21. Victoria
VICTORIA
The locker room was quiet as I made my way out of its corridors. There was no pride in winning the way we had. There was no joy in the downfall of another team. The only wins that mattered were the ones we had to work for. A game like this?
Not as fulfilling as one would think.
I clicked my way into my office, my heels sharp against the floor.
I heard the away team practically slamming their way out of Caldwell Arena, yelling and cursing at the top of their lungs.
I wrinkled my nose as I closed the door to my office, blocking out the sounds.
I knew Coach would handle it if he thought they were being too disrespectful to the...
“Hey! Keep the fucking shouting to a minimum! You’re guests in this house!” Coach Mercer bellowed as I heard him storming down the hallway.
Like I said, he’d take care of it.
I snatched the television remote off my desk.
My office was damn near pitch black, save for the little warm white nightlight in the corner.
I turned on the television mounted to the wall.
A television my husband put there after he made this office his own space during his coaching days all those long years ago.
My God, that life seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Breaking news, everyone,” one of the newscasters said, “apparently, the Detroit Pirates were drunk at their game tonight.”
“Our reports indicate that at least four of the team members—”
I flipped to another news station. “Breaking news! Disgraced PHL Coach Nicholas Mercer is headed to a championship game! Good to see that some things never—”
I paused on one channel long enough to watch thirty seconds of Coach Mercer standing at a podium outside Caldwell Arena.
No notes. No PR handler beside him. Just him, looking directly into the cameras, speaking in that flat, no-nonsense register of his.
I couldn’t hear the words over the muted television but I didn’t need to.
I could read his posture well enough by now.
He wasn’t apologizing. He wasn’t deflecting.
He was just stating facts about my daughter the way a man states facts about someone he intends to keep around for a very long time.
I flipped to the next channel.
I turned the station to yet another station. A local news station. And the headline made me grin. “The Vegas Vipers are headed to the qualifying round to play against the New York Bulldogs! Go Vegas Vipers!”
I clicked through every channel. I double-backed two or three different times. I saw news media rushing the Pirates as they tore out the side exit of Caldwell Arena. I grinned at their decision. That door tormented me when I’d first gotten into the building, and now it would torment them.
I watched those reporters stick microphones in their faces, and I couldn’t help but shiver with glee.
They deserved every fucking bit of it for disgracing my ice with their drunken ways.
Knock, knock, knock, knock.
The instant my office door cracked open, I knew exactly who it was.
Maybe it was the smell of him. Maybe it was the cadence of his steps.
But when I felt Rhett’s strong hands descend upon my shoulders, I groaned as I leaned forward.
His thumbs dug into the muscles that lined the edge of my shoulder blades.
His fingertips slid up either side of my neck, causing my head to dip even lower.
Goosebumps spread along my skin as I felt myself slowly giving way to him.
“Mmm, right there,” I muttered as his thumb ran over a knot.
He got right to work, digging the heel of his hand into that spot and slowly circling it. “Everyone talking about the game?”
I snickered as I switched to yet another news story about the drunk semi-professional hockey team. “Every single outlet right now.”
He paused. “Wait, all of them?”
I giggled as I turned to face him. “Yep. All of them.”
“Ah, ah, ah,” he said as he gripped my shoulders and turned me right back around, “keep flipping. I’ll keep massaging.”
My finger mindlessly clicked through the channels, but I was no longer paying attention to them. “Deal.”
Slowly, I clicked while he slowly massaged. The only sounds were the ones of my breathing, grunting, and clicking. Every once in a while, Rhett chuckled, but other than that, we just… stood there.
Him, pampering me.
And me, relishing the fact that my daughter’s naked back caught on some asshole’s drone footage was no longer floating through the media.
“Thank you,” I muttered when I finally abandoned the remote control back onto my desk.
“You know,” he said as he dug his thumbs into the knot at the base of my left shoulder blade, the one he’d learned was always the worst. I bent over my desk a bit, pressing my hands into the wood as he worked my aching muscles, “that was fucking badass watching you cross that ice in your heels. Never seen anything like it.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. “Wanna know how I learned?”
“I’d love nothing more.”
His words slithered down my spine, shivering me like hot water pouring over the top of one’s head after a snowball fight. “Ryan used to try and get out onto the ice to get away from arguments. So I learned how to walk onto the ice after him.”
Rhett’s hands paused. “You’re kidding.”
I giggled and shook my head. “I’m really not.”
He let out a bark of a laugh, and the sound pulled a smile across my face. “Why does that not shock me one damn bit, Miss C?”
“Because no one can get away from me when I’m pissed, that’s why.”
“Trust me, you more than proved that tonight. I’ve never seen someone go in on a team like that.”
I groaned as his thumbs sank into the divots of my lower back. “Hey, they were the ones fucking up on the ice. It would’ve been a very different story had it been you guys pulling that shit on the ice.”
“Trust me, we’d never pull that kind of shit on the ice.”
“You better not. I’ll have your fucking careers if you do.”
He chuckled. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Ahem.”
I gasped as I whipped up from the desk. Rhett promptly yanked his hands off my lower back. I turned quickly toward the doorway, my back pin straight and my cheeks flushed as I saw Coach Mercer standing in the opened doorway of my office.
“You didn’t shut the door, Rhett?” I hissed.
Coach grinned. “Rhett.”
I saw his shadow nod from behind me. “Coach.”
I leveled Coach with a look. “What?”
Coach’s grin grew to a smirk before he cleared his throat. “Just wanted to let you know that Brynn and I are headed home. You two coming?”
I sighed heavily before I peered over my shoulder at Rhett. Then my gaze slid back to Coach Mercer. I saw him staring at the television screen mounted on the wall, still softly playing through some pointless media reel that held no importance to us.
Coach’s attention came back to me. “I already have a press conference scheduled for the middle of the week. If anything about Brynn and—”
I held my hand up, stopping his words in their tracks. “There isn’t.”
He blinked. “What?”
I thumbed over my shoulder at the television. “You and Brynn aren’t on television right now.”
Coach eyed the remote before he charged into my office. He scooped it up, pointing it at the flatscreen on the wall, and quickly flipped through the channels like I had.
“Reports say the Pirates—”
“The bridge collapse on the southeast side of—”
“Breaking news, everyone! The royal family is preg—”
“—and apparently, if you put the fish in—”
“—news, everyone! The President is headed t—”
Coach muted the television and turned back to me, handing me the remote control. I just tossed it back on top of my desk. It was a television I hardly turned on anyway. In fact, I hadn’t turned it on at all in months before this shit kicked up with Colton and my daughter.
“It’s not anywhere right now,” I said, breaking the tense silence.
Coach eyed me. “Doesn’t mean there won’t be.”
I shrugged softly. “Then keep the press conference appointment, and if something changes, then you know what to do. But as of right now? It’s not anywhere.”
The sigh of relief that puffed out his cheeks told me all I needed to know. He turned to face me, determination swirling around in his eyes. I knew a man on a mission when I saw one. I knew he had something rattling around in that head of his that he had more than rehearsed.
However, the second he drew in a breath through his nose, I held my hand up again.
“Jesus, what?” Coach grumbled.
Rhett chuckled. “You get used to it.”
The two of us shot him a look and he simply held his hands up in mock surrender. That didn’t stop him from tossing a playful wink in my direction, however. I did my best to ignore it. Though the blush that crept down my neck wasn’t trying to be as coy as me.
“Anyway,” I said as I slipped my hand back down to my side, “whatever speech you currently have rehearsed, I don’t need to hear it.”
He crooked an eyebrow and looked over at Rhett.
“I don’t know how she does it, either,” he said with a simple shrug.
Coach shook his head as he looked back at me. “You don’t?”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t. I know that you’ve been taking care of my daughter. I know that you’ve got this situation under control. I know that you never meant to put her in this position, and I know you probably never will again.”
“Never,” Coach said gruffly.
I nodded. “That’s why you don’t need to give me the speech I’m sure you’ve probably rehearsed a million times in your head.”
Coach snickered. “And how the hell would you know something like that?”
I smiled softly. “Because you remind me a lot of Ryan.”
He fell silent. If he knew that name then that meant Brynn talked with him about her father, and that made me so fucking happy.
It was one of the many areas where I had failed my daughter.
I did my best to talk about her father while growing up.
After all, she was only in middle school when he was gunned down.
But sometimes talking about Ryan was simply too much for me.
I was glad my daughter found someone she trusted enough to talk with.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, “for protecting my daughter.”
Coach’s eyes held mine. “No, thank you. I know this has been hard for you to come to terms with, how I feel about your daughter.”
I drew in a deep breath. “And, to answer your original question: yes. Rhett and I will be heading back with you guys. I think it’s smart for us to capitalize on the fact that the media circus outside is preoccupied with the other team.”
Coach thumbed over his shoulder. “Brynn insisted on taking the opportunity to pull your car up underneath the awning on the other side of Caldwell Arena. It’s why I came to find you.”
I smiled softly. “Tell her thank you. Rhett and I are coming.”
He slipped past me, heading for the exit of my office. “Just let me snatch my bag out of the locker. I’ve got laundry to do.”
“I’ll show you where the washer and dryer are when we get back,” I said.
As we all gathered our things and closed down Caldwell Arena for the evening, I waved at the new janitor we hired.
He was more than dedicated to this place.
A bit younger than I would have imagined for a janitor, but we all had our stories.
He was happy to help, we were happy to hire him, and now we had two janitors splitting their time between this place instead of just one who had to do all of the work.
And as Rhett and I made our way out to my car parked on the shadowed side of Caldwell Arena, I couldn’t help but clock the severe lack of people with cameras and microphones.
“Maybe this is the beginning of the end,” Rhett said as he opened my car door for me.
I dipped down behind the wheel of the car. “One can only hope.”
He closed my door before he jogged around and slumped down into the passenger’s seat.
Then with a crank of the engine, we headed back to Victoria’s estate.
I fell in behind Coach’s truck, following the backroads he took in an effort to dodge any straggling media syndicate vans that may have been waiting for us around the bends.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when the wrought iron gates of her estate closed behind us.
“Hungry?” Rhett asked as we pulled up the winding driveway. “I think I saw some pork chops defrosted in the fridge. I could whip us up something.”
I furrowed my brow. “You cook?”
He chuckled. “What? You think I live on takeout like Jett?”
I paused. “Yeah?”
He barked with another laugh, and it tugged a smile across my face as I parked my car in its usual spot at the estate. I didn’t like the fact that being here still felt unfamiliar, even though it was mine.
I tried not to think too much about it, though.
“Come on,” Rhett said as he slipped out of the car, “I’ll whip us up something quick.”
I grabbed my purse and eased my way out of the car as well. “Good. It’ll give me a chance to get cleaned up and out of these heels.”
“What? You mean you don’t sleep in them?”
I snickered. “You’d know.”
He chuckled as he came around, his hands falling effortlessly to my hips as if they belonged there. “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.”
I crooked an eyebrow. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He grinned as he pulled me against his body, his ass resting against my car. “I don’t know. What do you want it to mean?”
I crooked an eyebrow at him before I shoved his chest playfully and stepped out of his grasp. “I swear, men are so weird.”
His tongue darted out, licking his lower lip as he tilted his head. He studied me, making a show of raking his eyes up and down my form.
“I suppose that’s one way to put it,” he said as he pushed off my car and started toward me.
I scoffed. “And how else would you put it?”
He took my purse from my hand and slipped his arm around my waist. “I would’ve used the word ‘obsessed.’”
And the way he practically growled the word against the shell of my ear made my knees practically buckle in the middle of my own goddamn driveway.
Thank fuck, I was used to walking in heels.