and even manages to make that sound superior. “This is never going to work.”

“It definitely won’t if you don’t try.”

“The only thing I’m trying to do here is to turn this bunch of losers into a bunch of winners.” He flings his finger toward the guys. “And it’s not my problem if I know how to do that and you don’t.”

My thumping heart pauses for a second at words that could so easily have come from my dad.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that I have a coaching pedigree most people my age can only dream of. But right now, I need to remember that with all my might.

I glare at him and battle to keep my voice calm, but firm, despite the wobble in my throat. “How many World Cups have you won? Zero. How many times were you captain? Zero. Examples of leadership skills? Zero. My list of coaching credentials, however, is even longer than your bar tab. I absolutely know how to get the most from players. And I absolutely know that you taking Ramon aside for a special little chat, and singling him out from the others like that, will do nothing to foster team spirit. And it’s team spirit that wins titles.”

“Right, yeah, sorry. I forgot you won a World Cup.” He shakes his head and rolls his eyes to the sky. “But that’s because it doesn’t count if you’re standing on the sideline holding a fucking clipboard.”

“It’s very mature of you to diminish my coaching achievements to make yourself feel better about having none.”

“Look,” he says, with a tone that clearly indicates an arrogant explanation of something obvious is about to follow. “Ramon is the biggest talent on the team.” Yup, there it is. “Of course I have to encourage him. He could win everything for us.”

“And there you go again. All about the individual.” Apparently my hands are on my hips now and I’m leaning forward into him. “No one player wins a soccer game, Hugo. Teams do.”

“I have. I’ve won plenty of matches single-handedly.”

“I think you’ll find there were ten other men on the field with you.”

He sneers. “Sometimes there might as well not have been.”

“And you fostering that same it’s-all-about-me attitude in Ramon will be his downfall. He’s eighteen. He’s impressionable. He comes from nothing. The salary he’s earning here is more money than he ever thought he’d see in his whole life. It could all easily go to his head.”

Suddenly, Hugo’s hand is on my arm, his fingers tight around my bicep.

“What the hell are?—”

I can’t complete the question because he’s yanked me so hard to the side that I’ve lost my balance and fallen nose-first into his chest. A chest that smells of clean laundry and a hint of spice that gives me a flashback to that closet in Paris.

“What the fuck was that for?” I ask, yanking my arm free of his grip and pushing myself away from his solid form.

A ball whistles right by us.

“The way Boseman squared up for that kick it was obvious the ball was going to curve and hit you right between the shoulders,” he says. “Anyway, I don’t care what goes to Ramon’s or anyone else’s head as long as we fucking win some shit.”

I rub my arm where Hugo’s strong hand had grabbed me and wiggle my bruised nose in an effort to shake off the disorientation, and the annoying tremble in my belly, from faceplanting right between his pecs .

If the shock of the unexpected physical contact isn’t causing him to miss a beat, then neither can I.

“So.” I set my feet firmly on the turf. “You don’t care if his head gets turned with drinking and partying? Or he gets hit with a lawsuit? Or some charlatan tries to rip him off?”

“I care about winning. What happens off the pitch is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what happens between kickoff and the final whistle.”

“You are so shortsighted. Do you really not realize that it’s impossible to separate what happens off the pitch with what happens on it? That one feeds into the other. If you’d bothered to research?—”

“I’ve watched videos of these guys till my eyes have gone square. That’s my job.”

“I was going to say, if you’d bothered to research who these men are as people , not just as players, you’d know Ramon has already been clubbing way more than is good for his game, he’s bought a car that goes faster than any car should, and he always refuses to talk about his family—so God knows what the terrible story is there.”

“His personal life is nothing to do with me.”

“Right, and what you did in your personal time never affected your game, right?” I mock the ridiculousness of the idea.

“Absolutely.”

“So the time you got sent off for yelling at a ref had nothing to do with the news that you’d been sleeping with the performance coach’s daughter being splashed all over the media that morning? The time you screwed up that England free kick against Finland had nothing to do with your buddy’s boozy birthday party the night before? And the Man United manager refusing to play you for the final title match of the season had nothing to do with you having a locker room tantrum and throwing a cleat at him?”

He stills. “Well, you have been following my career, haven’t you, Wilcox? You must be a very big fan. I’ll sign your arm for you later, if you like.”

Ass jerk.

I take a breath to try to calm my blood pressure. This man is not good for anyone’s health.

“Look,” I say in the most reasonable tone I can muster. “The point is that players need to be nurtured as well as trained. They’ll perform better, we’ll win more, and they’ll have better, longer careers.”

He does that thing where he puffs out his chest and folds his arms across it like he owns the place. “The only thing that matters is burying the ball in the back of the net more times than the other side.”

“And that short-term attitude is what’s held this club back for years. I’ve seen it. You haven’t. You’ve come in here with that same macho garbage of squeezing everything you can out of the players with no thought for longevity, for how to keep them mentally as well as physically fit.”

“Oh, here we go with the mental health as well as physical health bullshit. They just need to play their nuts off on the pitch. They do not need to sit around sniffing your stinky oils and chanting.”

This man is way more like my father than I can deal with right now. “No. I’m not having it. I’m not letting you repeat this club’s mistakes of the past. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I will not sit back and watch you drive these players into the ground until they burn out or injure themselves. I want them to be happy and healthy and love playing here so much they never want to leave. Ramon included.”

“Oh, do me a favor,” Hugo scoffs. “Once I’ve finished with Ramon he’s going to have such a fucking great season that we’ll win the cup and then he’ll be snapped up by LA Galaxy, or DC United, or one of the European big boys.”

“And you would see him leaving as a job well done?”

“Yes. It would mean I’d made him too good for us, and he was moving on to bigger and better things. That’s the whole point, isn’t it?”

It might be his whole point. But it is definitely not mine.

“And the same goes for you too, right?” I sneer.

“What do you mean?”

“That you’re here just to prove yourself to whoever you’re trying to impress. And right now that seems to be mainly yourself.”

I gesture from the top of his ruffled brown hair down to his black cleats. “It’s all about you, isn’t it? The only reason you want us to win is so you can keep this job for next season and then shop yourself around to bigger and better clubs as the glorious Hugo Powers who’s redeemed his shitty reputation by dragging this poor little team up by its bootstraps and leading them to victory. You don’t give a crap about the Commoners.”

“And you want to stay here ?” He tips his head toward the rundown buildings around us. “Forever?”

“I fucking love this club, Hugo. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, and I love it today. If my dad hadn’t had to sell it because he needed the cash, he would have passed it on to me and it would be mine right now. And if it were, there’s no way I’d ever allow you to set foot on a single blade of this grass. But if the coach’s job is what I have, then coaching the team is what I’m going to do. And if I have to do it with you for these few weeks, then that’s something I just have to suck up. But I am not going to do it by drilling the players till they drop.”

“Then there’s no way we can work together.”

“I completely agree. You are way too selfish, close-minded, stubborn, and…” I’m all out of words. Hugo Powers has driven me to the end of my ability to construct sentences. “… infuriating.”

He smirks and shrugs as if I’ve just given him exactly what he wants. “Then you have to quit.”

Now my fury is back. How dare he play me like an under-par opponent, trying to put me off my game enough that I make a mistake or give up. “Not a fucking chance.”

Out of the corner of my eye I catch several players and Jed, the intern who’s warming them up, stop what they’re doing and look at us. That must have come out a bit loud. I can’t let Hugo freaking Powers push me so far I lose control. That’s how he wins.

I lower my voice, but my throat is tight, my jaw rigid. “This is my club.” I jab at my chest with a trembling finger. “And I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. You take all the physical training. All the daily on-the-pitch stuff. Leave the rest to me.”

“There isn’t anything but on-the-pitch training, Coach Wilcox.” He laughs like a sarcastic teenager. “This is a football team, remember? We play football. We train. We get fit. We practice and practice. And then we score more goals than the other side.” He shakes his head, smirking.

“And that one-track mind, Coach Powers, is why you will not be the one to keep this job. You don’t understand what it’s like to be a fully rounded human.”

“Got to hand it to you, though, Wilcox.” He gives me a slow clap. “I like this idea. Like it a lot. It’s the best one you’ve had. Yup, I’ll do the training, while you light candles and manifest our way to victory. Or whatever the hell it is you do. As long as we stay out of each other’s way, everything is fine by me.”

Could not be better. The less I have to see of him and his obnoxious, flawless face the better. “Perfect. But not until after this training session. I am not walking off this field and making it look like I’ve deferred to you.”

Without stepping back, I snatch up the whistle hanging around my neck and blow it so hard that Hugo slams his hands over his ears and screws up his face.

“Okay, guys.” I spin around and march back toward the orange cones. “Dribble training. To prevent injuries, we’re going to start with the cones far apart, then move them closer together as you warm up.”

The players, who were all in various stages of a lunge or stretch look at Hugo for his approval.

I turn back to find him staring right at me. Silent.

“Come on, team,” I call out. “Let’s start as we mean to go on.”