“That was shit. Do it again. Keep your elbow tucked in and snap those hips around.”
My chest heaved as I glared at my throwing coach, Billy. In his mouth was the ever-present toothpick, the wooden end bouncing around his gray-whiskered mouth as he chewed frantically.
“I did snap my hips around.” My hands were braced on said hips. My elbow throbbed, and I knew I’d need a hell of a massage after practice.
He lifted an eyebrow when Jack Coleman, one of our wide receivers, smothered a laugh. Jake wore light pads, like me, and we were doing reps on the turf practice field in the training facilities outside of Bellevue. Normally, music pumped through the speakers while we threw the ball over and over and over, making rep after rep until both Jack and I were soaked in sweat and ready to murder each other over each missed catch or wobbly throw. Today, it was just the sounds of the team working.
“Snap them faster,” Billy said, sounding completely bored. That’s when I knew I needed to keep my mouth shut because when he sounded bored, it meant I probably had a shit ton more work to do to make him happy.
I nodded to Jack, who took off on a post route. With light feet, I jogged back a few steps and pulled my arm back, fingers gripping between the white laces. When Jack pivoted to the right, I snapped my arm forward, snapping my hips straight, keeping my other elbow tight into my ribs. The ball was a perfect spiral as it arced toward Jack, landing deftly into his waiting hands.
He whooped as he ran into the unguarded end zone, and I blew out a breath. Billy harrumphed behind me.
“Better.”
It was better. Which meant I’d need to do it a thousand more times for it to feel like second nature. “I still don’t like how my elbow feels when I tuck it in like that.”
“Because you want to stick it out in the air like a damn chicken,” he grumbled. “How the hell do you think you injured it in the first place?”
Couldn’t argue with that. Things that I could get away with in college, along with a hundred other things, didn’t cut it anymore at almost thirty-six. I had to work harder, longer, study more, and pay attention to every single muscle that I trained until it was rote—far more than my younger teammates.
They still partied each week while I was at home braiding my daughter’s hair and watching film during the off-season while she slept. I was up at four to work out at home while they were still passed out, so when they finally got to the training facilities, we could focus on passing routes, doing reps to change the way I threw the ball so it got where it needed to faster and more easily, with less strain on my elbow.
Jack jogged up to us and tossed me the ball, a stupid ass grin on his face. “Better, old man. I didn’t even have to reach for that one.” He held his hands out, arguably the only other hands on the team as valuable as my own. “Dropped right in like a perfect little leather baby.”
I shook my head. “The thought of you with a child is terrifying.”
Billy clapped me on the shoulder and walked away. Jack laughed and ran backward, holding his hands for the ball. I lobbed it easily, and he still missed it. Idiot.
“Faith loves me. Don’t you, turbo?” he called out.
From the side of the practice field where she was sitting up against the wall reading a book, she giggled. All the guys called her by the nickname that I’d given her as soon as she learned how to run, faster than any child had a right to be.
“Faith is a terrible judge of character,” I said dryly.
He winked at my daughter. Faith did love him. He was often over for dinner when my mom cooked or on holidays when he couldn’t make it back home to Michigan. He was a second-year player out of Michigan State, and since I graduated from Michigan, we’d bonded pretty quickly. That, and he was a helluva receiver, which we’d been missing for a couple of years. Going into this season, we were already projected to do better than we’d done in years, simply because of his presence on our team.
He finished toweling off his face while we walked in Faith’s direction. “Why’s she here again?”
“My parents are visiting my sister. Normally, they wait until right after the season ends or a bye week, but Kaylie just had another baby. Once school starts back up for Faith, it’s not such a big deal for my mom to be gone.”
“Why don’t you just like, hire a nanny or something?”
“Because this is cheaper,” I said with a raised eyebrow.
Shortly after Cassandra died, my parents just up and moved to Seattle. Without a second thought, they sold the modest ranch in Brighton that they’d lived in my entire life and graciously allowed me to buy them something equally as modest near Faith and me.
It wasn’t something I asked them, but they knew I’d need the help. Nobody wanted a stranger to raise my daughter, not in our family.
Jack rolled his eyes. “You make twenty-two million dollars a year, Piers.”
“And most of that is sitting in nice investment accounts, making me even more without me needing to lift a finger. You should take notes.”
He stretched his arms over his head. “You sound like Robert.”
We both fell quiet at his mention of our late owner. Jack was right; Robert had been financially brilliant, and the best advice I’d gotten since starting for the Wolves hadn’t been from paid financial advisers but from Robert.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I guess I do.”
“What do you think will happen?” Jack asked, looking as young as his twenty-two years suggested. Sometimes I forgot that he was still a damn kid, barely old enough to legally drink. Not that that stopped him. “They haven’t made any announcements from the front office.”
I shrugged. The whole situation gave me a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because the team being sold to a new owner could have untold and unpredictable results. Teams had moved cities for less—not to mention how it could affect coaching positions, how the money was spent, and who ran the front offices.
“Robert was smart,” I told him. “He spent twenty years building a machine that ran seamlessly without much interference, so maybe Cameron will take over.”
Cameron Mikaelson was our president and CEO and had been for the past ten years. He’d do a good job, and we’d continue exactly as we were now.
“Maybe,” Jack said doubtfully. “Wouldn’t we know that by now, though?”
Around us, teammates continued to do drills on the bright green turf lined with white. Some were jumping, some tackling, some running. Laughter and cursing and deep voices yelling at each other to do better, be faster, be stronger echoed around us. The red and black logo on the metal walls of the practice field looked freshly painted underneath the bright lights.
I loved that logo—the wolf with his head thrown back in a triumphant howl. It represented twelve years of sweat and blood and dedication that I’d redo in a heartbeat. Every injury, every snap, and every win and loss had brought us right here.
And I was their leader. Maybe I wasn’t the coach or the suit in the front office, but on the field, I was the guy who screamed in their faces when they needed it, slapped their helmets when they made an uncatchable catch, stretched for an impossible tackle, got sacked from staying in the pocket too long, and then stood and took the next snap in order to get them the ball.
I was the guy who’d held a shining silver trophy only once before in his career and desperately wanted to do it again. And if I didn’t step up at moments like this, then I wasn’t deserving of the position of team captain.
I laid a heavy hand on Jack’s shoulder. On the field, he was all about running his mouth and crazy touchdown dances that pissed off the safeties who were defending him. But then looking at me, all Midwest country boy, he looked every bit as young as his twenty-two years.
“What matters is what we’re doing right here. We practice and get better, and in three weeks, we’ll start another season and win, no matter who’s in that corner office. It doesn’t affect the work we do or the hours we spend making ourselves better, okay? They can’t make us win or lose. That’s on us.”
Jack nodded and elbowed me in the stomach. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“I’m always right,” I told him. Faith was watching us with a tiny smile on her face. She loved being at the facilities. Loved hanging out with the team, loved hanging out with their kids and wives and girlfriends. It was a trait she’d undoubtedly gotten from Cassandra because I didn’t have much extrovert in me. But Faith, she loved being around people. “Aren’t I, turbo?”
She giggled. “Not always.”
Jack crouched down and leaned in to her conspiratorially. “Okay, sweetie, you’ll have to give me a list of when he’s been wrong, so I can use it against him.”
Faith twisted up her lips and glanced at me. Just like it did every single day, my heart turned over painfully. Maybe I didn’t get out and party, but she was worth every second of it. Then she opened her mouth.
“Well, he wasn’t very nice to our new neighbor.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it. I’d used every single shred of control not to replay that strange interaction on a loop since she’d chucked the entire plate of cupcakes at me and waltzed away like a queen.
Jack pretended to take notes on his phone. “Tell me more.”
“Faith, we need to go.”
“No, you don’t,” Jack said. “Proceed, fair lady.”
Faith leaned in. “She looks like Barbie, and she brought cupcakes over after I waved at her. And Daddy wouldn’t let me come to the door with him, and then he was mean, and he dropped the cupcakes everywhere.”
“Is that so?” Jack drawled. I glared at him, kicking at his shoe, which he swatted away easily. “Barbie?”
My daughter nodded. “But prettier.”
Jack’s stupid face got very serious. “Prettier, you say?”
Faith’s eyes widened dramatically. “Way prettier.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Okay,” I interrupted, leaning down to pick up Faith’s bag. “That’s enough.”
Jack pouted about as much as my six-year-old when she stood next to me. “But her story was just getting good, old man.”
Faith scampered off, and I punched him in the chest.
“Ouch, asshole.” He rubbed at the spot where I’d hit him. “Seriously, though, what happened?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Chick showed up at the door wearing a bathing suit and holding a plate of cupcakes, which she threw at me when I told her she wasn’t very original.”
His face froze, then he shook his head in disgust. “You are such a waste of a professional football player. Do you know how many guys wish for that shit to happen?”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “Just wait. It will happen to you too. The second you decide you don’t want to sleep with random football groupies, they can smell it like a newly opened bottle of free champagne and will start showing up everywhere. Usually with very little clothing on.”
“Promise?” he asked dryly.
“It’s only fun the first few times.” I cut him a look. “Trust me. Once you realize they’d screw anyone in a jersey, it gets a lot less exciting.”
“I just, I just don’t think that’s the case.”
“What, that it gets old?”
“Come on,” he practically whined. “You’re telling me she was at your front door and nothing happened?”
I narrowed my eyes at him with a look filled with so much annoyance that he actually backed off. Which was amazing because Jack had the self-control of a puppy whenever he wasn’t on the field. It’s why he slept with any woman with a pulse (slight exaggeration). Since he regularly hassled me about my lack of sex life, this was exactly what he didn’t need to hear.
He didn’t need to hear that Playboy Barbie had, indeed, showed up at our front door, even more stunning up close than she’d been from a dozen yards away on her deck. Standing there in the shade of my porch, I could see the blue-green of her eyes and the small beauty mark above her perfect, pink lips. It didn’t matter that she’d covered her black bikini. The loose fabric covering that body didn’t hide the fact that she was a ten. Maybe even an eleven.
“Nothing happened.”
Although it was written all over his face that he didn’t believe me, he wouldn’t push me either. He knew better. And for that, I was glad because the last thing I wanted to do was discuss the kind of woman who was now living next to door Faith and me.
There’d been a moment, a fleeting, insane moment, where I wondered if I’d pegged her wrong when she shoved the cupcakes at my chest. Her eyes flashed furiously, but not from rejection. I’d seen that look often over the years since Faith came along.
Rejection had a distinct coldness to it, a disbelief that made features hard and unflinching. That was not what I saw from Playboy Barbie.
But my problem wasn’t what flashed in her eyes because if I was lucky, I’d never have to talk to her again.
