Chapter 20 #2
That now-familiar rope of anger laced my wrists, and I had to shake it off.
It was easy enough to live with not being on the team before, when things had been great with the Pipers, but now not so much.
I was on my last reserve of patience. “No plans,” I said in a steady voice, even smiling. “I’m focusing on the Pipers for now.”
“You’ve talked about your work with youth players in the past; are you continuing your camps this year?”
“Those camps are starting up in a few weeks. It’s mainly low-income middle school kids and early high schoolers I aim for. That’s usually one of the most influential ages for kids to really stick to sports, so I love doing them.”
“Okay, one final question so you can get going: what do you have to say about rumors about a relationship between you and Reiner Kulti?”
Dun, dun, dun. I smiled at him and eased my little heart to slow down. “He’s a great person. He’s my coach and a friend.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”
The look the guy gave me was incomprehensible, but he nodded and smiled and thanked me.
I couldn’t help but feel dirty. Just a little.
Like I’d done something wrong—or at least something that I wouldn’t want to own up to.
I could handle accepting my faults and mistakes.
I didn’t have a boyfriend; I wasn’t married.
I could be friends with whoever I wanted to.
And it wasn’t like he was still married or anything, either.
But….
I swallowed back the weird feeling in my chest, that strange indecisiveness that wasn’t sure whether I wanted to handle all this unnecessary attention or not.
I wasn’t a superstar. I was just me, a little-known soccer player. The equivalent of a bobsledder in Houston, as my sister had called me one day.
All I had ever wanted was to play and to be the best. That was it.
What was I doing?
I tried to block out all these things that didn’t matter when I was at practice, but it was a lot harder than usual for some reason.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Gardner’s warning, stupid Amber and her equally stupid husband, the national team, Kulti and all his famous-person crap.
I felt like I had a noose around my neck, slowly, slowly, slowly tightening. I couldn’t breathe.
Right after finishing my passing drills, I felt a hand wrap around my wrist when I wasn’t expecting it.
I hadn’t even realized he was nearby. To be honest, I hadn’t been paying that much attention to anything besides soccer: passing the ball, blocking, sprinting. Things I had done a thousand times and would hopefully do another thousand in the future.
A deep line creased between his eyebrows as he tipped his chin down to ask, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing” started to come out of my mouth, but I decided against it at the last minute. He’d know. I wasn’t sure how he’d know, but he would know I was lying. “I’m just stressed, that’s all.” Okay, so that was vague and understated, but it was the truth. I was.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough for him. Of course it wouldn’t be.
He got that überserious look on his face, the one that smoothed the angled lines of his cheekbones.
Kulti met me eye to eye, not caring that we were so close or that whoever wasn’t busy doing drills was more than likely looking at us.
He didn’t care. He simply focused on the object of his attention—me.
It tightened something in my chest that I couldn’t really put together.
“Later,” he stated, he didn’t ask. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Later,” Kulti repeated. “Keep your head in it.” I nodded and offered him a weak smile.
He didn’t smile back. Instead, he let go of my wrist and put his hand on my forehead before shoving me gently away. It wasn’t exactly a hug or a pat on the back, but I’d take it.
Sure enough, when I turned around, at least eight sets of eyes were on us.
Great.
A KNOCK at eight o’clock that night had me setting my latest concoction on the kitchen counter, careful not to let the spoon fall out of the bowl. I wasn’t sure who else I could have been expecting to show up besides the German, so I wasn’t surprised to find him on the other side of the peephole.
“Come in,” I said, already opening the door wide for him to enter.
Right before shutting the door, I noticed that his Audi was parked behind my Honda, the silhouette of someone in the driver’s seat. All right.
“Don’t mind me,” I explained, walking back to the kitchen where I’d left my face mask.
“You have something on your face,” Kulti stated, standing on the other side of the counter with a curious expression.
I had only managed to cover one cheek before he’d knocked, so I was sure I looked like an orange creamsicle.
Picking up the spoon, I applied more of the cool mixture to my cheeks and forehead, watching the German as I did it.
“It’s a face mask made with Greek yogurt, turmeric, ground oatmeal, and lemon.
” I raised my eyebrows as I dabbed some over my upper lip. “You want some?”
He eyed me dubiously. Then, he nodded.
All right, then. “Rinse off your face with hot water, and then you can put it on.”
I blindly finished putting the mixture on my target skin as he went to the kitchen sink and splashed water over his face, dabbing it dry with a paper towel.
It wasn’t until Kulti took a seat on the edge of the kitchen counter and tipped his chin down, that I realized he wanted me to put the mask on him.
“Are you serious?”
The German nodded.
“You are really something else, you know that?” I asked, even as I stepped forward and began smoothing the gunk over his nose and across each cheekbone, gentle and slow. The facial hair that had grown in over the day prickled my fingers with each pass over his features.
“Do you do this often?” he asked after I’d covered his chin.
“A couple times a week.” I smiled, noticing his eyes on mine. “Do you?”
“I’ve had a few scrubs before photo shoots,” he admitted.
I nodded, impressed. I ran my fingers over the strip of flesh below his nose. “We spend so much time in the sun, you really have to try and take care of your skin. I don’t want to look like an old lady before my time comes.”
He nodded his agreement and let me finish putting the mask on him with watchful eyes.
Once we were done, I told him we needed to wait at least twenty minutes before washing it off.
“Don’t touch anything either. The turmeric stains everything,” I warned him, but I didn’t really care if I got a stain on my furniture or not.
Grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, I sat on one end of the couch and watched him sit on the other.
Propping my leg on the coffee table, I slapped the ice pack down on it for a good fifteen minutes.
My notebook was on the cushion between us, with a whiteboard on the table for my sticky notes, right where I’d left it before I decided to do my first beauty treatment of the week.
The reporter’s question earlier about the summer camps reminded me that I needed to plan the lessons for them. I hadn’t finalized a single thing yet.
The German didn’t even hesitate to pick up the notebook, reading over the notes I’d written about the different things I thought would be beneficial to the kids at their ages.
“What is this?” he asked.
I fought the urge to snatch the notebook away from him. “Plans. I have a few summer camps coming up.”
His eyes flicked up from over the edge of the notebook. “Training camps?”
“For kids,” I explained. “They only last a few hours.” He glanced back down at the sheet. “For free?”
“Yes. I do it in low-income neighborhoods for kids whose parents don’t have the funds to enroll them in clubs and leagues.”
He hummed.
I scratched my cheek, feeling oddly vulnerable at him reading over the skills I planned on teaching the kids. He kept reading, and it got worse. It wasn’t like he was a fantastic coach, he wasn’t. I had no doubt he could have been a great coach if he wanted to, but he didn’t.
I scrunched my toes up in my socks and watched his face. “Did your parents have money?” I found myself asking.
Kulti grunted.
I pulled my knee up to my chest and put my chin on it, careful not to rub the yogurt all over it. “There was no scholarship for you at the academy?”
He glanced up. “FC Berlin covered the costs.”
No shit. They’d recruited him at eleven? It happened, but I guess it still amazed me.
“And you, Taco?”
I smiled at him from behind my knee, surprised he was asking.
“You’ve been to my house, Germany. We weren’t poor-poor, but I didn’t have a pair of name-brand shoes until I was probably fifteen, and my brother bought them for me with his first advance from the MPL.
I have no idea how my parents managed to swing paying for everything for so long, but they did.
” Actually, I did know. They cut a whole bunch of things out of the budget.
A lot. “I just got lucky they cared; otherwise things would have gone a lot differently.”
“I’m sure you haven’t made them regret anything they did.”
“Eh. I’m sure I’ve made them wonder what the hell they were doing a time or two.” Or three. Or four. “I used to have a terrible temper—”
The German snorted. Straight-up snorted, lips fluttering, too.
Ass.
I nudged his hip with my toes. “What? I don’t have a terrible temper anymore.”
Those awesome almost-hazel eyes looked up again from over the notebook. “No, you don’t, and neither do I.”
“Ha!” I nudged him again, and he grabbed my foot with his free hand. I tried to yank it back, but he didn’t let go. “Oh please, my temper isn’t anywhere near as bad as yours.”
“It is.” He pulled my foot back toward him, getting a better grip around the instep.
“Trust me. It isn’t.”
“You’re a menace when you’re mad, schnecke. Maybe the refs haven’t caught you pinching girls, but I have,” he said casually.
I sat up straight. “Unless you have any physical proof, it never happened.”