Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 74956 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74956 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
She laughs. “Not sure I can control half of that, but if you’re asking if we should be exclusive, the answer is yes.” She gives a little roll of her eyes as she adds, “I mean, I don’t want other women touching or smelling or looking at you, either, so…”
“Yay,” I say, beaming with such undisguised happiness, it makes her laugh again. She’s matching my grin, ear to ear, until her phone buzzes on her desk. The second she looks down, though, her smile falls away, and the color blanches from her cheeks.
“What is it?” I ask, instantly on alert.
She turns the screen toward me.
It’s a text, from her dad…
Need to talk to you about a few things off the clock. I know Tuesday is your night off from coaching. Let’s do dinner at my house. 7 P.M. Make sure Cruise comes along. And Stone, too, if he’s free.
My eyebrows shoot up. “Wait. What? Why me?”
“I have no idea.” Her voice is tight with anxiety. “I mean, Justin is the team captain, and Dad always likes to have the captain over for dinner at the beginning of the season. But as far as I’m aware, he doesn’t even know we’re friends. I have no idea why he would want me to bring you along unless…”
Unless we’ve been caught…
The unspoken words hang in the air between us.
Finally, I shrug, trying to appear calmer than I feel. “Maybe it’s something harmless. Maybe he wants to talk about me backing Justin up with the rest of the team or something. I mean, we are the oldest Badger players and the only ones retiring this year.”
“That could be it.” But she doesn’t sound convinced, and her cheeks are still pale enough for her to pass as one of the marble statues at the Portland Art Museum.
I take her hand, squeezing gently. “We’ve been careful. And he was cool today when I talked to him about missing the meeting. I think we’re fine.”
She bites her lip. “Guess we’ll find out tomorrow.”
As I leave a few minutes later, endorsement paperwork tucked under my arm—surprise, I actually am being offered a chance to sell a sports drink—I refuse to let Coach’s surprise invitation put a dent in my happiness.
Remy is my girlfriend and open to seeing where this thing goes between us long term. It’s a miracle I wouldn’t have believed possible even a couple of weeks ago, and one that’s absolutely worth fighting for.
No matter what her dad has planned for us tomorrow night…
Chapter 13
Remy
Rain pelts my windshield as I pull into my father’s driveway, the wipers barely able to keep up with Portland’s latest deluge.
The weather matches my mood—dark, turbulent, and showing no signs of letting up anytime soon. I’ve been a bundle of nerves since Dad’s text yesterday, my stomach churning with anxiety that not even Stone’s steady stream of supportive messages could fully calm.
Just breathe, his latest text read. If he knew about us, he wouldn’t have invited me to dinner. He’d have invited me to the bad part of town to be mugged and torn to pieces by feral dogs.
He’s probably right, but that hasn’t kept my palms from sweating all over the wheel.
Allegedly, Dad seemed normal enough with Stone after the storage room incident, and Justin being invited makes it logical that this is just the usual start of the season teambuilding thing Dad likes to do.
Still, I can’t shake the feeling that something’s...off.
Maybe because good things rarely come from being summoned to my father’s house for dinner. The last time he insisted I come over for smoked salmon, he spent two hours explaining why I should reconsider my decision to take the promotion I’d been offered without a bigger pay raise. He refused to acknowledge the reality that admin salaries don’t increase that dramatically with each step up the ladder and that Juliet had already fought to get me an extra 10k a year.
The time before that, he’d tried to talk me into moving into the apartment over his garage to “save money” right after I’d renewed the lease on my place, again refusing to believe that I had signed an iron-clad agreement and couldn’t simply “change my mind.”
Though I was really glad it was “iron-clad.” The last thing Dad and I need is to live under the same roof ever again. We love each other, but we’d also kill each other. Or I’d jump out a window to avoid a debate over every single choice I make, from the job I take to the car I drive to what I wear on the sidelines while I’m coaching.
My father’s definition of looking out for me almost always involves trying to control my life. He means well, but it gets insulting after a while and…exhausting. I’m just so tired of defending my choices every two to three weeks, when Dad decides it’s time for some “family bonding” over lean protein and roasted root vegetables.