Vincent and I didn’t breathe until he dismissed us and left to meet his daughter. I guess he didn’t care about leaving us alone in his office-not that we were dumb enough to snoop through his stuff. We valued our lives.
“Christ. I felt like I was a student getting called into the headmaster’s office again,” Vincent muttered on our way out.
We’d given Coach plenty of lead time so we didn’t have to walk next to him. The man was inspiring but also, frankly, terrifying.
“You’re not the only one,” I muttered back. “I’m surprised he didn’t put us in detention and make us scrub the floors.”
“Don’t give him any ideas.”
I snorted.
When we re-entered the main locker room, it was empty. However, a flurry of whispers led us around the corner to the exit, where the rest of the team was huddled around the little window in the door.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Have you ever seen Coach’s daughter?” Adil turned, his eyes gleaming.”She’s here.”
“So?” Vincent yawned. “What’s the big deal?”
“I heard she’s joining the team staff,” Samson said. I didn’t know how, but he always found out about team-related breaking news first. “She’ll be interning with Jones.”
Jones was Blackcastle’s lead performance nutritionist.
“Big deal. We get new interns all the time. She’s not special just because she’s Coach’s daughter.” Vincent sounded unimpressed. “You all better get back to the locker room before Coach sees you, or he’ll make us do horseshoe runs again.”
A collective shudder rippled through the group, but that wasn’t a big enough threat to make them disperse.
“Dude. Samson forgot the most important part.” Adil walked over and placed his hands on Vincent’s shoulders with great solemnity. “Coach’s daughter is hot.”
That got his attention.
I shook my head as Vincent pushed his way toward the window, but curiosity got the better of me as well. None of us had ever seen Coach’s daughter. I knew she lived with his ex-wife and that she was his only child, but that was about it.
I didn’t care that she was hot, but I was curious about what Frank Armstrong’s daughter looked like.
I squeezed next to Vincent and peered out the window. Coach’s back faced us, obscuring most of her body. After a minute or so, he shifted, revealing long blond hair, hazel eyes, and a heart-shaped face.
My jaw dropped.
Beside me, Vincent went rigid, his breath expelling in a similar rush of shock.
Because it turned out we had seen Coach’s daughter before. Not only that, we’d drank and partied with her.
We turned to each other, our expressions identical masks of disbelief while Coach continued to talk to Brooklyn.
The first thing I did when I left training was call Scarlett again. She had no idea Brooklyn was Coach’s daughter, but she didn’t sound particularly upset about it.
“I knew she was hiding something,” she said. “It makes sense. She does want to go into nutrition, and if I were Frank Armstrong’s daughter, I wouldn’t run around telling people either. I barely acknowledge being Vincent’s sister.”
“For good reason,” I told her.
She laughed, but like our conversation earlier, it sounded a bit forced. However, when I offered to drop by her house or have Earl pick her up for a rendezvous at mine, she declined, saying she was tired from rehearsals and wanted to nap.
I didn’t push it. She sounded like herself again the next day, so I took her explanation at face value.
The grueling demands of the preseason soon dominated my attention, and the novelty of discovering Brooklyn’s relation to Coach quickly evaporated as we swept through the friendlies and the real season kicked off several weeks later.
We won our matches easily, but we hadn’t faced any heavy hitters yet. The real test would be our match against Holchester in two weeks.
Still, that didn’t mean we passed up the opportunity to celebrate beating Wentworth in our first official match of the season.
What I really wanted was to celebrate with Scarlett, whom I barely got to see these days. Between my club obligations and her adjusted rehearsal schedule, we spoke on the phone more often than we did in person. I was spoiled after a summer of having her mostly to myself, and I was desperate for alone time with her.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t say no to the first team outing of the season, which was how I found myself packed into the Angry Boar with the rest of the Blackcastle team.
“Captain buys the first round,” Adil announced after we placed our orders at the bar-beer for those who indulged, water or soda for those who didn’t. “It’s tradition.”
Vincent narrowed his eyes. “Since when?”
“Since now.”
“Interesting,” Vincent said. “You know, I seem to recall you never picked up a single tab last season…”
“Hey, I entertain with my wit and humor. You can’t put a price on that,” Adil said defensively. “Speaking of which, I have a team bonding idea, and it’s all thanks to Donovan.”
Every head swung toward me.
I shrugged, as confused as they were.
“I read the book you recommended.” Adil reached into his pocket and brandished a small paperback featuring a colorful cover of a half-naked redhead and two massive, scaly reptiles. “Triceratops and Threesomes. Hey, it was good!” he shouted over an outburst of laughter and jeers.
“Bruv, what are you reading?”
“Are those dinosaurs?”
“What kind of kinky shit are you into?”
“Donovan.” Samson crossed his arms, his mouth twitching. “Explain.”
I almost told them the truth until I remembered Scarlett was the one who’d introduced me to the title. I hadn’t read it, but I did not want to explain why Vincent’s sister was the one giving me erotic book recommendations.
“I saw it in a bookstore,” I lied. “It looked…interesting, so I shared it with Adil and Noah.”
“Don’t look at me,” Noah said when everyone swiveled to stare at him. “I was an unwilling recipient of the information.”
“You were in a bookstore? You mean, you can read?” Stevens, one of the other forwards, cracked.
I crumpled a napkin and tossed it at him. It hit him square in the face. “Bugger off, Stevens. You don’t even know how to do your own laundry.”
His face fell. “I told you it was the machine’s fault! That high-tech shit is bloody confusing.””Excuse me, but let’s get back to the topic at hand!” Adil raised his voice. “Anyway, as I was saying, I have a team bonding idea. We should create a Blackcastle book club where?-“
More jeers drowned out his voice.
“Where we read a different erotic book every month!” he shouted. “It’ll be fun!”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.