18. Colton
COLTON
“Come on, Moose! You can do better than that!” Rhett exclaimed as I made my way toward the weight room.
I was already six minutes late to my own fucking practice, but that didn’t mean each late minute was worth it.
I still felt the softness of her forehead etched against my mouth as I silently inched into the weight room.
Rhett, our center and defunct team captain, clapped his hands as the goalie, Moose, tried to shove a ridiculous amount of weight up from a squat.
“The hell them legs for, Moose!?” Jett, our chirper and sniper, exclaimed as he clapped his hands. “Let’s get them thighs used to something other than clinging onto your next target!”
Moose shoved the impossible weight into the air and it reminded me of the hundreds of pounds I used to squat and deadlift back during my heydays.
So many people thought that being on the ice meant speed and agility.
But musculature and having strength was just as important, if not more important, than having that speed and agility.
Anyone could learn how to skate on the ice and stick a puck in a net.
Not a lot of people could learn how to take fully grown men out of the way in the process.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Jett said as he clocked me at the door. “Look who finally decided to show up for practice!”
Rhett grinned. “Late night, Coach?”
I pinned them with a look as I strode into the gym. “Win a game, and then we can talk.”
The team erupted into laughter, but I quickly settled them down with a high-pitched whistle. “Listen up!” I yelled over their heads as my voice echoed across the gym. “Today is for max-outs!”
“Hell yeah!”
“Fuck, yes!”
“Show-off day!”
I grinned. “And the two lowest scores on each exercise will drill those exercises on the ice until our first game!”
The groans that ricocheted through the gym greased my gears.
I could tell by the slightly flabby stomachs and the stench of a gym only used for a few minutes that they hadn’t had a coach ride them in a while.
No wonder they hadn’t won a playoff series in three years.
No one drilled them. Working on their strength. No one brought them together as a team.
Time to show the Titans exactly what they threw away.
“All right!” I said as I clapped my hands together. “Moose. That your max squat?”
He nodded as he wiped at the beads of sweat on his brow. “Yes, Coach.”
“Good,” I said with a nod as I walked over and plucked a clipboard hanging on the wall next to the gym door. I found Moose’s name and scribbled ‘425 lbs.’ down next to his name.
I lifted my eyes and looked at Jett. “Twiggy, you’re next.”
The boys howled as the string bean of a boy tossed me the cockiest grin I’d ever seen. He’d be a problem if I couldn’t get him to filter that energy of his into something productive. I watched as Moose and him worked together, racking and re-racking the weights.
Jett slipped himself beneath the 345 lb. bar and lifted it with way too much ease.
“Nope,” I said with a shake of my head. “Set it down. Stone,” I said, pointing to Rhett, “put five more pounds on either side.”
“On it, Coach,” he said.
Jett grinned at me. “Think I’ve got better?”
I just tossed him a look. “A man that doesn’t know his limits is a man unprepared.”
Five more pounds on either side, and he still threw up that bar like it was nothing. Guess twiggy had a bit more in him, after all.
“Five more,” I stated as I kept scribbling on my clipboard.
Until finally, Jett had to throw his whole body behind 375 lbs.
I watched his legs work. I watched his arms white knuckle the bar.
His determination as he locked his eyes with the wall in front of him seemed immobile, at best. He pressed the weight all the way up without locking his knees, and I put a star by his name.
He didn’t know his limits, but he had great form.
The guys could learn a thing or two from his form.
“All right,” I said as Jett placed the bar back down and hobbled away from it. “Stone, you’re next.”
Rhett beamed with pride and raked just shy of 400 lbs.
onto the bar. And one by one, me and the team circled through the weights until I had their maximum on everything.
Deadlifts. Bench presses. Squats. HIIT cycles.
The works. I drilled them to their max until the gym smelled like nothing but sweat and regret.
I tucked the clipboard underneath my arm and jammed the pen behind my ear.
“All right, boys. Hit the showers. Tomorrow is morning sprints, then we do an evening stint in the gym where we focus on core and stretching. Rest, eat well, and drink plenty of fluids. You pass out on me tomorrow, you don’t start. ”
The boys were silent as I scanned the gym, huffing and puffing and chugging down water. I cleared my voice and made it boom.
“I saaaaaaaid, you pass out on me tomorrow, you little fuckers, you don’t start!”
“Yes, Coach!” the boys resounded heavily in unison.
I nodded. “Good. Now, go shower. You all stink.”
Their chuckles followed me out of the gym, and I made sure to get down the hallway before I cracked a grin myself and shook my head. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was damn near noon.
“Shit,” I hissed as I marched down the hallway toward Miss Caldwell’s office.
It didn’t shock me to find the door already cracked.
“Miss Caldwell?” I asked as I knocked softly on the door.
“Please, it’s Victoria,” she said from somewhere inside. “Come on in. I just got here.”
I eased the door open and found her hanging up her purse and her jacket on a coat rack off in the corner. “What can I do for you, Coach Colton?”
I briefly wondered if I needed to ask her permission to take Brynn out for lunch tomorrow.
Hell, I wondered if I should tell her at all.
Memories bombarded me. Memories that felt like they were from a lifetime ago.
That’s what I should’ve done with Lydia, the donor’s daughter.
I should’ve talked with her father about pursuing her.
Even if it was just for sex. Hell, her father didn’t have to know that.
All he needed to know was that we were going to dinner.
I sure as shit didn’t want a repeat of the mistakes I’d made. But Brynn was a grown-ass adult. So she could deal with her own grown-ass mother.
That’s what you told yourself last time.
I shoved the plagued thought aside and cleared my throat. “Now that the meet schedule for the season has been confirmed by the last of the teams, I hoped to speak with you about the practice schedule you originally posted.”
She waved her hand in the air. “Your schedule is yours. I put that together well before I ever made you that offer. Throw it out if that’s what you wish.”
Well, that was easy. “If you’re sure.”
She snickered as she made her way to her desk, those expensive heels of hers clicking against the floor.
I drew in a short breath to dismiss myself before I heard Victoria’s office door swing open behind me.
“Heeeey, Miss C,” Rhett said.
Victoria sat down at her desk and didn’t even look up. “Morning, Rhett.”
I peered over my shoulder with a quizzical stare, but he just folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe.
Then he started with a bunch of questions. “You had your coffee?”
“Yes, Rhett.”
“Breakfast?”
“Yes, Rhett.”
“Took a shower?”
She sighed heavily and closed her eyes. “Yes, Rhett. I bathed. I ate. I drank.”
He chuckled. “Good.”
Then, she finally looked over at him. “Bry texted you, didn’t she?”
I quirked a curious eyebrow as Rhett simply shrugged. “She just wanted me to check in on you.”
“Is… everything all right?”
Victoria shot me a look before turning her attention back to her work. “Just my daughter being overprotective. You can go now, Rhett.”
“Only if you promise to eat lunch after I leave, Miss C.”
Another heavy sigh from her. “It was a late breakfast, I won’t be hungry until dinner. If my daughter has an issue with that, she can come talk with me.”
I wondered why in the hell a bunch of kids checked up on this grown ass woman. Was something wrong with Victoria?
Rhett held up his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, I’m just the messenger.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you are,” Victoria muttered.
It made Rhett chuckle. “Have a good rest of your day, Miss C.”
“You, too,” she said to no one in particular as Rhett clapped my upper arm before heading back down the hallway.
I stood there until Rhett’s footsteps could no longer be heard.
“You sure you’re—?”
“Look,” she said with a curt voice as she slapped her pen down against her desk, “I get it. My daughter is on a crusade to get me out of my routine rut. But to be quite honest, Coach, you’re not my type.”
I blinked. “That’s fine. You’re not my type, either.”
She sighed before she picked her pen back up. “Good, because my type died fifteen years ago. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work to get done before your center and my daughter harass me about another meal. So if you’ll excuse me.”
And when the icy cold demeanor of her attitude settled heavily in the space around us, I just nodded my head before slipping silently out of her office.
Well, at least we were all on the same page with that one.
I was halfway down the hallway when I turned the corner and nearly walked straight into her.
Brynn pulled up short, her iced coffee tilting in her hand, her eyes going wide behind those glasses.
She had her laptop tucked under her other arm and her hair half up, half down, and she was wearing that bar shirt again, the one with the faded logo across the chest that fit her in a way that I was choosing not to think about.
“Sorry,” she said, steadying the coffee. “Didn’t see you.”
I didn’t move out of the way. I should have. The hallway was empty and there was plenty of room and I had approximately twelve good reasons to step aside and keep walking.
I didn’t move.
She looked up at me. Tilted her head the way she did when she was figuring something out. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. My voice came out lower than I intended.
She studied me for another second. Then something shifted in her expression, not quite a smile, something quieter than that, like she’d just arrived at an answer she wasn’t sure she was ready for. She moved to step around me.
I caught her elbow.
She stopped. Looked down at my hand on her arm. Looked back up at me.
I walked her back two steps until her shoulders met the wall. Not hard. Deliberate. She let me do it, which was its own kind of answer. Her coffee hand came up between us and I took it from her, set it on the floor against the baseboard without looking away from her face, and straightened back up.
“Colton,” she said. Barely a sound.
“I know,” I said.
I braced one hand against the wall beside her head and lowered my face toward hers.
Slow. Giving her every chance to say no.
She didn’t say no. She tipped her chin up instead, those brown eyes steady on mine from behind those glasses, and when my mouth finally touched hers it was soft at first, careful, the way I’d been telling myself all morning I wasn’t going to do this.
Then she made a small sound against my mouth and my hand moved from the wall to her jaw and soft turned into something else entirely.
She tasted like that goddamn iced coffee and something underneath it that was just her, and I felt her free hand curl into the front of my shirt like she needed something to hold onto.
I let her have it. I tilted her head back and took my time with her mouth the way I had been wanting to since the first night she stood behind that bar and looked at me like I was a problem she hadn’t decided whether to solve yet.
It was a bad idea. A terrible, specific, completely avoidable bad idea that I was making worse by the second.
I pulled back.
Not far. Just enough. She was flushed, her glasses slightly skewed, her hand still twisted in my shirt. She blinked up at me like she was coming back from somewhere, and I watched her get there, watched the moment her brain came back online and her eyes focused.
“Noon today,” I said. My voice had gone rough and I didn’t do anything about it. “Don’t be late.”
She stared at me. “That’s it?”
“For now.” I picked her coffee up off the floor and pressed it back into her hand. Straightened her glasses with two fingers. “Go do your work, Brynn.”
She made a sound that wasn’t quite a word. Then she pushed off the wall, adjusted her laptop under her arm, and walked down the hallway without looking back.
I watched her go. Stayed right where I was until she turned the corner and disappeared.
Now to make sure Victoria didn’t flip her lid when she found out I had a thing for her daughter.