5. Victoria
VICTORIA
With every tear dropping from my daughter’s eye, my anger mounted.
Now you have to understand, my daughter doesn’t cry.
She was a crier as a child, but when she hit puberty?
That strong-willed streak ripped through the house, and it didn’t once stop.
The last time I heard my daughter crying, it was in the shower over a failed test that required her to retake a course over the summer her freshman year of college.
Freshman year.
When she was eighteen years old.
And now, as I stood there in my office holding my adult daughter together while she tried to hold herself together, I locked my eyes with Coach.
“How much of the article is truth?” I asked.
Brynn gasped as she whipped her head up from my chest. “What are you talking about, Mom?”
I tightened my grip around my daughter when Coach tried reaching for her hand. I stared him down until he put that fucking hand right back at his side where it fucking belonged.
“Answer me,” I glowered. “Is my daughter just another type to you?”
“Mom!” Brynn exclaimed.
She didn’t pull away from me, though. If she was really angry, if she was really that upset with me, she’d have pulled away.
After all, she was my daughter. I knew her like the back of my hand.
Maybe I hadn’t always been the best mother.
Maybe I let my emotions get the better of me sometimes.
Maybe I let my mind run away from me on my bad days. But I knew Brynn.
And if she wanted to really pull away, she would have.
Which meant she didn’t feel safe with the man standing in my fucking office.
The thought boiled my blood.
“I won’t ask again,” I hissed.
That’s when Coach cleared his throat. “Miss Caldwell, she’s always been more than that.”
I just shook my head and tucked my daughter’s face back against my chest. And when her head fell to my chest, it took everything I had not to lash out at the pathetic excuse for a man sitting in front of me.
This was exactly what I was afraid of. I knew all too well how happiness could be ripped away at a second’s notice.
And feeling my daughter’s body heave against mine with her crying stirred an anger within me I hadn’t felt since…
…Well, since I got that dreaded phone call from the police, that’s what.
“Mom, please,” Brynn whispered.
Her whispered voice ripped me out of my trance.
Coach paced my office, his phone gripped white-knuckled in one hand, the screen still lit up with that goddamn headline every time it caught the light.
I stroked my fingers through my daughter’s wild, curly hair.
Such a stark opposite to mine. She inherited her father’s hair, that much was for certain.
I loved running my hands through her hair.
It reminded me of better times.
“Miss Caldwell, you have to under—”
I interrupted Coach. I didn’t want to hear his voice unless it was productive. “What’s the plan?”
Coach blinked at me. “The plan?”
I pinned him with a look. “Don’t you dare play dumb now, after you’ve dragged my daughter into—”
Brynn sighed as she lifted her head again. “Mom, this isn’t his—”
“You’re crying in my arms. I blame him,” I said plainly.
My daughter pulled away from my grasp and gazed up at me with those beautiful brown eyes she had also inherited from her father.
My God, I missed that man.
“Mom, he didn’t—”
“Walk me through exactly what happened before you ended up in my office,” I said curtly.
I watched my daughter gravitate back to that man’s side, and I had to resist the urge to pull her back to me like she was a fucking six-year-old.
“Now,” I demanded.
Coach drew in a deep breath. “I was on the ice. Bry came down from the stands with her phone in her hand and the article already pulled up. I didn’t even know something had happened until I saw her face.”
I looked over at my daughter, waiting for her input. My eyes dropped to the way she slipped her hand into Coach’s, and I ground my teeth together just to keep myself rooted.
I wanted to strangle the fucking man for making my daughter vulnerable to his bullshit lifestyle.
“And then you…?” I asked.
“Came right here,” Coach said.
I nodded as I looked over at my daughter. “Did you guys ever talk about a contingency plan for when this happened?”
And when the two of them slowly looked at one another, I was plotting Coach’s death.
“You mean to tell me neither of you saw this scenario coming from a mile away?” I asked as I tilted my head.
Coach apparently didn’t like that. “You want to go ahead and spit out what you’re accusing me of?”
“Okay, guys,” Brynn said, “why don’t we just—”
I took a step toward the man. “I relinquished my position over the two of you dating, and this is how you repay me? By not even sitting down and running her through the risks of dating you?”
The man puffed out his chest, attempting to tower over me. But he was about to find out that I didn’t play that game. His muscles and his height and that daring stare of his didn’t intimidate me one bit. I perfected the art of intimidation.
And this man had stepped into my domain.
With my daughter crying on his arm.
“Mom, please,” my daughter whispered.
Two words that disarmed me at the drop of a hat. I drew in a deep, sobering breath before I leveled Coach with a look.
“I want you to tell me what your solution is to this problem before I tell you exactly how stupid it is and tell you how we’re really going to handle it,” I said flatly.
Coach blinked. “Good to see you can use your words.”
Fury lit me up behind the eyes. “And I think, for once, you should use your words instead of sticking your tongue down my daughter’s fucking throat.”
“All right, all right, everybody!” Rhett said cheerfully as he slammed my office door open and clapped his hands, rubbing them together like a hungry teenage boy staring at a buffet of his favorite foods.
“Who’s up for lunch, yeah? I could order us something.
We could go out. We could head out of the city to this little place Coach and Bry go to sometimes where—”
Coach glared at him. “I thought I told you to hit the locker room.”
Rhett just grinned that boyish grin of his. “I did. Gave it the best right hook I could.”
As he walked toward me, standing about halfway between me and Coach, the sound of Bry’ giggling was the only thing that disarmed me.
Gone were those tears in an instant, replaced by a soft, half-hearted smile at just a few words from that boy’s lips.
But when I watched him wrap an arm protectively around my daughter’s shoulders, I felt the scowl on my face return.
Too late for that.
In my eyes, he already proved he couldn’t protect her.
That picture of her bare back up against the floor-to-ceiling glass of his penthouse, caught by some fucking drone, was proof positive of that.
But with my daughter looking at me as if I had all the answers, I forced my brain to jumpstart, running through half-cocked scenarios of what we could do in the meantime until the heat died down.
Rhett, however, was the first to pipe up. “What you guys need is a routine that gets you away from the press.”
I scoffed as I turned my attention to him, watching him as he walked up to me.
“You guys have an undefeated season and you’re about to go up against the Detroit Pirates.
Your greatest rivals. The media isn’t dying down anytime soon.
” I shot a look at Coach. “Which is what he should’ve known if he used his brain to think instead of his—”
“Mom!” Bry exclaimed.
Rhett held up his hands in between the three of us before he looked over at me. “Then what you’re going to need is a place to hide out until this is all over. You know, until the media has to cycle to something else.”
“Might take a while,” Coach grumbled.
I pointed at him. “One more word out of you and I’m liable to make you disappear.”
“Mom! Stop it!” my daughter exclaimed.
I turned my heated stare to her. “He made you cry. He didn’t protect you, he was flagrant with your body on a game where he should’ve known the press was going to be in the city, and now you’re in my office, in my arms, crying.
You don’t get to take my anger away from me because someone made my daughter cry. ”
That silenced the room. But not for long.
Rhett really did have a set on him sometimes.
“Well, now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems,” he said as he clapped his hands together, “if there isn’t an option to hide out or run an alternative schedule in the meantime, then the only other option is being escorted everywhere you go so that, if the media does come down onto your heads, you’ve got help getting out of the situation. All three of you.”
I crooked an eyebrow at Rhett. “Even if we were to orchestrate something like that, they could still watch us anywhere. Brynn, working at the bar. Me, going to and from the house. Locking ourselves away isn’t the answer.”
Rhett shrugged. “I never told you to lock yourself away. I’m simply handing out options.”
Brynn spoke out. “How long were you standing out in the hallway listening?”
“Long enough,” is all Rhett said as he stared down at me like I was the only one in the room.
“I have a property,” I said before Coach could open his mouth. “The Willow Estate. On the outskirts of the city. It has a gate and enough space for all of us. The press won’t be able to get near it.”
I glared at Coach. “Unlike your penthouse, which someone flew a drone up to so they could photograph my daughter’s naked back through the glass.”
Brynn spoke up for him, and that’s how I knew she finally returned to the conversation. “We can get blackout curtains for all of the windows.”
“And I’ve already reported the invasion of privacy to the authorities. The sheriff said—”
I just held my hand up before I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Fucking hell, at least they had done something in between figuring out this fucking disaster and barging into my office.
I didn’t like any of this. It turned my stomach in ways that made me want to break fucking necks.
My daughter, out there and vulnerable to the world, with a man on her arm that didn’t give two shits about what it did to her so long as he got to possess her.
I knew I hated Coach for a reason.
I parted my lips to tell him to go kick fucking rocks before my daughter’s cell phone dinged. I muttered beneath my breath as she pulled her cell out of her back pocket. But the instant her eyes watered after she unlocked her phone made me stride across the office.
I plucked the damn thing from her hand.
She didn’t even fight me as I tilted it toward the light in my office to get a better look. Her best friend, Dani, sent her a text message.
More pictures of her and Coach.
More articles written without their permission.
Both of them, hand in hand, leaving the movie theater. Both of them, embraced, kissing on the front fucking lawn of my goddamn house. Both of them, smiling up at one another while eating in some restaurant I didn’t recognize. Probably not one in the city.
Which meant these fuckers chased them from city to city.
It was the muffled sobs of my daughter that pulled my attention up from the text message on her phone, though. And when Coach pulled her against his chest and I saw her shoulders shake, I ground my teeth together before I settled on what we were going to do.
It didn’t matter that I hated the fucking man.
All that mattered was that my daughter was protected.
“Give me the day to pack mine and Brynn’s things. Rhett and I will meet you at the Willow Estate before dinner and we’ll hash out what we do next,” I said.
Coach just nodded as he draped his arms around my daughter. “We’ll head over and get settled in.”
Amidst all of the drama, however, I barely registered the fact that I didn’t even stop to inform Rhett that he’d have to hole up with us. If nothing else, to make sure that my daughter always had an escort somewhere.
Nor did I catch the fact that not once did he protest.