Chapter 14 #2
One of my legs was braced behind me, the other one out in front so I could tag the runner out, if the first baseman didn’t get him first. I should have recognized the look on the guy’s face—pure determination.
I was just a girl in front of someone insistent on not getting out.
Muscles contracted, my hand was out to catch the ball in case first baseman decided at the last minute to throw it.
But he didn’t.
A second later, the runner was on me, one foot stomping down on mine, in an attempt to make it to second. What did I do? I got the hell out of the way, even though it was too late to avoid the heavy-ass shoe on my instep.
Holy freaking shitttt.
A giant puff of air escaped my mouth, and pain flared up through my foot and shin. It was one thing to get stepped on and another to have an elephant-sized foot try and trample me.
“Out! He’s out!”
“Are you blind? He made it!”
Hands gripping my foot over my shoe, I looked up at the sky and breathed through the pain while I tried to convince myself I was fine. Some of the players were arguing about the call, but I stood off to the side cradling my freaking foot.
“Are you going to live?”
Breathing out through my nose, I looked just slightly down to see Kulti standing in front of me, his thinner bottom lip pulled into a straight line. “I’ll be fine.” Yeah, that didn’t sound convincing at all.
From the shape his eyebrows took, he didn’t believe it either. “Put your foot down.”
“In a minute.”
“Put it down.”
I should and I knew it, but I didn’t want to. “Now, Sal.”
I gave him a look that said just how much I disliked it when he got bossy and set my foot down anyway, gingerly, gingerly, gingerly—
I groaned, grunted, and whimpered just a little at the same time.
“You’re done,” he ordered.
Yeah, we were. I needed to ice myself because there was no way in hell it wasn’t going to bruise spectacularly. Marc and Simon were two of the people arguing about the outcome of the game, those assholes not giving a crap that I’d gotten practically crushed.
“Losers,” I called out. Sure enough, they both looked up.
Ha. “I’m leaving now. I’ll call you later.”
They nodded, with only Marc adding, “Are you all right?” I gave him a thumbs-up.
With a quick wave at the people I did know, the ones who hadn’t tried to hurt me, I walk-slash-limped around the outskirts of the field, following two steps behind a slow-paced Kulti.
He didn’t stop or turn around to make sure I was following after him; he just kept heading in the direction of the lot.
As we got closer, he jogged toward his car.
In the time it took me to walk the rest of the way toward the bathrooms where I’d found him, he had already opened the trunk of the Audi and set a small blue cooler on the lip of the bumper.
He pulled two small white things out and closed it again.
With a large hand, he pointed at the bench right off the curb. “Sit there.”
I squinted to see what he was holding as I sat dutifully. “Shoe off.” He continued to order me around, and I didn’t fight him on it, realizing he had two ice packs stacked together in one hand.
Toeing my tennis shoe off, I pulled my foot up to rest the heel on the edge of the bench.
Kulti handed me one of the packs before sitting down next to me.
He didn’t have to tell me what to do; I rolled my sock down until it just covered my toes and placed the still very cold cloth material on what was already inflamed pink skin.
Kulti folded his body so that his leg was partially propped up on the corner of the seat and placed the other pack on top of his knee.
We were sitting on a bench nearly side by side, with ice packs.
I burst out laughing.
I laughed so hard my stomach started cramping and my eyes got all watery and overwhelmed, and I couldn’t stop.
The German raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Look at us.” I laughed even harder, unable to catch my breath. “We’re sitting here icing ourselves. Jesus Christ.”
A small smile cracked his normally stern face as he looked at my foot and then at himself.
“And why do you have ice packs in your car anyway?”
His small smile eroded into an even larger one, which eventually cracked into a low chuckle that lightened his face in a way that had me admiring just how handsome something so insignificant could make him.
“If I want to walk tomorrow, I need to ice immediately.” There was a brief pause before he added, “If you tell anyone—”
“You’ll ruin me, I know. I got it.” I grinned. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you, so I guess we’re even, right?”
His expression fell into a flat one. “I won’t say a word.” I lifted a shoulder.
He must have thought I didn’t believe him because he kept going. “If you get kicked off the team, I wouldn’t have anyone else to play with.”
My little heart wrapped up that comment in cling wrap to preserve it forever. “What about Gardner?” I offered.
He shot me a look. “Once was enough.”
What? “You played with him?”
“Two days after you.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad.” Gardner had played college soccer.
Kulti sat back against the old wooden bench. “Have you ever played with people who were significantly worse than you?”
That was an incredibly rude way of putting it, but I nodded. “Picture it, and then imagine that they thought they were a much better player,” he explained. Ooh. I grimaced, and he nodded.
I fought the question that had been living in my brain since that first time he asked me to play and then decided, why not? What if I never got this chance again? “I wondered why you asked me and not anyone else.”
He sat back against the bench and adjusted the ice pack on his knee, his attention steady and his words careful. “You play how I like. You don’t hold back.”
“Didn’t you tell me yesterday that I think too much when I have the ball?”
His biceps flexed against the back of the seat. “Yes. You play better when you follow your instincts and not your head.”
Was that a compliment? I thought it might be.
“What about Grace, though? I thought you two were friends.”
Reiner Kulti gave me a look. Yes, I was nosey, and no, I wouldn’t apologize for it. “Her husband and I have known each other for a long time. He was a trainer in Chicago when I played there. She and I aren’t on speaking terms anymore. Even if we were, I would not have asked.”
Because of what he’d said to the girls that day? Maybe that question was pushing it, so I dropped it and just nodded in understanding.
The part-time model, who once upon a time appeared half naked in underwear ads, blinked his long eyelashes at me.
“I owe you my gratitude. I never thanked you for what you did that night at the hotel. Most people would have handled the situation differently. I”—his eyes moved from one of mine to the other, gauging me—“appreciate it. Greatly.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, though now that we were on the topic, I wanted to ask why he’d gotten drunk in such a public place.
It was probably a little too soon, so I kept my mouth shut.
Wiggling my toes, I sat back against the bench, his hand brushing my shoulder, and sighed.
“And thank you for the ice pack. Hopefully tomorrow I can walk.”
His index finger nudged me. “You will.”
What he wasn’t saying was that I had to. How the hell else would I explain that I’d taken a hoof to the instep? Accidentally? That definitely wasn’t believable.
That didn’t mean I wanted to have him telling me what to do all the time. “Are you going to boss me around even when we’re not on the field?”
He didn’t even blink before he answered. “Yes.”