Chapter 9
Teddy
Dad
I heard you’ve got some challenges this season. Hope it goes in your favor.
I’m heading out on deployment, so I’ll be in and out.
It was a short message but showed he’d maybe been following my career, which was practically sentimental from him. I was about to ask if someone had hijacked his phone. Instead, I replied the only way I knew how.
Teddy
I’ll make sure of it.
He’d think I was concussed if I gave him more than that or even added an accidental kiss at the end of it. I kept it how we always did—militant.
I locked the screen and sat there for a beat longer, trying not to think about the fact that there was a part of me that still wanted him to be proud of me. Still wanted him to say you’re doing good, kid, even if all I ever got was I hope it goes in your favor like I was a horse at the track.
I breathed in once, twice, trying to ignore that tug of my heart strings.
I wished he’d respect my career choice instead of treating it like a hobby I’d grow out of.
I used to think if I worked hard enough and got my degree while playing rugby, he’d see my dedication.
He’d look at me with a sense of pride that I’d spent my whole life chasing.
But he didn’t even make my graduation—he chose a farther-away deployment.
Being gone for that moment in my life only proved I was never going to get what I kept breaking myself to earn. Which meant, I had to do this for me.
He’d been this way forever, and I knew losing my mom the same week I was born had carved something deep in him, and growing up, I could always feel the edge of it.
Looking at me became too hard for him because he saw what he lost; it didn’t matter what he gained in me.
It didn’t matter that I never knew her, that I’d spent more time with paid help than a parent.
That’s the thing we’d never talk about. The thing we could never repair.
It was easier for him to stay away. Easier for me to pretend it didn’t matter.
And to make myself feel better, I called the one person I knew would always be around.
“Teddy-bear?” Her voice was warm and familiar. “I miss you, my darling.”
I closed my eyes, letting her caring nature soothe something inside me. “Nat-nat, I miss you too. How are you?”
“Oh, you know,” she said, a smile audible in her voice. “Montana is cold enough to freeze my eyelashes off this time of year, but that husband of mine keeps saying it’s character building.”
I smiled. “You have the most character of anyone I know.”
A chuckle floated down the line. “Enough about me.” Her tone shifted to that gentle authority she never lost. “Tell me how you’re doing. I had a feeling you were going to call today.”
I’d never understand how she knew that. Mother’s intuition, maybe?
She was the closest thing I’d ever had to one.
My dad worked with her brother, and when I was four months old, she came into my life and stayed until I graduated high school.
She stayed through my father’s deployments, the birthdays, the sports I’d play until I found rugby.
I always knew she wasn’t my mom, but she felt like family all the same.
She couldn’t have her own children, so I guess I became an extension of her dreams too.
“You always know.”
“Of course I do,” she said. “You’re my girl. Now talk to me.”
“I’m okay,” I told her, but it came out thin.
“Teddy Elizabeth Sloane, I know you didn’t just lie to me.”
I exhaled. “I guess this month has just been a lot so far. There’s been plenty to adjust to.”
“All the stadium sharing?”
It didn’t surprise me that Natalie followed my career to the extent she did, considering she had for most of my life so far. “Yeah, and everything feels a lot heavier. There’s pressure, and then there’s this. It’s more. I need to keep it all together for my team.”
“Mhm, you always were insistent on being a leader, even when you were tiny. Stubborn little thing walking before you were nine months.” Her voice was soft, remembering how she raised me. “Has your father been in touch?”
I hesitated. “Yeah. Today.”
“What did he say?”
“That he hopes the season goes in my favor.” I forced a small laugh.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she breathed.
I held the air in my lungs until my eyes stopped burning. “It’s fine.”
“Teddy-bear,” she said. “You don’t have to pretend with me.”
I pressed my thumb into the seam of my leggings, needing to feel pressure somewhere. “It’s just how he is.”
“I know, but you know I’m here for you, still, always.”
Something inside me loosened, and I ranted about everything that had happened.
The dam well and truly broke as I spilled all the drama about the shared stadium, being around Connor again, feeling like the expectation might swallow me whole some days and I still needed to show up and do the damn thing.
The season hadn’t even started, and I was feeling burned out already.
“I’m going to tell you what I told you when you first picked up a rugby ball all those years ago, Teddy.”
I wiped the heel of my hand under my eye, even though no tears had fallen. “What’s that?”
“That you don’t have to earn your right to take up space.” She didn’t waver. “Not on a pitch. Or in a room full of journalists. Not next to that boy who gets under your skin. And certainly not with your father.”
My throat tightened.
“You deserve that space because you show up.” She continued. “You work harder than anyone I’ve ever known. But you forget that you’re allowed to need things too. To rest, to breathe, to be supported. You don’t have to prove your worth every second you’re awake, my darling.”
Sometimes it felt like I did, but I didn’t voice that. She already knew.
“You’re going to be incredible for your team, you know how I know that? Because you’ve got fire, Teddy. Just don’t forget that even fires go out if they aren’t tended to.”
She’d said some version of that a hundred times growing up, after bad games, bad grades, stupid boys, but this time, I knew she was right.
I needed to make sure that I was taking care of me too.
Some days, that flame she loved about me was dim, and I wasn’t about to let it go out completely.
I just needed to figure out the balance before the full season started.
I closed my eyes, letting her voice wash over the edges of the pressure that had been growing inside for the last few weeks. “I wish you were here.”
“I’ll always pick up the phone, no matter the time.”
A small smile tugged at my mouth. “I know.”
“Good. Now go make sure you listen to me. I’m old and wise, remember?”
We both laughed, and when the call ended, I pushed my shoulders back and felt renewed of energy for today.
Coach needed me this afternoon. So, by the time I got to her office, she was in full logistics mode, which meant three coffees deep and chewing gum aggressively. Pure hyper fixation.
“Hey,” I said, sitting into the chair across from her. “Please tell me I’m not in trouble. Unless it’s trouble with an all-expenses-paid vacation somewhere I don’t have to be Captain Sloane for a day.”
“Not quite,” she said, cracking a smile. “Though I did tweak your schedule for tomorrow.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Define tweak.”
“You’re off-site for the morning. PR needs you to go to a sponsorship shoot.”
My hope wilted like spinach in a hot pan. “So, not a bubble bath and an audiobook?”
“Not unless the audiobook is sponsored by Buzz; you know the energy drink company? They’re interested in a season-long partnership and want to meet the face of the Valkyries.”
“Just me?”
“And Connor.”
Right. Of course. Because for some absolutely baffling reason, we were becoming a two-for-one deal, and it hadn’t even been two weeks.
Buy one stubborn captain, get the other at half price.
I knew there’d be press, sure. I even expected a few grip-and-grin photos for the preseason promo stuff.
But this? This felt like the PR version of a shotgun wedding.
How many campaigns did our management have planned? I didn’t want to ask.
Coach must’ve seen the exact moment my soul attempted to crawl out of my body, because she softened. “It’s a good opportunity, Teddy. These partnerships bring attention, and attention brings growth. We’ve got momentum, but we need to keep the buzz going. Pun intended.”
In not so many words, she was telling me to play nice in order to be rewarded.
Something I’d been doing with increasing frequency lately, though I wasn’t sure anyone appreciated just how much restraint it took.
I wasn’t unreasonable—I was actually very reasonable within the clearly outlined limits of my patience.
The problem was that ever since the quake, nothing had gone to plan.
Schedules were chaos, expectations had tripled, and my fuse had been slowly shrinking by the hour.
So yeah, maybe I’d been saltier than usual.
But I wasn’t proud of it. I just hadn’t figured out how to hold everything without occasionally letting something snap.
“Okay,” I sighed, nodding. “I’ll be good.”
Coach Em laughed at that, like someone who’d seen every one of my not-good moments firsthand. “I don’t need you to be good, Teddy. I just need you to be you. You’re a damn good leader. Charismatic as hell. Let them see that version of you, and they’ll be eating from the palm of your hand.”
Which sounded nice, in theory. But right now, I wasn’t sure which version of me was going to show up…
the cool, composed, marketable one, or the one who wanted to crawl back into bed with noise-canceling headphones and a bag of chocolate-covered almonds.
Or the newer one, who was perpetually scowling because of some hotshot rugby captain playing house with me and my team.