Or so I thought.
I’d just gotten comfortable underneath the covers when my phone rang.
“Hello?” I said, answering when I saw Nate’s initials pop up on the screen. The text messages had been ongoing since I left for camp, but this was the first time he’d called me.
“Coach Brooks,” he replied, good-natured as usual, even though the line was staticky. “I see you’re making quite the splash at training camp. You are a very popular search term on Google right now. How are things going?”
I flipped onto my back, with the phone pressed to my ear. “Things are going well. The team is looking great. Well… the offense is looking great.”
Nate chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what I hear too. Cole isn’t very happy with the defense, but… we’re a team in transition, you know. We have to be willing to accept the growing pains that come along with it.”
“Definitely. I know one thing though…”
“What’s that?”
“Our receivers? I’m expecting record stats out of them.”
I could practically feel Nate’s eyebrows go up. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. None of them are without their flaws, but you damn sure aren’t going to see last year’s mistakes. I have Johnson spending thirty minutes a day doing basketball drills, working on his vertical. Grant… if he listens, I can keep him from looking goofy out there, running pell-mell at everything. Amare… I can’t say enough about that kid’s potential. You know he hasn’t talked back, not once, this whole camp? You give him an instruction, he’s listening, absorbing and then just… delivering.” After I said that, I pushed out a sigh that Nate immediately latched on to.
“Wait, why don’t you sound that happy about that?”
“It’s not that I’m not happy about it, it’s just… unlike him. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t miss the attitude, but he’s been a little lifeless out here. You may want to drop him a line.”
“Thank you, I will. And the other receivers?”
I shrugged. “A mixed bag. But we definitely have what we need for a strong squad.”
“Excellent. Excellent. This is the kind of report I like to hear. And now… what about their coach? How is she?”
“Great,” I said immediately. It wasn’t even fully off my lips before I registered how unconvincing it sounded. Too quickly delivered, too falsely excited.
And of course – of fucking course – Nate was already on top of it.
“What happened? Don’t lie.”
I frowned. “Wow, you say that as if I’m just known for lying!”
“You’re right, let me rephrase – don’t omit.”
Shit.
He kinda had me there.
“Why don’t you tell me what you already know? Because I’m sure you know something.”
He chuckled. “I know plenty, about plenty, but you my dear, can be quite the mystery. But… I know you ran a route today – full speed, full power, impressive as usual. And you’re talking to me right now, so I know it didn’t kill you. You want to fill in what happened in-between?”
“Not particularly. You have all the pertinent information.”
“I don’t have how you feel. You’ve been fearful of even a short jog, and yet you managed a full sprint… are you happy? Proud of yourself? Are you less paranoid about getting your heart rate up now?”
I scoffed. “Yeah, I’m going to go with none of the above. And also um… I’m tired, and it’s late, so…”
For several seconds, he said nothing, just let the staticky line fill with his disappointment.
“Okay Sloane. Good night.”
“Good night.”
I snatched the phone away from my ear, hurriedly pushing the button to end the call before I let it drop onto the floor beside me. That hadn’t exactly been the smoothest way to get off the phone, but it had been quick. Either way, mission accomplished.
How the hell was I supposed to explain that my fear of my rising heart rate had increased instead of decreased now? At least before I hadn’t known how it felt – now I just never wanted it to happen again. Who the hell wanted to stop, assess, and self-diagnose every time their heart rate lifted?
Hell no I wasn’t proud of myself – doing it had been stupid, and had everything to do with ego. Not teaching. If it had been about teaching, I could’ve asked Amare to run the route again, since he’d already executed it perfectly.
But noooo.
I just had to show Terrence Grant that football wasn’t just some shit I taught and talked about it. I’d done this.
And I could have killed my dumb ass, trying to prove a point.
So no.
I wasn’t happy.
I was scared, and angry at myself, and confused as to what my life could or would look like moving forward from this. I’d been so confident in my ability to not just do this job, but to excel at it. Now that my body had betrayed me, so deeply… I wasn’t so sure anymore.
Which was a really, really shitty feeling.
But instead of dwelling on it, I went to sleep.
Tomorrow was a fresh day.
Ten
“Coach Brooks?”
I looked up from the huge TV screen where the players were, as some type of soldiers were destroying a colony of fearsome-looking aliens. It was one of the last few days of camp, and instead of being holed up in the faculty dorm, all the coaches were mingling with the players. Talking shit, playing cards, pool, on the video game. In theory, it was a good team-building activity – having fun together that had nothing to do with football.
That did not change the fact that I would’ve rather been in my bed.
But that wasn’t something to take out on the nervous-looking intern who’d approached me, probably choosing me because I was the only other woman in this room.
“Yes, how can I help you?” I asked, having to yell a little over the noise.
Her gaze bounced to her left as a loud string of curses erupted from the men playing the game, and then came back to me. “Uh… Nate Richardson is here. He wants to see Rutledge Amare, but I can’t find him. Everybody is supposed to be in one of the common areas, but I’ve been over both, twice.”
“You checked his room?”
She nodded. “No answer.”
“Okay. Um…” I thought about how, throughout camp, Amare had been all about following instructions. I doubted that today was any different, so he was probably out here… somewhere. “I’ll find him.”
“Great!” She immediately brightened. “He’s waiting in conference 4C!”
Before I could object, she’d taken off, leaving me to, apparently, not just find Amare, but get him there too.
Ugh.
Because I was familiar with him, it didn’t take long for me to spot the man, tucked off in a corner to himself, with a towel hanging over his face. I nudged his knee, prompting him to take his sweet time removing the towel to see who it was and what they wanted. When his eyebrows lifted to question my presence, I answered.
“Someone wants to see you. Come on.”
I started moving, not questioning for a second that he would get up and follow. The conference rooms were in the next building over, down some halls and through some doorways. Once we made it, I fought the urge to peek inside myself – I just showed him where he was supposed to be, and then moved on about my business.
The business of sneaking away from this forced socialization so I could get more familiar with my bed.
The quickest way back to faculty housing was through the players’ dorm, which I’d left through the back to escort Amare to Nate. Now, I exited through the front entrance, and was surprised to find Jordan Johnson sitting alone out on the front steps, instead of upstairs clowning with his teammates.
“You look like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders,” I said, stopping beside him, but not sitting down. “You good?”
“Always,” he shot back, with much less confidence than I was used to from him.
“That doesn’t sound very convincing.” I took several steps down, moving so that I was closer to eye level with him, but still not sitting down. “What’s going on?”
He shook his head. “Just gotta get out of my own head. Focus. Stop being a pussy.”
“Ahhh,” I sang, propping my hands on my hips. “This is about your shoulder?”
Jordan’s head pulled back as he frowned, apparently stunned that I’d so easily hit that mark. “How the hell did you…?”
“I know you Johnson… remember? Don’t forget who turned you into a first-round draft pick now,” I teased, making him grin.
“Never that. Why you think I volunteered to be featured in your documentary? BSU to the Kings. A fucking success story.”
I nodded. “For both of us. And now… your shoulder has you concerned. You’re afraid to use it. Afraid it’s going to fail you. Again.”
“Coach Brooks, you know you’re one of my favorite people, right?”
I tipped my head. “Sure.”
“So don’t take it personally when I tell you I’m not really trying to hear any platitudes or shit right now. It doesn’t help.”
“Oh I wasn’t about to encourage, I was about to commiserate. When some vital part gives out on you, it’s fucking scary, and I can’t blame you for being paranoid. I get it. More than you know.”
His eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
I pushed out a sigh, glancing around to make sure we were alone before I stepped a little closer. “Can you keep a secret?”
He shrugged. “You’ve kept mine. Say what you need to say.”
“Well… a little over two months ago… I had a heart attack.”
Jordan immediately frowned. “What? You?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “Me. And since then… I’ve been afraid to do almost anything. Afraid a blood clot is going to cause another attack, or that I’m going to overwork it, or worse… that I’ll go into cardiac arrest again. And that this time, there won’t be anyone around.”
“That’s… scary.”
“Damn right it is. My doctors say that if I take my meds and eat right and all that, I’ll be fine. I can go back to normal activity as soon as I feel ready. I can jump, and run, and do all these things, just as soon as I… I don’t feel ready. I don’t know when I’ll feel ready, if I’ll ever feel ready.”
He shook his head. “But you ate that route yesterday like it was nothing.”
“Only because I felt like I had to. And then I went and had a fucking panic attack. Because I didn’t feel ready, and I still don’t.”
“But that’s the lesson right there, isn’t it?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t say shit about a lesson, did I? I’m trying to tell your ass I’m scared too!”
“That’s still the lesson though,” he laughed. “Whether you admit to it or not. You were scared, and you did it anyway, because you had to. And you killed it. When we hit that field for pre-season –”
“You’re out of your mind if you think we’re putting you on the field in pre-season for some newbie lineman to try to take you down for clout. No sir.”
“But you get my point though? That even if I’m scared, it doesn’t change what I have to do. I can’t be ruled by fear.”
I smiled, and nodded. “Yeah, Jordan. I get it.”
He extended a fist toward me, and I tapped it with mine, using that gesture as a goodbye before I headed off. I hated that his words resonated in my head, sticking with me through the short walk to the faculty dorms. I didn’t want to think about how self-defeating it was to allow fear to dictate my moves. It was so much easier to just be scared.
The building was empty with almost everyone still hanging out with the players, which meant I didn’t have anyone stopping me for small talk. I went straight to my room and sat down, toying with the idea of styling my freshly washed hair into the twists I’d put off after my shower earlier, in favor of making it to the joint dinner and activities with the players on time.
I decided to take another shower just because it was so hot, and lay out on the bed, wondering what the hell Nate was doing here instead.
It wasn’t as if training camp was just up the road from our normal practice facilities – out here, we were hours away. Nate hadn’t even hinted that he was coming up to check on his players today, and if it hadn’t been for the intern looking for Amare, I wouldn’t have even known he was here.
I… didn’t like that.
I didn’t like it at all.
In the weeks since Nate had shown up at my door the night after the Johnson wedding, not much between us had changed. He was still showing up for walks, still with the late-night texts, still checking to make sure I was taking care of myself. The difference, I guess, was… me. Instead of tolerating, or even expecting, I’d started looking forward to his presence.
Or rather… allowing myself to look forward to it.
Even though I knew it was a dangerous thing.
Sure, I may have opened my mind to seeing Nate differently – seeing him seriously. But that didn’t even remotely address the fact that there were still major barriers to us having a relationship of any type.
At least having it publicly.
The conflict of interest with our jobs, the age difference, and as much as I hated to admit it… it mattered to me what the public would have to say. It wasn’t just about my feelings, either. I had to consider my daughter, and the things she might hear or see. High school was a fragile time for teenagers, no matter how mature. Garrett and I had been lucky with Madison so far, but that only made me worry that the hellish years everyone had warned us about were right around the corner. I did not want my love life to be the trigger for any of my daughter’s pain.
And then, of course… there was Garrett.
I shook my head, telling myself that none of it mattered, not right now at least. It wasn’t like Nate and I were in a place to even put a name to what we were doing. We were just… living.
Anything beyond that could, as Nate said, wait until later.
As if I’d thought him up, a knock sounded at my door.
I wasn’t sure how I knew it was him before I left my bed, but I did, which made me move quickly, not wanting anyone to see him at my door. He slipped inside as soon as I opened it, looking impossibly good in a white Kings tee shirt, a royal blue hat, and blue and gold shorts – the standard uniform for staff, but on him, it just looked…
Shit.
“Hey.”
I sucked in a little breath. “Hey back at you. What are you doing here, Nate? It’s a four-hour drive, and training camp is almost over. What emergency couldn’t wait two more days?”
“What emergency do you think couldn’t wait two more days, Sloane?”
I shrugged, backing up when he took a step toward me. “I don’t know. Did someone tell you I was on the verge of clotheslining Grant next time he takes off faster than he should?”
Chuckling, Nate took another step. “Nah. But that’s good to know.”
“Amare, then? My report about his demeanor concerned you?”
“His report about your demeanor concerns me.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, backing up until I couldn’t unless I planned to climb the wall. “You met with him to talk about me?”
Nate shook his head. “Nope. But he was concerned enough to bring it up. Referred to you as… motherly.”
I frowned. “Seriously? Oh God. And it doesn’t help that I’m old enough to be his mother. I must be being too nice to them.”
“I definitely don’t think it’s that,” Nate assured me, laughing. “But I’m more interested in hearing why you’ve been off… supposedly. Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Shut me out,” he said, placing his hands at my waist. “I’m here because I didn’t like how you sounded on the phone. I only talked to my playe
rs so that if anybody saw me, there would be a logical explanation for my presence. The emergency that couldn’t wait… is you.”
“Oh,” I nodded. “You came to hear in person how I did something completely stupid and scared myself into a panic attack because I was trying to prove a point that didn’t need to be proved?”
“I came to see with my own two eyes that you were okay. I don’t know anything about this other shit you’re talking about.”
I sucked my teeth. “So you’re just gonna always have the right thing to say? Ugh. Move!” I shoved him off so I could move toward the bed, and he followed me, laughing.
“Never before have I experienced a woman getting pissed because I said the right thing,” he teased, dropping to a seat on the bed beside me. “This is new.”
“Won’t be the first or last thing I teach you, youngin’.”
He smirked as he leaned back onto his elbows, his wide shoulders taking up a good amount of space on the bed. “Why I gotta be all that?”
“Because you are,” I told him, turning to put my back against the headboard and stretching my legs across his lap. Immediately, he shifted his position and his hands went to my bare feet, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, moaning as he worked away weeks of stress in what felt like just a few minutes.
“You keep moaning like that, I’m gonna have to remind you what this youngin’ can do.”
I cracked my eyes open, grinning. “How much pussy have you foot massaged your way into?” I asked him. “On campus, at that? Does this little scenario bring up good memories for you?”
“As a matter of fact, it does,” he quipped. “Memories of being a young, horny sophomore, imagining myself doing the filthiest of things to the fine ass football coach. And now… I don’t even have to imagine. Because I’m a man of action.”
“Mmmm. That you most certainly are,” I purred, my back arching as my toes disappeared into Nate’s mouth. I moaned again, feeling it between my legs, all the way up to my nipples as his tongue dipped between each digit, warm and wonderful and… familiar. His lips pressed to the arch of my foot, and then the heel, then on up my ankle and calf, and thigh, and then he bypassed everything to get to my collarbone, then my neck, then my ear.
Pass Interference (Connecticut Kings Book 6) Page 14
