Don’t blow this, you idiot.
I swallowed, stepping back, and gave Logan a slow nod.
He relaxed, his eyes softening only a fraction. Coach watched us with interest, the good cop to Logan’s bad cop. He wasn’t even all that bad, if I had to be honest. Just pissed off. And if there was any reaction I could understand, even if it was aimed at me, was being pissed at someone for a perceived disrespect.
Even if I knew all that, I desperately wished I could just hold my hands up and explain why my first day played out the way it did. Explain how thrilled I was to be playing for Washington, amongst some of the most talented players in the league. Explain how awful it felt that I might never live down the persona that I’d cultivated in Vegas.
But judging by the look in their eyes, no one wanted that from me. Not yet.
Activity resumed in the weight room, some of the defensive players grinning broadly at their leader giving me the dress-down.
The coaches walked away, and I let out a slow breath. The heat left my face, but I braced for another interaction when our QB approached. He was cool under pressure on the field, unflappable in the pocket, and he held out his hand instead of offering me a cold shoulder.
We’d played against each other over the years, but other than our small interaction at the event the day before, we’d never spoken. Warily, I shook his hand.
His smile was wide at my expression, teeth white against the dark burnished color of his skin. “Peace offering,” he said warmly. “Besides, I think you got the point from him.” He jerked his chin at Logan.
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he offered.
“He usually chew out players he doesn’t coach?” I asked.
James laughed. “Only when they really deserve it.”
“Touché.” I glanced at the clock. “I need to hit the showers.”
“I’ll walk with you.” It wasn’t a question. This was the on-field leader of the team telling them that he was taking some time with me. A hothead I might be, but I wasn’t an idiot. Getting along with my quarterback was about the most important thing I could manage to do.
We left the weight room, quiet for a few moments while I followed his long-legged stride. He was tall for a QB, and with his style of play, we’d be able to create magic.
“There’s no perfect team,” he started. “Like you, I didn’t start at Washington. I transferred here four years ago, and it’s always an adjustment when you switch.”
“You could say that.” I rubbed the back of my neck.
“But this place…” James paused, looking at the logo on the wall. “It’s something special. Guys will fight sometimes. Coaches will get on our asses if we mess up, which we do. We don’t always get along, but I’ve never played anywhere like here.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “You’ve got a good future here, Walker, if you can see it for what it is and not for what it’s not.”
“So far, it seems like a place where no one in that room wants me here,” I admitted.
His eyes were steady. “Can you blame them?”
I let out a slow exhale, my body still edgy from the interaction with Ward. “No.”
“Give them some time, and don’t prove their first impression of you right. We all make mistakes, but once we start repeating them, they’re not mistakes. They’re choices.” He tilted his head at the logo. “This place is a good choice. But the rest of it is up to you.”
With his parting words, I felt a little bit better. And I tried desperately to maintain that calm as I showered and changed, then made my way to my car and pulled up the address that had been texted to my phone while I was working out.
Sunshine: Meet me here at 10. Don’t dress up. - Faith
I glanced down at my jeans and plain black T-shirt. Not a problem. The interactions I’d experienced in my first few days at Washington cycled through my head as I drove down the 405. My hands tightened on the steering wheel because this block of time doing … whatever the hell little miss sunshine had planned for me, was my next test.
Maybe I could just toss a ball in the schoolyard with some school-age kids, tell them not to do drugs and work hard, and be done with it.
But when I took the exit, and the buildings got a little shabbier, a bit more run-down, I knew I wasn’t meeting her at the Team Sutton offices for some “volunteer orientation.” The GPS had me turn, and I pulled into a parking lot with only a few cars and a two-story brick building. A bright white sign with purple, red, and blue painted letters proclaimed it as a community center.
The schoolyard had clean basketball hoops and a court painted with crisp white lines. The property was kept up nicely with potted flowers on either side of the double doors. As I parked my truck, the double doors swung open, and Faith Pierson walked out, shielding her eyes from the sun.
There was no printed T-shirt today, but her long legs were covered in dark denim fitted to her curves and a simple white tank top that probably cost as much as my truck payment. The ponytail from the other day was gone, her dark brown hair in a straight, shining sweep around her shoulders, which was covered in an expensive-looking blazer buttoned in the middle.
Her face didn’t change when I climbed out of my truck, and I could see her hand tapping the side of her thigh in a nervous gesture that she couldn’t quite hide.
“Morning, sunshine,” I said as I drew closer.
Her lips only hinted at a smile at the edges. “Good morning, Mr. Walker.”
My eyebrows lifted slowly. “So formal today.”
She tapped at a sleek and professional-looking name badge clipped onto the pocket of her jeans. “I’m on the clock.”
“You were on the clock yesterday,” I pointed out.
Faith’s dark eyebrows bent in. “That was different. We were at a big event.”
“So now you’re nicer to me because there are no other football players to help you antagonize the new guy?”
“Th-that’s not what I was doing.”
“Wasn’t it?” I murmured. “I think all you’ve done since the moment we met was give me shit.”
“Because you…” She stopped short and let out a slow breath. “You’re right. Even if I can’t control your reaction to me, I can control my own.”
“I usually am right, sunshine.”
Color flushed her cheeks at my lightly teasing tone, but today, there was no witty comeback. Yeah, Faith Pierson was exactly my usual type, and it made me want to tug on the proverbial pigtails just a little bit more to see what happened.
Determined to unnerve her, I reached forward and hooked the edge of the badge with my finger and pulled, once I saw it was on one of those retractable cords. In the thumbnail picture of her, she was smiling widely at the camera without a care in the world.
“Fancy,” I murmured.
Careful not to brush her skin against my fingers, Faith plucked the laminated card out of my grasp.
“Ready to go in?”
I stared at the building. “What am I supposed to be doing?”
“This community center has been a longtime grant recipient for the foundation. I used to volunteer here before I started working for Team Sutton, and I love their reading program for kids who struggle with literacy.” She smiled at the shrieks of laughter that echoed down the halls. “There’s a strong tie between secondary education drop-out rates and reading issues. All you’re going to do today is visit with one of the groups and read a couple of books.” She glanced at her watch, a sleek black and gold number that encircled her slim, fine-boned wrist. “I think today is the girls’ group. They’re all eight or nine, I think.”
My skin went ice cold. “No fucking way.”
Her eyes went wide.
Panic had me stumbling over my words. But there was no way I could sit in a room of girls Ivy’s age. Not this week. “I just … why would they want me to read to a bunch of little girls? Can’t I like … throw a football to some boys or something?”
Faith Pierson
studied me for a moment, and I held my breath, waiting for another verbal attack for the day. Someone telling me I was disrespectful, a punk. Then she smiled. It was soft, and it made me so uncomfortable that I desperately fought the urge to sprint back to my truck.
“Follow me,” she said.
Without another word, she walked into the building. And even though my heart was thrashing in my chest, I did as she asked.
Faith
Walking through the hallways, it very much felt like I had a growling animal behind me. One with no manners and zero training and the temperament of a rabid raccoon. When I woke earlier in the day, I’d made a decision of how to approach Dominic Walker, once I’d seen tiny glimpses of softness at the car wash. I was adding it to the rule list.
Don’t Engage with the Tantrum.
No matter how he baited me, what names he called me, I would ease us through the day exactly as if he was one of the dogs I walked at the shelter around the corner from my apartment.
Once they acclimated to your presence, and you kept your calm, kept steady, they’d relax. And one could only hope that it would work with a six-four tight end with attitude problems.
And like I thought he would, the pushback from Dominic started quickly. That wasn’t the surprise. It was his reaction when I told him he’d be working with the eight-year-old group with their reading.
I hated how curious it made me, that a man like him would panic so visibly at spending time with a bunch of girls. It didn’t fit neatly into any of the categories that I could’ve defined for him. In all my years of doing this, no players had reacted that way.
And now, more than anything, I wanted to know why.
The man piquing my curiosity walked a bit slower than I was, maybe to unnerve me by staying just out of my view.
“This particular community center has been one of the Team Sutton recipients for almost fifteen years,” I explained. “We have a few programs that we’ve funded the entire time, providing necessary staff and training that they may not be able to afford otherwise, along with some new classes and groups for kids who live in the area.”
Dominic was as quiet as the grave, and I blew out a slow breath. Okay, he wasn’t going to make this easy.
These were the moments when I felt woefully unprepared for leadership, but I thought about what Allie had said. It wasn’t about eliciting the greatest reaction. It was about figuring out motivation.
“The literacy program is one of those programs. We’ve seen an uptick in grant requests for things like this.” There was a stack as tall as a toddler in my office to prove it, but he didn’t need to know that. “We can’t help all of them, of course, but we do what we can.”
“That make you lose sleep at night, sunshine?”
The silky hairs along my forearm lifted slowly at the gravelly sound of his voice.
I kept my voice casual. “What?”
“That you can’t hand out all your billions with one magnanimous sweep of your arm.”
Slowing my steps, I glanced over my shoulder at him. “In a manner of speaking, yes. There’s a lot of red tape involved in granting people money. It’s not the fastest process in the world, a lot of steps to make sure they’re going to use it in the way they say they will. That’s one piece of my job.”
“A hardship, to be sure.” Disdain dripped from every syllable, every sound that his mouth formed.
It was harder than I thought not to snap back at him in the same way I had during our first couple of meetings. But something in my gut told me it would only make it worse. He didn’t need attitude thrown back at him. Not this time.
Hands clasped innocently in front of me, I stopped, tilting my head as I studied him. His jaw clenched, coated in even more dark stubble than the last time I’d seen him. Everything about this man looked hard-edged and dangerous. But for some reason, Allie thought this was the best course of action, that it would help him, maybe just as much as it would help some of these kids.
Even knowing that, even knowing what I’d decided about how to handle him, I could only keep my tongue on so tight of a leash.
“And how many zeros did your signing bonus have when you signed with Vegas?”
Dominic’s eyes, dark and piercing, never wavered. But his mouth stayed shut in a firm line.
“What about your contract with Washington?” I raised my eyebrows at his continued silence. “You act like you’re better than me, like you can judge me because I come from a wealthy family, but I don’t think you’ll be suffering economic hardship anytime soon, hotshot. What are you doing to help people who don’t make millions of dollars catching a ball?”
Surprise lit those eyes, pleasant surprise too, which made me instantly wary. “Now, what would Daddy think listening to you make fun of my job?”
I blew out a slow breath and pivoted away from him. “That’s not exactly what I was doing.”
Dominic clucked his tongue. “Sure sounded that way to me.”
Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan. Do not engage, I reminded myself. Digging into whatever mental reserves I had at my disposal, I schooled my face just as a loud burst of young girlish laughter came from a classroom at the end of the hall.
At his side, I saw Dominic’s hands curl into fists, then his fingers stretched back out. An unconscious gesture, I was pretty sure. We’d worked with so many different players over the years, all sorts of personalities, but no one who was flat-out unwilling to help.
I didn’t like that Dominic Walker was hard to define. One moment he was rude and judgy. Then he was laughing while fluffy little dogs licked his face. Everything in my life could usually fit neatly into a category, and I got uncomfortable when it didn’t.
Still, watching him, I wasn’t entirely sure he could actually do this.
“A couple of the girls in there do better reading when someone sits next to them to listen. One day a week, they bring in a therapy dog program and the kids read to the dogs.” I gave him a wry smile. “So if you can match the enthusiasm of a golden retriever who doesn’t understand what they’re saying, you’ll be just fine.”
But my quip didn’t make him laugh. He looked pale, his body tight with tension. My brow furrowed as I realized this wasn’t just plain old hesitation. This was actual panic at the thought of going in that room. Before I could say something, though, the door to the classroom opened.
One of the program directors came into the hallway, her eyes lighting up when she saw us. “Faith, I was wondering where you were. The girls are excited to have a guest today.” She held her hand out to Dominic. “I’m Keisha. Nice to meet you.”
He nodded. “Dominic Walker.”
Okay, so he was capable of basic manners as long as the person wasn’t me.
I laid a hand on Keisha’s arm, yet again, going with my gut. “Do you mind if we switch things up a little?”
“What are you thinking?”
Without checking with Dominic, I tilted my head toward the exit that led to the playground. “Can we keep it a bit more relaxed today? Maybe have him toss a ball with some of the kids outside? He could just get to know them a little bit for now.”
Keisha must have seen a look in my eye that begged her not to say no because she nodded slowly, then gave Dominic an encouraging smile. “Absolutely. There’s a handful of kids out there right now.” Another burst of sound came from the room, and she breathed out a tired-sounding laugh. “Let me go check on them. I’ll be out on the playground in a little bit.”
“Thank you, Keisha.”
Dominic exhaled quietly, but I noticed that his frame had relaxed. My brow furrowed as I led him toward the playground. Maybe he wasn’t a good reader.
“It’s killing you not to ask, isn’t it?” he said.
I looked over at him in surprise. I hadn’t even realized he could see my facial expressions.
“You do a shit job of hiding what you’re thinking.” His gaze touched on various points of my face, and my cheeks warmed at his careful perusal
. “You plan on prying, sunshine?”
“Everyone is entitled to a degree of privacy,” I answered carefully. “Especially with the life you lead.”
We reached the door that led to the playground, and he lifted his chin toward the banged-up metal door with a small window that allowed a block of bright sunlight into the hallway.
“What am I supposed to do out there?” he asked.
At his disgruntled tone, I couldn’t stop my smile.
“What?” His voice got grumpier and grumpier the bigger that smile got.
I laughed quietly. “Just … be yourself. Maybe a little nicer to them than you are to me,” I corrected. “Play catch. Give them some tips. Tell them about how hard you worked to get here.”
“That’s it?”
“These kids don’t have a ton to look forward to once they go back home. In the summers or on their days off from school, they hang out here because either their parents work themselves to the bone to provide for their families or they don’t do much of anything. It’s a safe place, yes, but they also want to breed opportunities for the kids. Show them how to utilize those opportunities for growth and give them the confidence to try.”
He sighed. “Let’s get this over with.”
I pushed open the door and walked into the yard with him behind me. As his big frame filled the doorway, I heard a little girl shout, “Heads-up!”
The football hurtled in our direction, and I ducked down, but with the sun directly into his eyes, Dominic never saw it coming until it hit him square in the balls.
Dominic
“I think I killed him,” a tiny voice whispered above where I’d sunk to my knees on the concrete.
My hands still cupped my throbbing balls, and holy hell, it was all I could do to breathe, so there was no chance I could correct her even if I wanted to.
Faith exhaled a laugh. “I don’t think he’s dead. You just … hit him pretty hard in a not-so-fun spot.”
The Lie : a bad boy sports romance Page 6
