Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Deke

I wish I could say that finding a drunken college student in a puddle of youthful idiot on the benches outside my stadium was an unusual event. In the five years I've been a Division I football coach, however, it's been a semi-regular occurrence, at least a few times every fall.

It's always been my practice to rouse them enough for security to get their dorm information, then send them on their way. Tonight's unusual simply because the drunken reveler isn't a knucklehead boy with more beer than brains rattling around in his head.

Tonight, it's a girl. A precious, adorably rumpled and soused little girl. Protective instincts, the ones I have been doing my best to ignore for a few years now, surge to life. How did this little doll wind up alone on a bench outside the football stadium, drunk off her gourd?

"Hey there, little lush. Wake up, please. You're not supposed to be here." I know better than to touch her to shake her awake, but I do want to touch her. Prudence keeps my hands tucked into the pockets of my slacks. I don't want to startle her, or risk any improprieties being alleged later.

"Go ‘way, Daddy. Too early… school…" Her mumbling is adorable. She's obviously too drunk to realize it's not her father waking her up to get ready for classes. Hearing her mumbling for Daddy does weird things to my chest.

It's been a long time since I got to hear such sweet murmurs from a rumply sleepy-headed Little one. The feelings rousing now, at the least opportune time possible, are a reminder that I've been neglecting my own needs for too long while I focus on building an unstoppable team this season.

"You need to wake up, babydoll. This isn't a safe place for you to nap and I need you to show me your identification so we can get you home." I'm crossing lines left and right already, calling her babydoll and sitting here on the bench next to where she's curled up.

It's chilly enough to have her shivering in her lightweight sweater and yoga pants, so I toss my jacket over her. The damn thing is like a blanket. She's so much smaller than me all curled up in a tight ball like a little kitten. She lifts her head to blink owlishly at me, her light hazel eyes swimming with confusion. A messy brunette braid flops like a tail over her shoulder, tousled strands escaping all over to form a dark halo of hair that gleams in the lamplight from above.

"Wha—? Who you am I?" Her jumbled sentence makes no sense and should not be as adorable as it is.

"Little miss, you are drunk, alone, on a bench outside my stadium. So, I think I'll be the one asking questions. What's your name?" I force a stern tone of voice; glad she's got her eyes squished shut and can't see the smile I'm fighting.

"Windy Howell, Sir. I didn't know this was your bench. I'm so sorry." Her words are still slurred, but slightly more sensible as she's rousing more and more.

She tries to sit up, but the sleeves of my jacket tangle around her legs. The quick reflexes that served me throughout my years of college and pro-football prove they're still as fast as ever as I pull her into my lap before she can roll off the bench and hurt herself.

Propriety has left the scene. My lapful of drunk young woman curls into me as though she's been on my lap dozens of times, and I don't hate it. Exactly the opposite, and with nothing but a name to go on, it's not a situation I find tenable.

"Windy, you must wake up. I know you've drunk a lot and it's hard, but you must. I need to know if I should call you an ambulance, or if security can escort you to your dorm." I thumb a message to campus police to have them come assist. I don't want to call the paramedics unless absolutely necessary, especially once her name registers in my mind.

Windy Howell is a senior on the women's soccer team. I know this because her coach, Paul Vanderman, and I are good friends, and he talks about his players as though they're his kids. It's a lot easier to do when he's got twenty-five young women to keep track of to my more than a hundred rowdy men. Still, his fond ramblings about his players means I know exactly who this little rule breaker is.

She's a midfielder, which explains her brick-house body with the solid, thickly toned thighs encased in soft, stretchy yoga pants. Midfielders run practically the length of the entire soccer field back and forth for the entirety of the ninety-minute matches. That takes a depth of endurance and physicality uncommon in most other positions on a soccer team, and definitely compared to other sports. This girl's definitely got a body built for stamina and dammit, I should not be thinking such sex-adjacent thoughts about a student athlete. Especially one sitting in my lap, drunk off her ass.

As a senior, I know she's legally old enough to drink, but I also know alcohol during the season is strictly forbidden for University of Mariposa athletes. A rule which I'm completely positive my little lush is well aware of.

The soft whirr of a campus-police golf cart to my right captures my attention just as Windy's chin snaps up and her confusion multiplies. I narrowly miss a knock on the chin, but manage to jerk my head out of the way.

"C-coach M-m-McCree. Sir. Oh shit. Sir, what happened?" The guard stammering and stuttering my name has Windy turning to stone in my lap. Slowly she turns her anime-oversized eyes my way. In another time and place, those big, pleading puppy eyes would have me bending over backward to spoil her like a princess. I give my head a shake, unsure where these powerfully instantaneous thoughts are coming from.

"Oh no. No, no, no, no, no! You're… you are… um… you're him." Her stammering is far more adorable than the still-floundering security guard's is.

"I am him and he is me, yes. Little lush, you're quite the eloquent rulebreaker, aren't you?" My reminder of the rules and her drunken state seems to snap the sober right into her.

"I didn't mean to drink! Someone filled the water bottle with Everclear. I don't drink because of…" Her thought trails off as a sweet blush races over her cheeks. She's practically glowing pink in the light of the streetlamps all around.

"Because of…" I want to hear her explanation, especially because if I remember what Paul's told me about her, she's the exact opposite of his troublemaker extraordinaire player, her best friend Taryn Ellis. The story of how she wound up alone and drunk on a bench outside the football stadium should be an interesting one.

"I'm just not supposed to. Coach Vanderman has strict rules and plus I, um, I take a medicine that makes alcohol a bad idea." She's obviously embarrassed admitting that to me, but it's a relief. It shows she's most likely not suffering from alcohol poisoning, and explains how she wound up here. I want to ask a dozen questions, like what medicine, but I hold back.

"I was trying to hurry home before it hit me after I realized I drank the Everclear by mistake. Guess I didn't make it, huh?" She's still bright red, and the innocent blush has those protective feelings rising again. Why is no one taking care of this precious doll?

"Why were you at a party alone, little lush? You have to know that's dangerous," I scold. If she were my little girl, I'd be doing more than lecturing her. She'd be bare-ass over my knee right now, security guard be damned, and I'd be painting her backside as red as her cheeks.

Instead, I allow security to get her dorm information pulled up and arrange for a transport to her room. Before she leaves, I put my phone number into her cell and make her promise to text me when she gets home, safely, and to come to the athletic department health center first thing in the morning to be checked over.

It may be the middle of the night, but there's always people coming and going around here, and the small crowd of onlookers keeps me aware of the potential for gossip to spread. The last thing I need just when my season is heating up is the rumor mill getting ahold of my personal life. Been there. Survived that.

I think it's perfectly normal to become more private than ever after having the woman I was dating air all our private business publicly the way my ex did. These days, I keep my preferences and practices under wraps. It took the better part of two years for the gossip to die down, and I'm not eager to ignite it again.

That doesn't mean I won't be seeing little miss Windy Howell again soon.