Chapter Six Barrett
Chapter Six
Barrett
If there weren’t three perfectly serious women staring back at me across the conference room table, I’d have thought the entire thing was a joke.
I schooled my expression and took a quick glance at the clock. Eight minutes left in this meeting; then I’d need to be back in my office to take the call from the kids.
Pearl noticed. Her hawklike features sharpened at the small tell.
“You’re being awfully quiet about this,” she said. “Even for you.”
“I’m . . . thinking.”
Bridget cleared her throat delicately. “That means he hates it.”
The marketing admin next to Bridget . . . I couldn’t remember her name, but she had a mass of curly brown hair and a small nose piercing that winked underneath the overhead light. “No, he doesn’t hate it. That’s just his uncomfortable face.”
I wasn’t entirely sure I’d ever had a conversation with her before in my life, but apparently she knew me well enough to have me pegged on that one.
“And you all think this is a great idea.”
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
Curly Hair slid a folder across the table. “Our social media reach went up by forty-two percent when we shared those clips.”
Jaw tight, I opened the folder and glanced at the numbers she’d shared.
It was all neatly displayed in bright colors.
Maggie would’ve loved it. Proof that her impulsive decisions yielded incredible results.
With a flick of my thumb, I closed the folder, tented my hands on the table, and stared back at them.
When I didn’t say anything, the three women shared a look.
Finally, Pearl rolled her eyes and slapped the table with her open palm, the bottom of her wedding ring clinking loudly against the surface.
“If you take too much longer, I may die sitting here waiting, and I cannot tell you how pissed off I’ll be if I die in the middle of a marketing meeting. ”
I exhaled slowly. “I hate it.”
Bridget smirked. The marketing admin deflated in her chair, and Pearl narrowed her eyes.
“Why?” she asked. “If you’re gonna break Wren’s heart, you might as well give her a good reason.”
Wren. Got it.
The woman in question pursed her lips, trying and failing to hide her annoyance.
“Wren,” I said as gently as possible, which is to say I was also failing, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable putting my daughter out there like that.”
She straightened in her chair and pulled another folder out, sliding that in my direction too.
“I can understand that—but with all due respect, Coach, she’s already in the public eye.
Last week, they showed her on SportsCenter’s top ten plays of the day when she took over your press conference.
” I pinched my nose and sighed. Wren shared a look with Bridget, who nodded.
“She’s a scene stealer. If we do something like this, we can control the narrative of how she’s featured in the public eye.
We can highlight what makes her so great—her intelligence and her humor and the amazing relationship she has with the players. ”
The second folder wasn’t data or neatly printed bar graphs. There were logo mock-ups, and a sketch of a set that looked like a talk show.
The yellow background had me lifting my eyebrow at Wren. “Yellow, huh?”
Bridget smiled. “I know everything.”
I gave my assistant a dry look. “I’m aware.” I glanced back down at the proposal.
Midfield with Maggie—a recurring social media series featuring Maggie King, an informal question-and-answer segment featuring three to four players each week.
Pearl cleared her throat. “It’s a good idea,” she said. The diamonds on her rings sparkled, and I had to wonder if the jewelry she had around her fingers and neck and ears were worth more than my house. “It gets your kids involved.”
“Bridget’s already planning to blackmail me for more money if she has to watch them again.”
Bridget pursed her lips. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“More than once, actually.”
“In my defense,” she sighed, “Maggie was showing me how she learned to forge your signature, and I didn’t particularly feel like having that knowledge inside my head.
She would love something like this,” she pointed out, giving me one of those stern looks that didn’t leave me much room in the way of arguing.
“So let them be here more,” Pearl said. “You think I’d walk all the way down here for a shitty idea, King?”
“No, ma’am.”
“All our competitors will be jealous they didn’t think of it, and I love making people jealous. You gonna deny an old lady what few pleasures she has left in life?”
Bridget smothered a smile. Wren bit down on her bottom lip, and I cleared my throat.
It didn’t seem like a great time to remind her that she was a billionaire who could buy whatever pleasures she wanted.
“No, ma’am.”
She waved her hand. “Would you quit calling me ma’am? Makes me sound old.”
Bridget widened her eyes meaningfully, flicking them over to the clock.
Five minutes.
I tapped my thumb against the table and stared down at the logo.
“And if the narrative shifts in a way I don’t like?
” I asked. At any given moment, I could conjure two dozen headlines that lingered painfully long after they were published .
. . the ones that had pitted me and my brother against each other, had made my divorce tabloid fodder.
The thought of my daughter risking any of that was worth pissing off the boss.
“Then we stop,” Wren said. “Right now, it’s something fun and lighthearted. And if Maggie stops having fun, if you have any concerns that the marketing team doesn’t notice first, we’re done. No questions asked.” She looked to Pearl, who gave a short nod. “We’re just doing this as a test run.”
I was so used to having eyes on me, dissecting things like how often I smiled on the sidelines, when I got visibly angry during a game, if I was making the right moves as a coach. But this wasn’t that, and I didn’t want to be the kind of father who applied my own shit to my kids’ lives.
My daughter would perish from excitement. I gave them a weary nod. “Fine.”
Wren smiled widely. “Thank you. We’ll do one feature before the end of the season and see how it lands. If it does what I think it will, we’ll run it maybe once a month during the regular season so it doesn’t take up too much time during practice.”
“During practice?” I asked incredulously.
“What do you think midfield means?” Pearl barked.
“End of practice,” I countered.
Wren looked a lot tougher now that she’d gotten her way, crossing her arms and lifting an eyebrow.
“Last thirty minutes. I want chaos in the background; that’s what will make it even funnier.
Players will spend less than a minute with her for each rapid-fire round.
If we get to the point where it’s too much, we’ll schedule separate filming. ”
I slicked my tongue over the edge of my teeth. “Fine.”
Pearl reached out, patting Wren’s arm. “I told you he’d come around.”
“Did I have a choice?” I asked dryly.
“Of course. If you’d said no, we would’ve asked someone else. But like it or not, you’ve got a daughter who’s so great at this, she can’t seem to help herself.”
“And if I change my mind now?”
She arched a silver eyebrow. “Too late for that, King. Now your choice is gone.”
My entire life seemed to be comprised of women meant to humble me, and I tried not to think about what universal meaning I was supposed to glean from this.
Bridget was no help; she watched the exchanges with the bright glint of humor in her eyes, no doubt recalling every minute detail so she could go home and tell Janie the best part of her entire day.
“When would you like to do this, Wren?” I asked. “I need to coordinate with my parents since they’ll be watching the kids.”
“I thought Bridget was doing that?” Pearl asked.
Bridget shook her head. “Oh no, he has a neighbor who’s helping until his parents get here.”
“Ah.”
“She hates him. Like, a lot. But still she’s helping.”
I gave Bridget a quelling look, but she ignored it.
Pearl glanced between us. “Why does she hate you?”
“Why doesn’t she hate me might be a better question,” I answered, exhaustion pulling at my frame. “My very presence seems to offend her.”
Pearl sighed. “I know a few men like that.”
I cut her a questioning look.
“Not you, Mr. King.” She adjusted the diamond pendant around her throat. “If you made me want to claw my skin off because you breathed too loudly, I’d have fired you already.”
“Good to know.”
Bridget slapped a hand over her mouth to stem the laughter.
Wren stood, stacking her folders into a neat pile, then tucking them beneath her arm. “I’ll email you some dates, Coach.”
I rubbed my hand over my jaw. “Thank you, Wren.”
Just as she turned to leave the conference room, the door flew open and six feet four inches of quarterback barreled her over. Wren shrieked, papers went flying, and Archer’s arms darted out to keep her from toppling onto the floor.
“Oh fuck, sorry—wasn’t watching where I was going.” He set her back to see if she was okay.
Wren’s cheeks were pink, and she ripped her arms away from Archer’s grasp. “It’s fine.”
He scratched the side of his neck; then Pearl stood up and smacked him on the back of his head. “Help her pick up the papers,” she snapped.
Archer was a bit too slow to move, and Pearl muttered something about idiotic young men, giving him a steely-eyed glare. “Wren, come see me tomorrow morning. I’ve got some other ideas,” she called, just before stalking out of the room.
“Okay, Pearl.”
“You call her Pearl?” Archer asked. “Aren’t you scared?”
Wren barely stifled a sigh. “No.”
He picked up a single sheet of paper and held it out to her. She didn’t meet his eyes, but her lips were set in a firm line as she snatched it out of his grasp.
I’d already come around the table, joining Bridget to help gather the remaining pieces on the floor. I handed Wren the folder once we had them gathered, and she gave me a tiny smile.
“Thanks, Coach.”
Bridget tapped her watch before she left the room, and I nodded, folding my arms over my chest before turning to face Archer, who was still watching Wren as she hustled down the hallway.
“She hates me.”
“Well, you did just about give her a concussion, so I’m not sure I can blame her.”
He crossed his arms, too, mimicking me, and I took the measure of his facial expression.
“You were supposed to come see me this morning,” I said.
Archer’s jaw was tight, his mouth firm, and his stance prepped for a lashing. “Got busy in the weight room. Saw you in here and thought I’d see if you can talk now.”
“I can’t,” I told him. “I always take a call from my kids at three thirty, and I never miss it.”
“Look, I know you’re pissed at me about the game,” he said, dropping his arms and setting his hands on his hips, a defensive gesture that wasn’t lost on me.
“I’m not pissed, Archer.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “You looked pissed.”
“I was disappointed,” I amended.
His eyes flickered, face closing off immediately. “I was standing up for my team.”
“And I need you to be a leader. Not an instigator.” I dropped my arms, too, hoping that instead of defensiveness, he saw it as a softening.
“We can’t always do whatever we want out there.
Your teammates require a level head for game management.
Preparation during the week so that you can override the impulses and rely on your training. ”
“Aren’t my instincts what got me here?” he asked with a slight tilt to his head. “No one’s questioned them until you got here.”
“Yes. And as we get older, we hone those instincts until they’re a weapon. If we don’t, it’s just unrealized potential.”
He let out a short scoff, frustration weighing down the sound until it dropped like a lead weight between us.
“You’re the last player in every morning. You spend half the time in the film room that you should. You’ve missed meetings,” I told him. “We’ve had to fine you multiple times for other offenses too.”
“And last season, the team had three wins.” His chin jutted out. “We’ll finish over five hundred this year if we win out, and we have a shot at the playoffs.”
I held his gaze. “And that’s great progress, Archer, but I’m not satisfied with just over five hundred—or relying on other teams to lose in order to get that playoff shot.
I want championships, and I think you do too.
You and I have to work together if we expect that to happen, and you cannot keep skating by on your arm alone. ”
“And my legs,” he said lightly. “They’re not bad.”
Irritation flared, and I had a memory of a conversation like this with my brother in college. He never seemed to take things seriously, and I’d never been able to wrap my brain around that.
“I need you to do better, Archer,” I told him, voice low and serious.
“Not because they’re paying you an unholy amount of money, but because you are smart and fast, and were born with the kind of talent most guys can only dream of.
And because you don’t want your legacy in this league to be a guy who peaked in college and couldn’t put in the work once things got serious.
It’s never going to be easy. It shouldn’t be, not if you want to be the best. But right now, I can’t tell that you want much of anything except a paycheck.
And you get that whether you’re on the field or not. ”
The arrow hit its mark, color creeping up his cheeks and his mouth flattening.
“I’m still the starter,” he said. “As long as you’re here, your wagon is hitched to mine, Coach.”
My eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re the starter . . . for now.”
He exhaled in a short burst. “You wouldn’t bench me.”
“Wouldn’t I?” I crossed my arms and held his gaze.
Archer let out a quiet laugh. “No, you won’t. Because everyone would question your sanity if you did. You wouldn’t risk your job—or your reputation—to prove that point. You want everyone to think you’re perfect.”
The sharp thwack of his comment caught me somewhere between my ribs, dead center bull’s-eye, but I kept my face impassive.
“My kids are going to call any minute,” I told him. “If you want to join me tomorrow morning, I’m having breakfast with your receivers. I think we’re done here.”
He didn’t answer, simply looked down at the ground for a second, then shoved the conference room door open and stormed back out into the hallway.
I sank into a chair, braced my elbows on the table, and let my head rest in my hands.