Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Two weeks went by in the blink of an eye, just like I knew they would. Days became a repetition of each other. They were a steady, reliable daily battle that had to be perfectly planned.
If you really wanted to get down to specifics during practice, you could add: make sure I won daily sprints, fart around with Harlow, have Jenny mother me, help out the younger girls, and stare at the mute that stood in the corner every once in a while.
I mean, every once in a while. No one had time to do it all practice, every practice.
I mean, come on.
Then off to burn under the sun, despite wearing shirts and a hat designed to protect against UV rays.
The one shower a night was probably the reason I was still single, but what was the point in showering twice if I knew I was just going to get sweaty from practice and work?
Nothing said sexy like long jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and work boots.
During work, Marc would harass me about Kulti and if I had any gossip to share with him.
Needless to say, he was disappointed I didn’t have anything to complain about.
The man everyone was so curious about hadn’t said a single word to me. Whomp, whomp, whomp.
In between all the ways The King had saturated my life was the annoying conversation I finally had with Eric, my brother, that went along the lines of “blah, blah, blah, that guy is a fucking asshole, blah, blah, blah, don’t listen to a goddamn thing he has to say to you.
” I didn’t even get a chance to tell him that Kulti had forgotten how to speak.
“Blah, blah, blah, no one here can believe he decided to coach for the WPL. Someone told me he got offered an eight-figure contract to coach for one of the Spanish teams.” More blah and a little more wah.
On top of everything else I didn’t get to tell him, he didn’t find out during that biweekly conversation that I’d begun getting passive-aggressive messages from Kulti fans… all because of him and his damn leg.
“…AN IDIOT.” I looked up at Gardner and noted, “He is an idiot. I’m not going to argue that.
” Then I continued reading the email I’d gotten the night before.
“Casillas had it coming to him. I’m tired of Kulti getting blamed when he was doing what he needed to be doing.
You seem like a sensible lady, so I really hope for your sake you don’t start talking a bunch of shit about The King and learn to regret it. ”
Gardner sat back in his chair with a shake of his head. “Jesus, Sal. I’m sorry.” He blinked a few times. “Let’s get someone in here so we can come up with a strategy to get this crap figured out, because I’m really over my head here.”
“I’m sorry too, G. I hate to bother you with this crap, but I don’t know if there’s something I should do or if I should keep ignoring the messages.”
He waved me off with one hand, already dialing numbers on the conference phone on his desk.
“Don’t think twice about it. Sheena? Can you come down to my office?
I have Sal Casillas in here. She’s been getting some strange emails regarding Kulti, and I’m not sure what the best route to take is.
” A second later, the phone was back on its cradle, and he raised both eyebrows up to his hairline. “She’ll be over in a second.”
I nodded and smiled at him. “All right.”
Gardner gave me the gentle smile that always reassured me. “How’s your family doing?”
“Good. How’s your fam—” and I’d forgotten I’d heard through the grapevine that his divorce had been finalized in January, “—kiddo?”
“Great. Twelve going on eighteen,” he answered with an easy smile. “You? Planning on taking some time off to have some of your own?”
I stared at him. Then I stared at him a little longer.
The fuck?
“I’m messing with you, Sal,” Gardner laughed dryly.
“I really thought you were serious,” I said slowly.
Jeez. Not that you need a boyfriend to have a baby, but…
. My eyebrows went up. “Yeah. No.” I hadn’t had a date in…
a year? And I hadn’t had sex in…? A long, long time.
Not that I didn’t want to—because I did—but because I had a vibrator, and a vibrator never left you hanging.
Or had a wife or a girlfriend you didn’t know about. Anyway.
He snorted. “I’m just messing around. You’re still young.”
I thought about the other girls on the team and winced a little.
Not that long ago, I was one of the new girls, the really young ones that had just finished college and been drafted.
Now I was one of the girls that the other ones looked up to.
I rolled my ankle and let the stiffness in it answer back, reminding me how precarious its health was.
Someone knocked on the door, and Gardner welcomed them in.
Sheena peeked her head through the cracked door. “Hi.” The door swung open, and a second later, I spotted the head that appeared above hers.
My stupid, stupid, stupid traitorous heart remembered what it was like to be thirteen.
My brain, apparently the only logical organ in my body, said to all its brothers and sisters: Get your shit together and calm down.
I put my big girl socks on, took a deep steadying breath, and managed to smile at the two people who made their way into the office, right toward the chairs next to mine.
I swallowed and said, “Hi, Sheena. Hi, Coach Kulti.” All right, that came out a lot dumber than I would have liked.
My cheeks decided right then that they were going to get hot, real hot.
Damn it. Get it together, Sal!
“Hello, Sal,” Sheena greeted me as she took the seat right next to mine, glancing over her shoulder for a moment to say, “I asked Mr. Kulti—”
Mr. Kulti? Really?
“—to come along.”
I blinked at the same time my bones froze.
The short-haired man, who resembled someone in a branch of the military, shook his head, still silent.
My knees felt stiff and traitorous as I planted my feet solidly on the ground and got to my feet, thrusting a surprisingly steady hand toward the man that who shaken hands with—
Poop. Poop, poop, poop.
Why should I care who he’d shaken hands with? I didn’t.
With a slow, quiet breath through my nose, I tipped my chin up higher, like that would help me keep my dignity intact more. And like that wasn’t enough, I blurted out another “Hi, I’m Sal Casillas, one of the forwards…?”
Was it time to shut up? Yes. Definitely.
A large, warm, masculine hand gripped mine almost immediately, and I filled my lungs with another steadying breath, smiling at the man standing on the other side of Sheena.
It was a normal handshake; he wasn’t limp-fishing it, but he wasn’t trying to break my hand either.
He was just a man. He was just a normal man with interesting eyes and a serious face.
“Can you tell me a little about the emails you’ve been getting?”
Drawing back the hand that had just touched Reiner Kulti, I settled my gaze on the woman next to me and nodded.
I summarized the messages I’d been getting.
Insults aimed at my brother, warnings that I should do everything I could to learn as much as possible from the German, and a bunch of other crap that stressed me out a whole lot.
Sheena’s cheek hitched up high, and it was easy to see on her clear dark skin that she was thinking. Then she nodded sharply. “Okay. I’ve got it—”
“Your brother was that imbecile?” Kulti interrupted.
“That imbecile” had been the fourteen-year-old to my seven-year-old who held my hand when I crossed the street, let me tag along when he’d go play soccer with his friends even though he grumbled, kicked the ball back and forth with me in the backyard before he would go out, and he was the same person who would be on his feet in the stands, yelling at the top of his lungs, when I had a bullshit call made against me.
I loved my brother. Was he an arrogant jackass who thought he was gifted with a talent straight from heaven? Yes.
But he was the one who had held on to my shoulder when I’d made a horrible play in my younger years that cost my team a championship and told me that it wasn’t the end of the world.
While I looked at Kulti as the type of badass I wanted to aspire to be one day, Eric had been the one to assure me I could be better.
When Kulti had broken my brother’s leg, I made my choice. I would choose my brother every single time.
Except as my lips formed the shape it took to enunciate the letter “b” for bitch, I remembered.
I remembered what Gardner had warned us of two weeks ago during our first Pipers meeting. If I hear any of you call him any derogatory nicknames, you’re out of here. Fuck me.
Calling him a bitch wasn’t better, was it? A bag of dicks wasn’t much better either.
My lips sealed themselves together, and in response my nostrils flared.
“He isn’t an imbecile, but Eric is my brother,” I answered him carefully. My eye was starting to twitch.
From ten feet away, someone’s green-brown eyes narrowed. “What else would you call someone—”
My eye went full speed twitching, and before I thought twice, I cut him off. “That purposely swept an opponent’s leg harder than necessary?” I shrugged. “You tell me.”
My throat clogged instantly, and the twitching in my eyelid got worse once the words were out. I’d done it. Jesus Christ. I’d insinuated he was an imbecile, but hinting at it wasn’t the same thing as outright calling him one, right?