4. Colton

Ice baths had always been both the bane of Colton’s existence and the thing that kept him sane. Once the stinging wore off and he became numb, all thoughts would disappear. No more thinking about how poorly he’d done so far this season. No more thinking about his father’s harsh words. For the next ten to fifteen minutes, he should have been able to relax in complete silence. It had always been meditative.

Except now, that wasn’t the case. Lucia Moretti had ripped away that calm, that sanity. The thought of having to work with her for an entire season made him want to scream at the top of his lungs. She was infuriating.

The rivalry between him and Max had begun in college and had extended into the NFL, where he was sure it would continue until one of them retired. He’d only seen Lucia a handful of times during his college years, and he hadn’t had an issue with her outside of the fact that she was Max’s girlfriend. Until he’d learned about what her best friend had done. He remembered seeing the black-haired woman leaving the football apartments but hadn’t thought anything of it until Max had taunted him after Crestview lost during Colton’s senior year, laughing about how she’d learned their plays just by being around them.

It was bad enough that Lucia, her boyfriend, and her best friend had stolen his senior season with their conniving, but now she was pretending to “help him fix his game”? He didn’t buy it. It was too convenient. Even if it had been six years ago, it had lost him the chance at playoffs in his final season, and that wasn’t so easy to forgive.

He hadn’t cared so much when she was with the Vipers. Max Clark was a slimy weasel, and Colton wasn’t sure what she saw in him, but with him in a different state, he’d rarely had to pay the narcissist any heed. But now, with her so close to home, it was all coming back, and he was bitter.

How many lectures had he endured from his father after that game? How many extra reps had he forced himself to do to prove to his father that he had, in fact, cared about this sport? How many times had he been told how lucky he was that Max was the year below him, because when draft time came, he wouldn’t have to outperform the Lincoln quarterback?

He’d spent weeks perfecting everything about his game before that loss, and all of it had been ripped away from him. She was a reminder of that, and he couldn’t stand it.

He couldn’t stand her in that little skirt, those ridiculous heels, or that blazer that he was sure she’d been overheating in. He couldn’t stand that she knew so much about his game after watching a few hours of film, or that she knew so much about football in general. He couldn’t stand that little groove that had popped up between her eyebrows when she got mad at him, the look of disgust on her face clear.

Most of all, he couldn’t stand the fact that the moment she’d walked through the doorway of that boardroom, his first thought hadn’t really been, You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. It had been, She’s even more breathtaking than she was in college. And that pissed him off more than any of the other thoughts.

He groaned, pulling himself from the ice as his phone alarm went off. All of that aside, he really didn’t want to work with her. It’d been fine when he thought he was just getting some nerdy analyst to come in and give him pointers, but Lucia was, and had always been, the enemy. And he knew she would relish pointing out all of his failures. As if he didn’t have enough people in his life doing that.

Coach Turner’s words came back to him. “At the end of the day, it’s a numbers game. And she’s a numbers girl,” he’d said, like that was supposed to make him feel better.

It had not, not one bit. And now he had to go upstairs and meet with her one-on-one, and they had to try not to kill each other while getting his numbers up. Because it was a numbers game.

“Coop, I’m heading up.” Coop waved his hand, too relaxed in his adjacent ice bath to respond.

Colton had just finished toweling off when Lucia appeared, eyes widening at the towel tied loosely on his hips.

“Oh, I—” She shook her head, cheeks pinking as she looked down at her watch. “You’re really dragging your feet. You’re fifteen minutes late, and I didn’t wanna let you get away with ditching again.” She kept her gaze averted.

“Practice ran over. I’ll be up in a few. Unless you wanna watch me get dressed.” He grinned. If he was going to do this, at least he could enjoy getting under her skin a little.

“I’ll be in my office.” Her heels clacked against the polished concrete floor, but she’d opted out of wearing a blazer.

When he looked back at his best friend, Coop was smirking back knowingly. “Oh, yeah, you hate her.”

“Shut up.”

Ten minutes later, no less stressed than before the ice bath, but definitely more clothed, Colton strolled into her office. They’d given her a well-furnished room with a view of the practice fields, which was surprising. They usually saved those for the coaches. She must’ve been really good at her job if they were rolling out the red carpet for her.

Lucia had already pulled a chair beside hers, and when he rounded her desk, he noticed one of the monitors had four angles of his last game and the other had a bunch of numbers and symbols. Great.

“So how does this work, exactly?”

“Well, when I click this spacebar here, it’ll play whichever of these four videos I click on. And then I can watch you try not to get sacked by the entire d-line as the pocket collapses.”

He felt his temper rise at her sarcasm. “I might look like a dumb jock, but I am actually capable of understanding basic computer functions.”

She sighed beside him. “Obviously, with the game tomorrow, there isn’t much we can do in a couple of hours to get you ready. I’ll watch tomorrow and take note of anything I see that could be contributing to whatever’s going on with you. From there, I’ll plan to watch each practice, and we can work through strengths and weaknesses together afterward.”

She waved at the screens before them. “There will be a lot of reviewing film and numbers, and I’ll also probably have you run drills alone before or after practice to see how you’re doing on your own. Once my equipment comes in, I can get you hooked up to some different monitors to see how you fare during the drills, and even during practice.”

He groaned internally. He was tired of reviewing film. It often felt like he watched himself play football more than he actually played it.

“Coach Turner said you’d decide how often we need to meet. After seeing the past couple of practices, what do you think?”

“I think we have a lot of work to do. I was reviewing your stats from last season, and you’re averaging well below on everything except turnovers, which are, of course, up.”

He felt his hand curl at his side. Did she have to be such a know-it-all?

“Yeah, I’m well aware of that, thanks. ESPN is all too happy to let me know exactly how my stats have been comparing to last season’s. What I was asking was how often I need to be here.”

She clicked on one of the four windows of film, pulling up a play he knew would end poorly for past-Colton. “Well, that sort of depends on you. Theoretically, we could meet after every practice and go through how you did that day. But, in the interest of us not being at each other’s throats five to six days a week, we could cut it to every other day. And obviously not on game days.”

“Fine. That’s fine.” He watched past-Colton step back and read the field before throwing an admittedly beautiful pass, though it wasn’t anywhere near his receiver because he’d mixed up his route. A mistake he’d never made before that game.

She moved the video back a few frames and picked up a pen, tapping the screen right before he released the ball. “See that there? That’s an early release. You may have read the field wrong, but even if your receiver ran the route you thought he would, that beauty wouldn’t have found him.”

Dammit, she was right. He’d let go of the ball a split second earlier than he should’ve.

“I’m not sure if you’re just not focused, or if you’re getting stressed because your o-line is playing like they’re in high school, but that’s certainly one of many problems.”

His jaw clenched at her words. “There’s nothing wrong with my focus,” he grumbled. “You try reading the field correctly, checking if any of your receivers are going to be open, scrambling to prevent four 300-something-pound linemen from crushing you, all while trying to find an opening in the defense where you can rush for a few yards.”

“That’s literally your job. That’s what you get paid millions of dollars to do!” When he turned to glare at her, she met his eyes. “And it’s what you’ve done for years with surprising precision. Everybody knows you’re capable of it, you just need to pull your head out of your ass long enough to make the changes I tell you to make.”

Colton narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like the idea of taking orders from Lucia, but had she just complimented him? “What is this software you’re supposedly creating specifically for quarterbacks?”

He was surprised to see her smile. She practically lit up as she turned toward her other monitor. “It’ll focus on throwing accuracy and game-time decision-making. So, I’d feed this film, or practice film, through it, and it would pinpoint the things that need to be improved. For example, that early release or your arm angle. Or even your follow-through. There will also be a piece that you can wear, and it’ll connect to an app that coaches can use during practice to monitor metrics. Oh! And it’ll track progress over time so you can see how you improve!”

She turned back to look at him, and he watched the excitement drain from her face when she caught him watching her.

Even though everything about her pissed him off, he found himself wanting to know more. And maybe a part of him wanted to see the excitement on her face again. A very small part of him he wanted to squash. “How will it figure out if I’m making the right decisions?”

“I’d use all-22 film, and it would determine whether the pass or rush you chose was the best option,” she said, referring to when their film crew took video of the entire field, including all twenty-two players.

“Sounds complex.”

“And that’s why I get paid. Though, not millions, unfortunately.”

This time when their eyes met, she was almost smiling at him, and it almost felt like there could be a semblance of a truce between them. Almost.

And then his phone buzzed, and he saw her look down at the screen briefly as his Do Not Disturb turned off and hundreds of DMs came flooding in.

She rolled her eyes, scoffing. “So predictable.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means, of course you leave your notifications on so you can see all your ardent admirers. I bet you like the instant gratification.”

Not for the first, not for the second, not even for the third time that hour, he felt his temper rise. Who the hell did she think she was? She didn’t know anything about him.

He wasn’t about to tell her that he hadn’t pursued a woman in years. And he certainly wasn’t going to tell her the reason he’d even re-downloaded all his socials was to scroll through Max’s feed when the news had first come out.

So instead, he said, “There’s no need to be jealous.”

She scoffed, “Please. If you were to measure my emotions right now, jealousy would be at below-zero levels.”

“What’s below-zero jealousy?”

It was her turn to narrow her eyes, but whatever she was about to say was cut off by his phone ringing, Maya’s name popping up on the screen. She was on the WTA tour, so if she was calling, it either meant something was wrong in the tennis world, or she was making her rounds through the family. She was the one who kept the family together. She had made it her mission to keep everyone in contact after their mom had passed.

“Don’t worry, Moretti. There’s no need for below-zero jealousy with this one. It’s just my sister. I’m gonna take this.” Lucia made a noise, but he was already walking out of her office.

“Hey, Mai. You okay?”

“Yep,” she chirped. “Just checking in with everyone and wanted to talk to my favorite oldest brother.” He knew that meant nothing because he was the only oldest brother, but he loved it anyway. She was his favorite of his siblings, something he did nothing to try to hide.

When their mother had died, Maya had only been twelve. She had been Maya’s everything. Probably due to the fact that the minute their father had realized she wasn’t a future football player, he’d passed her off to their mother without a second thought.

Their mother had been the most dedicated and loving woman Colton had ever met. She’d sacrificed her career the moment he’d been born, always promising that, regardless of their father, she would be there for her children as they grew up. She’d sacrificed seeing her side of the family more than once or twice a year, had given up teaching her children the culture she’d been born and raised in because she was scared of what might happen to them if she tried to leave.

Maya had taken it the hardest when she’d passed, and the loss had made her cherish her relationships more, even into adulthood. While most of Colton’s friends hardly talked to their siblings, Maya always made sure to speak to both of her brothers at least twice a month, no matter how busy she was on her pro circuit.

“How’s the tennis?”

“It’s great! My coach thinks I have a chance at getting a wild card into a Grand Slam this year, which is exciting.”

“That’s great, Mai. I’m so proud of you.”

“Oh, stop it, you’ll make me blush. How’s the ol’ pigskin? I regret to inform you that I have not been watching football the past couple of weeks.”

Probably for the best. “It’s good. Landon’s been doing really well.”

“And you?”

Colton sighed. “I’ve seen better days, but that’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“Has our dearest patriarch been up your ass per usual? Who am I kidding, of course he has.”

Colton laughed for the first time in a few days, thankful for Maya’s sardonic humor. “Yeah, it’ll be a cold day in Hell before that stops.”

He heard voices on the other end of the phone and knew Maya was probably with her group of tennis friends. Maya was never without them, something else he was thankful for. She deserved better than their shitty, dysfunctional family. “Go ahead, Mai. I know you’re busy. We’ll talk again soon. Love you to the moon.”

“Love you to the moon, Colt. Good luck on your next couple of games, and I’ll text you if I ever go to the house in Charleston.”

He put his phone on Do Not Disturb again—indefinitely—slipped it into his pocket, and walked back into Lucia’s office. He couldn’t decipher the look on her face, but at least it didn’t seem like she wanted to knife him. She didn’t make any more comments about his “ardent admirers,” and they managed to get through an hour without killing each other.