Chapter 29
Austin
Zoya was right.
And while I thought accosting Isa somewhere in some bid to be romantic was a terrible idea, I did know she came to the Lightning training facility every Thursday evening. So, that week, I decided to hang around awhile.
“We could have done this tomorrow.” Trevor handed me my bottle of water, and we walked off the training mat to the exam equipment.
He looked up at the clock; it was nearly seven in the evening. Usually, only staff were here this late in the offseason. “You
didn’t have to stay this late.”
But then I’d miss Isa. I looked over his shoulder to the open door and empty hallway, hoping she’d be here. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, your mobility looks good.” Trevor looked at some of the readings from the dynamometer, a device used to measure different
forces along the muscles. “And I can run these results by Dr. Reinhold, but you’re probably on track to play in a few weeks,
once he clears you.”
I smiled. Now that I had been back from France for a few days and I’d given my knees some rest, I was anxious to get back to training. If this was going to be my last season, I wanted to make it a good one.
One I was proud of.
“Great.” I heard a few footsteps down the hall, my heart raced, and I was thankful I wasn’t on any of the heart rate monitoring
equipment.
A few more steps and the person I was waiting for walked in, her attention flickering around the hallways before finally looking
inside.
Her eyes landed on me, and her lips pushed up against her cheeks in the most adorable grin. Her trademark mint-green scrubs,
the New York Lightning zip-up on, and her hair in a neat bun. A jolt of excitement ran up my body.
“Dr. Mercado,” I greeted her, and this time a slight shade of red ran across her face.
“Hi,” Isa said nonchalantly, but her eyes lingered on mine for a moment. She walked in and went straight to one of the computers.
She cleared her throat and started on her work like nothing had changed from the last time I saw her in here. “Don’t mind
me, I’m just going to draft some of the findings for the research report.”
Her eyes locked on the screen; I could see her lips quake as they tried to remain straight and serious.
It had only been a few days, but I missed her.
“I thought your research report was mostly done,” Trevor asked.
“It is . . . I wanted to . . .” Isa stammered, the cool casualness breaking for a second. “I was going to look into some of the data we had from the college team. You know, for good measure.”
“No rest for the wicked?” Trevor flipped through a file and gave me the okay to get up. I was free to get going as he packed
up a few of his things and prepared to leave himself.
“Apparently not,” I added.
He looked between us speculatively.
“Well, I have to go, but there should be some staff around for the next couple hours if you need anything,” he said to Isa.
I waited until he was out of earshot and out of view, far down the hallway and around the turn he’d need to make to leave,
before I talked to Isa. “You came here for research . . .”
“Mm-hmm. As discussed, I enjoy the work.” Isa’s eyes stayed on the screen. “The team allows a few college programs to use
the training facilities. Some of the college athletes agreed to use some of the de-identified recovery stats.”
“Oh yeah?” I nodded and crossed the room to stand right next to where she sat.
“Yeah.” She looked up at me for a second. Air filled her lungs like she was just waiting to tell someone about it.
There was a way her body stilled with focus, but her eyes came alive when she read something that excited her. Or when she
explained it. She may have had her hopes pinned on that fancy research fellowship, but she practically glowed when she was
here.
“In younger athletes, we’re more likely to go in with a surgical repair first because they recover well, as opposed to . . .”
“Older ones?” I leaned down and looked at the screen like I understood anything she was reading on it.
She glanced over her shoulder to where I was crowding her, but she didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t move a muscle.
“The older ones require more . . . finesse. Operatively, I mean,” she added with a hard swallow that shifted down her throat.
“So . . . you’re here late.”
I braced each arm around her now, keeping her locked between them. That close, every memory with her flashed in my mind. I
let out an exhausted breath. I wanted to take her home, but more than that I wanted to take her out. On a real date. I wanted
this thing to be real. “I wanted to see you.”
A blush ran along her cheeks. I was realizing pretty quickly if I wanted to startle her, all I had to do was be direct. “Is
it because you have a little crush me?”
“Yes,” I answered definitively. I wasn’t giving her any cutesy ways out. “I want to take you on a date. A real one.”
Her frame tightened for a moment. Her eyes flickered around. My pulse hiked up. But then she turned and her gaze met mine,
and finally, her expression stilled, becoming serious.
“Okay . . .” she said with all the confidence of someone standing at the edge of an open plane door being coaxed into skydiving.
But while her voice needed some steadying, her eyes were balanced. And honestly, a part of me was expecting a much more scattered
reaction. I smiled. “Great, how about this weekend?”
“Sure.” The word was heavy as it sank down my body, pushing excitement up in its wake. She glanced up at the time and pushed her chair back. I gave her some room to stand. “We can hang out tonight, too. I have the de-identified data, so I can do this from anywhere now.”
She pulled the portable drive out of the computer and tucked it in her bag, then closed the tiny space between us.
“Hang out?” I was a little disappointed that after I mentioned a date, her mind went right to a hookup.
“It’s what us young people call—”
“I know what you mean.” I yanked her close, running my palms over the rough fabric of her scrubs. I could see what she was
doing, pushing this back to what it was at the wedding, a fling or friends with benefits or whatever she was thinking. But
I didn’t want to be her friend. And I had a feeling the only way to make Isa believe something was to show her it could happen.
So, I would. “I want more.”
She nodded; this time her eyes and voice were steady. “I have an early morning, that’s all, so I can’t go out on a real date
tonight. But we can stay in . . .”
Suddenly on defense, a jitter ran up my spine. “Fine. But you still owe me that date this weekend.”
“I already agreed. We have plans this weekend.” She put her hands up innocently. “A real date.” She smiled cheekily. “I know how to do that, promise. And you’re not exactly being subtle.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re a difficult woman to pin down, Isabelle.”
A spark lit in her eyes. She leaned in and whispered against my lips. “Let’s go back to your place and I promise I won’t make
it difficult for you to pin me down.”
A drought of not seeing—or touching—her ended the second we got back to my place. With our dinner out on the kitchen counter and our clothes somewhere out in the living room and probably the hallway, we lay there, covered in a thin layer of sweat.
“So, you know about the Blake of it all.” Isa lay with her back against my chest. She took my hand that gently stroked her
hip and weaved her fingers into mine. “Who’s your Blake?”
“Don’t say his name when you’re in bed with me,” I warned in her ear.
She rolled her hips against me. “Don’t dodge the question.”
I didn’t have a Blake and I really wanted to stop talking about him. Mostly because she said it with a casualness like I was
a buddy that she happened to be sleeping with. Not the guy she was dating, and I wanted to be that guy.
“Well, at first, I did the thing most pro athletes do when they go pro.” I answered her question without actually answering
it.
“Whored around?” She lifted her head up to look at me with a mischievous grin.
I cleared my throat, not expecting her bluntness even though that’s what I’d become so familiar with when it came to Isa.
“Yeah.”
“Respect.” She looked back up at the ceiling. “Everyone needs a ho phase.”
“Yeah well, after that, life became . . .” I went home and I felt like I had to put all the energy I used to put into serving
my own interests into something else. “Different.”
“What do you mean?”
“Theo got sick,” I said curtly. I tried to be around more when he first got sick—it was when Joseen was only a year old.
Isa didn’t say anything, but she looked at me with a soft curve along her lips, encouraging me to keep going.
“He was the reason I didn’t fall through the cracks. With everything from home life to struggling in school,” I admitted.
I didn’t talk about it much, not because I was ashamed of my past but more because I was a little ashamed of not being around
more. When I left, I was kid—eighteen—and suddenly went from dirt poor to a million-dollar contract and attention from all
angles. I spent too long entrenched in it. “But when nobody cared, Theo refused to let anyone forget about me. It didn’t sink
in that I wasn’t spending enough time here until it was too late.”
When he got sick, I came back every chance I got.
Isa was stoic, stone-faced. Probably good for a surgeon given they had to deliver the type of news I was sure she’d broken
over the years. She swallowed hard, her jaw set tight, serious.
“And you feel guilty,” she said softly, almost in a whisper. She turned around and snaked an arm around my neck. Pulling forward,
she pressed a light kiss on my cheek.
It was sweet. Intimate.
And she was right. I did feel a little guilty—always did when I talked about him with anyone else. But with Isa, it was easy.
“A little.” I cleared my throat.
She was still naked in my bed, and this conversation became heavy.
A type of heavy Isa usually steered back to light, but she hadn’t at all, and despite the knee-jerk desire to change the subject, I liked that she knew this part of me.
I pulled my arm around her waist and kept her chest flush against mine.
“Is that why you act like you aren’t a famous athlete?” she asked.
“I don’t do that.”
“You definitely do.”
“A part of me hated that while he had always been there for me, I was an ocean away for so long,” I confessed for the first
time out loud. I didn’t come back and spend much time in the States until I was well into my career. I thought back to all
that time I’d lost with my best friend and what I traded it for. “And formerly famous is probably more accurate.”
The idea for the soccer schools was Theo’s. Equal parts best friend and investing genius, Theo knew an open market. Creating
a way to keep talent in the States would have meant me staying here if it had happened years ago. Since it hadn’t, he made
a way so it could.
She looked up, opened her mouth like she was going to ask more, but she stopped. She turned around, grabbed a clean jersey
folded on my nightstand, and pulled it over her head.
“Well, I’m glad someone understands what it feels like to be the friend that’s a success but also kind of a mess.”
“I never said I was a mess. Just a little lost for a while,” I said, glancing over to the nightstand when my phone buzzed
on it. “I always had one vision for the future.”
“I get that.” She nodded, running her fingers through my hair. Her nails sent tiny sparks along my scalp. “Have you considered being a professional wedding date? Because I had a great time.”
With that, the heaviness was chased away. I liked her like this, relaxed and a little silly. It was a stark contrast to how
she was out in the world. An intimate look I wanted to hoard all for myself.
“I’m choosing to take that as a compliment,” I said lowly in her ear as a warning.