Chapter 36 Coach
Coach
Icouldn’t remember the last time I’d been this angry with my daughter. Which was impressive, considering Scotty’s been testing my blood pressure since roughly the age of three.
That girl came into the world stubborn, loud, and absolutely convinced she was right about everything.
She got that from me.
Our arguments over the years felt less like parenting and more like watching two brick walls repeatedly slam into each other to see which one cracked first.
It wasn’t exactly healthy communication, but it worked for years. I wasn’t about to start pretending we were one of those families who sat down and calmly processed their feelings over herbal tea.
Tonight, I bypassed the usual head-butting and went nuclear instead.
“Are you even listening to me, you son of a bitch?” Morgan hissed as I marched us out of the restaurant.
People turned their heads as we walked past, and I had to grit my teeth to stop myself from telling them to mind their own fucking business. The last thing I needed tonight was an audience.
“Are you talking about the third or fourth time you told me to go fuck myself?” I asked dryly as I held the door open so she could storm outside.
“Very fucking funny,” she snapped the second we got into the car.
I shut the door and leaned back against the seat for half a second, trying to breathe through the pounding in my temples.
“I am so fucking mad at you, Dick.”
I growled under my breath. Nobody called me Dick.
It was Richard or Coach. Dick sounded like I sold used cars and argued with customers about warranty packages.
But Morgan looked roughly two seconds away from ripping her stiletto off and stabbing me with it, so for once in my life, I decided shutting the hell up might be the smarter move.
If only I’d been this smart fifteen minutes ago.
“How could you do that to her?” Morgan demanded, throwing her hands in the air. “She’s your fucking daughter, and you acted like you were ashamed of her for leaving her ex.”
“I never said I was ashamed of her,” I growled.
I’ve never been ashamed of Scotty. Not once.
I’d been proud of my kid every damn day of her life.
Proud when she was a stubborn little gremlin picking fights with playground bullies twice her size.
Proud when she decided she wanted to learn how to skate and spent an entire winter throwing herself onto the ice until she figured it out.
The girl had grit. An alarming amount of it, honestly.
At one point, I briefly considered bubble-wrapping her and locking her in the house just so she’d stop launching herself into danger.
“You might as well have,” Morgan shot back immediately. “Gods, I thought you were an idiot when you asked Scotty why she didn’t stay with Ken. Did you even apologize to her for that?”
“No,” I muttered.
“Richard—”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Gods, Richard, what the hell is the matter with you?” she demanded. “That’s your baby, and you couldn’t spare five minutes to fix things? She deserves so much better than that.”
“Don’t you think I fucking know that?” I roared, gripping the steering wheel hard enough that my knuckles turned white. “I had no fucking idea what I was doing after Joanna died, but I sure as fuck know it wasn’t enough. Do you know how hard it is raising a kid on your own?”
Morgan lifted an eyebrow, and I swore under my breath.
Of course, she fucking knew.
Ryder’s sperm donor disappeared before the pregnancy test even showed the second line. From everything Morgan had told me about that asshole, it was probably the best thing he ever did for that kid.
I hated admitting it, but Morgan had raised a hell of a man. I felt a stupid swell of pride earlier when Ryder grabbed that little fucker and hauled him off my daughter.
But if Ryder had thrown a punch in the middle of a crowded restaurant, the league would have been up our asses before the night was over. So I stepped in to try and shut the whole thing down before it got worse.
Instead, I followed them, ready to give Ken hell myself, caught the end of Scotty’s speech, and did what I did best.
I got angry.
Said things I should have never fucking said without thinking about what they’d do to the people around me. That kind of shit worked when you were yelling at a locker room full of professional athletes.
As a father?
Not so much.
“And threatening my sons’ career?” Morgan continued, her voice rising again. “For what? Loving your daughter? Both Hunter and Ryder would cherish that girl, and you made it sound like they were doing something disgusting. Go fuck yourself, Richard.”
“They don’t love her, Morgan,” I snapped. “They barely know her. They’ll move on when shit gets boring.”
“They are her scent matches!” Morgan screeched. “Would you have walked away from Joanna?”
“Fuck no.”
Joana was my everything, and losing her killed a part of my soul and left me physically sick and with a deep emotional pain that even now has never gone away.
Nobody warns you what losing your bonded mate does to you. I tried for Scotty, but there were days I wished the universe would do me a solid and just let me go be with Joanna.
But even knowing the outcome, I never would have walked away from her. The eleven years I got to spend with my mate would always be cherished, and the idea of never having them- never having my daughter- hurt even more.
Morgan came along and mended some of those broken pieces, but never tried to replace what I had with Joanna. I loved the damn woman so fucking much for that.
Even if she currently wanted to kill me.
“You don’t need a scent match to be happy,” I said gruffly. “Look at us. We’re happy.”
“Did you stop to think maybe they make her happy?” Morgan asked.
When I didn’t answer, she turned and stared out the passenger window.
“Just drop me off at my house.”
“You’re not coming home?”
“I wouldn’t even be in the fucking car with you if Hunter and Ryder hadn’t already left,” she snapped. “I love you, Richard, but I also kinda hate you right now.”
“Morgan…”
“Figure out your shit and make things right with Scotty and my boys, and maybe I’ll come home.”
I started up the car and pulled onto the road leading back to our neighborhood, and we both sat there in angry silence.
The anger itself didn’t bother me. Anger, I understood.
Anger was simple. Anger was comfortable territory for a man who had spent most of his life yelling at professional athletes.
The problem was that every time I settled comfortably into being furious, another thought kept sneaking in right behind it, suggesting I might have been the one who caused the entire mess in the first place.
I had one goddamn rule. Don’t date the players I coach.
That was it. One boundary between my job and my daughter’s personal life.
It seemed perfectly reasonable, considering I had spent most of my teenage and adult life inside locker rooms before moving behind the bench.
I knew exactly what hockey players were like when they were young, talented, and convinced the universe revolved around them.
Not all of them were idiots, but enough were that letting your daughter date one felt like tempting fate.
When she met Ken, I was furious about the hockey player part, sure, but he seemed like a decent enough kid, and the fact that he was a Beta and not her scent match made me feel better about her marrying him. Barely.
I sucked it up when she announced she was moving to Blackridge because he got traded and expected her to give up her whole life here. She seemed happy.
I even sucked it up when our calls became less frequent until I barely heard from her at all.
And what did I do when my little girl finally came home?
According to Morgan, I went and fucked it all up.
Remembering the look on Scotty’s face when I told her I couldn’t look at her, I had to agree with my fiancée.
But my damn pride got in the fucking way like it always did, and instead of comforting my distraught daughter like a halfway decent father should have, I managed to make her feel even worse.
That had always been one of my more impressive talents as a parent.
Give me a room full of professional athletes, and I could motivate the hell out of them.
Put me in front of my own kid when emotions got involved, and suddenly I had the communication skills of a pissed-off Rhino.
“I’ll apologize to her when I get home,” I muttered as I pulled into Morgan’s driveway.
Morgan turned toward me, and I cursed under my breath when I saw tears shining in her eyes. I’ve seen Morgan angry plenty of times. I’ve even seen her furious. But this quiet, hurt, kind of disappointment sitting there now was somehow worse.
“I told Scotty today how wonderful you are,” she said softly, staring at me like she was trying to figure out who the hell I actually was. “I even thought to myself how fucking lucky I was to have found you after all those years of deadbeats and struggling to make it on my own.”
“They never deserved you.”
“True,” she huffed out a small laugh, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “Ken didn’t deserve Scotty either. I really hope you open your eyes and see that, Richard, because one simple apology isn’t going to fix the damage you caused tonight.”
“I’ll fix this, Morgan,” I promised. “I swear.”
She just shook her head, already reaching for the door handle. “Text me to let me know she’s safe,” she said before climbing out of the car and slamming the door shut hard enough to rattle the windows.
The short drive back to my place was miserable, and when I stepped through my own front door, I knew Scotty wasn’t there.
When I fucked up in the past, Scotty didn’t run away.
She fought back. She yelled. She stomped her foot.
She slammed doors hard enough to rattle the damn walls and occasionally destroyed whatever unfortunate object happened to be closest to her at the time.
That kid had never let me get away with anything in my life, and she definitely never backed down from a fight.
Until now.
“I really fucked this one up,” I muttered to the empty house.
I grabbed a beer from the fridge and dropped into my recliner facing the front door.
Scotty didn’t know this, but I’d spent more nights in that exact chair than I could count while she was growing up.
Any time she went out with friends, any time she went on a date I didn’t approve of—which was most of them—I’d sit right there and tell myself I was just watching TV while actually staring at the door like a paranoid guard dog waiting for my kid to come home.
I did the same thing that night.
Only this time, my little girl didn’t come home.
And when the sun finally started creeping through the blinds, I realized I was still sitting there with an empty beer bottle in my hand and a ball of anger sitting heavy in my chest.
But I wasn’t angry at Scotty anymore.
It was directed squarely at myself for hurting the person I loved most in the world.