Chapter Nine Barrett
Chapter Nine
Barrett
With my head down and my focus on the notes for my next meeting, I hardly noticed Bridget trying to flag me down. When I finally glanced up, I looked around her desk area. Her empty desk area.
“Where are my kids?”
She set her hands on her hips. “You give me too much credit, boss. Maggie crashed the defensive-line meeting, and I haven’t seen her for at least an hour.
” Her head tilted toward the office across the way from mine.
“Bryce is in Mark’s office; he’s either asleep on the couch, or he’s helping him with play selections for our last game. Hard to say.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “Okay. Wait . . . Maggie’s doing what?”
She laughed. “You should go check. Wren is having a field day with this.”
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Why are they here again? I thought the neighbor was watching them today.” She quirked a knowing brow. “Last day at the office before Christmas break, and all.”
The way our last two games were scheduled out, we had an eleven-day stretch between.
Great for resting injured players. Great for giving the guys a couple days to enjoy the holidays with their family.
Absolute havoc for guys like me, who had kids out of school and couldn’t wrangle his mental stability long enough to let Lily watch them for a little bit longer.
“My parents are flying in after Christmas,” I answered gruffly, immediately cursing the defensive edge to my voice.
“Ah. It’s too bad there’s not, like, a person in your neighborhood who could help.” Without looking at me, Bridget pretended to skim the notebook in front of her. “Like, next door or something.”
“We needed to give her a break,” I said. The words came out clipped and terse.
“‘We’?” she asked slowly.
The times I’d lied to Bridget could be counted on one hand, and two of them had been about Lily Townsend. That alone should’ve scared the shit out of me.
I needed a break. I needed a break from her eyes and her hair and her snippy little comments. From that fucking mouth. Because that mouth . . .
When I realized Bridget was waiting for me to respond, I blinked rapidly, tucking my folder underneath my arm. “Yes. She helped a lot the last week and a half.”
“And one more day was too much for her,” Bridget added. There was nothing inherently skeptical about how she said it, but I knew this woman. “You’re off tomorrow. And the next day. Like, completely, totally off, and she needed a break from watching them for one day. Am I getting that right?”
“Don’t you have work to do?” I asked her.
“Yes, I’m terribly busy and important at all times.” She sat in the big, expensive leather chair she’d requested when we started in Buffalo, then shooed me away from her desk. “Speaking of which, go find your own kids. I know you have fifteen minutes until your last meeting.”
When her chair angled smoothly in the opposite direction, I was effectively dismissed. “You know, I bet there are head coaches in this league who have executive assistants who respect them.”
“Oh. Are you still here?”
I sighed, walking to Mark’s office, where, sure enough, Bryce was studying schemes on the giant whiteboard on the far wall.
“Do you need me to remove this small human from your office?” I asked Mark.
They both turned, and I smiled. Bryce was wearing a prototype jersey about three sizes too big. “I’m helping,” my son insisted.
Mark grinned. “He’s fine.”
“Thanks, Mark.” I tapped my watch. “I’m going to find your sister; then I have one more meeting and we can go home, okay? Be ready in about forty-five, Bryce.”
He gave me a crisp salute, then turned back to the board.
The conference room where the defensive line was supposed to be meeting was empty, so, with another sigh, I turned to take off down a few more hallways. They weren’t in the locker room. Not in the weight room either.
One of my defensive backs found me standing, hands on my hips, trying to decide which direction to go next.
“Looking for a girl about this tall?” Travis asked, holding his hand up to his midsection. “Likes bossing people around?”
My mouth tugged into a reluctant grin. “Yes.”
He tilted his head down the hallway to the right, which led to the main practice field “Down there.”
“I’m scared to ask why,” I muttered, and it made him laugh.
It wasn’t the typical Saturday for us, with no game on Sunday.
On a normal week, we’d do walk-throughs of all the plays, gearing up for travel if it was an away game.
Because of the holiday and the longer-than-usual break between games, the schedule wasn’t as grueling.
A good number of the players were already home for the day after reviewing film and spending time with their coordinators.
Some would’ve come in for treatment too; everyone was a little banged up by this point in the season.
This time of evening, just past dinner, there weren’t usually players on the field anymore. I made the last turn, and when I let myself through the first door that led to the field, I couldn’t help but let out an incredulous laugh.
Maggie stood on a step stool, a megaphone to her mouth.
My entire defensive line was practicing dance moves while she instructed them on what to do next.
“No, no, everyone on the left, you need to pirouette,” she said in exasperation. “Look at Keshawn; his is so good.”
I covered my mouth with my hand as one of our team captains, an absolutely massive guy, one of the stalwarts of our defense at six five and with inked arms the size of tree trunks, executed a perfectly graceful ballet move, his hands arched above his head.
The other guys clapped and whistled. “How can you do that so well, man?” someone asked.
Keshawn shrugged. “My daughter is in ballet. I help her practice sometimes. You gotta feel the move.”
Wren was off to the right, directing the intern who was filming every bit of this, and I could only imagine what would end up on the team’s social media.
I cleared my throat, and Maggie whipped around. “Dad! We’re making content. They’re gonna give me my own show.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So I heard. Are you keeping these guys from doing their work?”
“Aww, come on, Coach,” Keshawn said. “Five more minutes? We almost got it that time.”
“Yeah, Dad, can we have five more minutes?” Maggie asked, bouncing slightly on her toes.
“Five more minutes,” I told her, my lips curving into a helpless smile. “Then make your way back to my office, okay?”
She held her hand out, and Keshawn gave her a high five.
Then she brought the megaphone to her mouth.
“You heard the man. We have five minutes, so let’s do two more takes.
” She swiveled in my direction, still speaking into the amplifier.
“Dad, can we watch a Christmas movie and eat cookies when we get home?”
Every eye on the field was on me. “Uh, yeah, that’s fine.”
“Can we come, too, Coach?” someone asked.
I smiled wryly. “Not tonight, no.”
Maggie turned again, pointing at one of the tackles at the end of a line, megaphone to her mouth. “Justice, if you can’t get that pirouette on beat, you’re off the video.”
“I’ll get it,” Justice promised. He gave me a meaningful look. “She’s scary, Coach.”
“Trust me, I’m aware.”
“Christmas break is the best,” Bryce sighed. “No school for two weeks.”
“Totally the best,” Maggie agreed. We were halfway through Home Alone, Maggie lying on the floor with a pile of pillows from her bed, her legs kicking back and forth in the air.
We’d finally taken some time to put up a tree when we got home from the facility, though the kids lost interest in hanging the ornaments about halfway through the process.
Bridget assured me that all their presents were wrapped and ready to put under the tree—hidden in the storage room in the back of the extra garage stall.
She’d snuck them in earlier that day while I was in a meeting.
Bryce’s chest was covered with cookie crumbs, leftovers from the most recent batch brought home with them from Lily’s. The best cookies in the entire world, according to my children.
I’d yet to try one. Knowing her, she’d slipped a camera into the takeout container and the entire thing would self-destruct if I took a single bite.
“Christmas Eve tomorrow,” I said quietly. “What should we do?”
“Eat sugar all day,” Bryce insisted.
“Part of the day.” I nudged his leg. “We could play a couple games.”
He gave me a shy look. “And you don’t have to work . . . at all? Not even a little?”
“None,” I promised. “Film can wait until after the holiday.”
He tried to smother his pleased smile, but it broke free anyway. “Maybe we could play Monopoly or something? You don’t usually have time for a long game like that.”
It was almost impossible to speak over the guilt screaming in my head. “Monopoly would be perfect.”
Bryce jumped off the couch. “Sweet, I’m gonna go pick games for tomorrow,” he called, tearing off toward the storage closet at the end of the hallway.
“Can we go to that church down the street?” Maggie asked. “A couple of my friends at school said they do one of those candle services.” She frowned. “It doesn’t sound very safe to have open flames in church, but I kinda want to see it.”
“We can do that if you want. We can make all new traditions, if that sounds good.”
With Rachel, Christmas was always over the top. She wanted black tie parties and spectacle. It wasn’t about movies and games and quiet evenings at home. A decorating company came in and made our house look like something out of a magazine.
Maggie stared at the half-decorated greenery in the corner. “I love our little tree.”
“That little tree is nine feet tall,” I said.
“Yeah, but it’s not perfect. I like that.” She hopped up from the floor and dug through the box to find another ornament. Baby’s First Christmas, it said, with a small blurry picture of Bryce. “It feels like a family Christmas tree.”