12. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Carissa

Coach Galvin is different from how I expected him to be. When Darcy first told me about the job, she said the coach was an even-keeled man with a knack for strategy, and he came to the Thunder after coaching the Irish national team for several years, which supposedly means he's good at what he does.

Today I've been mostly focused on Mel as she teaches me the most common way to tape players' limbs for stability or support, but I've also spent a decent amount of time watching the coach direct his team.

And by "direct" I mean "shout at." Profusely. I've learned some highly creative insults and curses over the last couple of hours.

"I've seen half-dead grannies run faster than you!" Coach yells when Bean gets hold of the ball and darts through the defense. Honestly, as far as I can tell, Bean is the fastest guy on the team and just now outran three different guys before he got stopped. "Have you been lying around all week, Henderson? Taking it easy when you think the boss isn't looking?"

It's the first time I've seen Bean look anything but confident. He tosses the ball aside to reset the play as the coach keeps tearing into him. I'm pretty sure he's trying not to let the insults get to him, but he's failing. Even from several yards down the field, I can see the pain on his face.

"Is the coach always this harsh?" I ask Mel.

She looks up from the new roll of tape she was unwrapping and wrinkles her nose. "He didn't used to be. He was a good coach at first."

"What changed?"

She shrugs. "We lost the last two seasons? I don't know. But he's in an especially bad mood today."

After the next play, Bean gets the ball again but is tackled almost immediately. It takes him a while to get up, and when he does, he's limping. Coach shouts at him again and points to us before turning his furious attention to the rest of the guys.

For someone who's injured, Bean reaches us surprisingly quickly and flops onto the grass in a heap.

"Are you good to take this one?" Mel asks. "I need to check on Raiden." When I nod, she hops to her feet and heads to her office to check her phone, leaving me alone with Bean.

I grab the tape, determined to do the best job I can so I can avoid any shouting directed at me. Mel introduced me to the coach before practice started, and he only spoke with me long enough to confirm I'm the person the owners hired. And that was enough interaction for me.

"Where's the pain?" I ask Bean.

"Hmm?" He was watching the drills the team started running, but he looks back at me and shrugs. "Oh. Uh. Here." He points vaguely at his shin.

I purse my lips. So much for proving myself. Did he really fake an injury to avoid getting yelled at some more? "He's wrong, you know. "

Bean grits his teeth, eyes on his legs. "About what?"

"You're insanely fast."

Scoffing, he runs a hand through his sweaty hair and shakes his head. "Apparently I'm not."

"I'm pretty sure you can run circles around the rest of the team." I glance up and realize the coach is watching us. Face heating, I shift so I'm facing Bean and start wrapping his leg, not caring if he's not actually hurt. "Don't listen to him."

"Did you know he played on six different champion teams?" Bean watches me work, a deep furrow in his brow. "Everyone says he's brilliant, and maybe he is, but I wouldn't know because the only thing he's taught me is how pathetic I am."

"You're not pathetic, Bean." I pause, waiting for him to meet my gaze. I can't have a serious conversation with him while calling him Bean. "What's your actual name?"

That gets a smile out of him, which helps me relax a bit. Maybe he's not too downtrodden. "Wyatt."

Smiling, I return to my taping as I talk. "Wyatt, if your coach doesn't respect you and the effort you put in, nothing he says against you is worth your time. You know you're fast, and you know how much your team relies on you."

Wyatt grabs my hand, stopping my movement. "Thanks, Rizzo. You're right. Um…" He swallows. "I know I was a jerk for shouting at you the other day, but maybe you and I could—"

"How does that feel?" I tug my hand free, knowing my face is bright red right now. I stand up, hoping that conveys how much I don't want him to finish his sentence. I knew this would happen eventually, that one of the guys would finally work up the courage to ask me out, but I hoped it would take longer.

I'm terrible at saying no, and already the guilt of turning him down is building in my stomach and leaving me queasy. And he hasn't even asked me yet!

Wyatt stands as well and tries to wiggle his foot, with little success. He gives me a sheepish smile. "Uh, you probably need more practice. I'm happy to be your dummy. We could grab dinner and bring it to my place so you can—"

"Oh, um." Gah, this would be so much easier if he wasn't such a nice and friendly guy! "I don't think that's a good idea, Wyatt."

His expression falls. "Oh."

Sweet merciful heavens, he looks like a kicked puppy, and my resolve is slipping. "We work together, Wyatt, and that's a boundary I can't afford to cross." But maybe I could do it this once. It would be work. I can make sure he knows that, and there won't be any harm in getting to know him better, right? Especially after that verbal beating he got today, he probably needs a win. "Maybe—"

"Paxton!" The sharp call of my name makes me jump.

I peer around Wyatt's shoulder to see Cole jogging toward us. Most of his expression is neutral, but his eyebrows are pulled low. "Yes?" I squeak. I can't decide if I'm grateful for his interruption or annoyed. We didn't talk much this afternoon after I picked him up to come to practice, so it's hard to know what kind of mood he's in today.

Cole glances at Wyatt, who clenches his jaw, before turning his attention back to me. "What happened to Mel?"

"She went to check her phone."

"I was hoping she could help with my knee. It's feeling loose today."

"Oh." With the tape still in my hand, I hold it up and shrug. "I could help. Apparently I need the practice."

Cole glances down at Wyatt's obstructed ankle and suppresses a chuckle. "Clearly. Bean, you probably won't want to stay away from Coach for too long and give him more reasons to shout at you." He claps Wyatt on the shoulder and gives him a raised eyebrow look that instantly sours Wyatt's mood.

Grumbling something under his breath, Wyatt tears a couple strips of tape from his skin and heads back into the fray, leaving me alone with Cole.

I narrow my eyes at him. "You didn't have to do that."

Chuckling, he folds his arms, which has the effect of making him look bigger than he already is. Yes, I trauma-dumped on him last night, but that doesn't give him the right to butt into my affairs. I've already used him more than a good friend should by borrowing his car, and I don't know how to feel about him stepping in to save me from attention.

"For your information," he says, "I was serious about wanting Mel's help. But I may have delayed coming over here until I noticed you were uncomfortable."

"I wasn't…" I stop when he raises an eyebrow at me. Apparently he's really expressive with those eyebrows when he chooses to be anything other than stoic. "Okay, so maybe I didn't know how to let him down easy."

"All you have to do is say no."

"That's easy for you to say!" Crouching down, I slap the end of the tape onto the side of Cole's thigh and pull it down to his shin on the opposite side, doing the same in the other direction to make an X below his knee. It takes a lot of concentration to avoid letting my fingers stray over his muscles. This man's legs are huge. "How's that? And I can't not worry about hurting someone's feelings, so rejecting him feels cruel."

Cole tests his step and nods. "That's great, actually. Not the cruelty part. My knee. Bean's feelings will be fine, and you have every right to say no when this is your job."

"His name is Wyatt." I don't know why I'm advocating for him, but whatever.

Cole smirks at me. "I know his name, Carissa."

"Then why don't you use it?"

"I'll call him Wyatt when he stops calling me Rihanna."

I almost forgot that's what they call Cole; they rarely talk to him anyway. "Where did your nickname come from?"

"Coal under pressure becomes a diamond."

I frown. "I get that, but what does that have to do with Rihanna?"

"It's one of her songs."

"Ah."

"And they think I'm a diva because I was used to wearing padding when I got tackled." There's a shout behind him, and he glances back, nodding at someone. "I should get back out there." He puts a hand on my shoulder. "Just say no. Unless you honestly want to say yes, that's all you need to do." With another smirk, he jogs back onto the field.

I don't know what it is, but there's something about him that feels…lighter? It's as much in his facial expressions, so much looser and less reserved, as it is in his body language. He was so stiff before, even last night, but today he's moving with more fluidity in his steps.

It's great for his flexibility and for preventing injuries, but as I watch him laugh at something Moxie says to him, I wonder if this change is benefiting him in other ways too.

And I wonder what made the change in the first place and if it has anything to do with me.

"Well that was interesting." Mel pops up at my side out of nowhere, making me jump.

Breathless, I press a hand over my heart and ask, "What?"

"Cole."

"What about him?"

She purses her lips, looking at me in the same way my mom used to look at me when she thought I was lying about something. I almost never lie, but I have the worst poker face in the history of ever, which means sometimes people think I'm lying when I'm not. "Did something happen between you two?"

Aside from him being raw and real and making me a simple but delicious dinner and giving me a space to feel safe enough to admit what happened with Peter and letting me borrow his car because I don't have one? "No, of course not," I say. "I barely know him."

And while that's true, I know more than I ever thought I would. I may not know his favorite foods or why he started playing rugby or how he became friends with a movie star, but I know he has a lot of trauma that he hides from people and thinks he can't let himself be happy and loved because of some crazy family history.

I pick him out of the mass of men on the field and watch the way he is so focused as the players gather to throw the ball into play from the sideline. One of these days I'm going to need to learn the rules of this game, but it's fun to watch regardless. Tink throws the ball at the same time several players lift French Roast straight into the air to catch it. French Roast tosses it to Cole before touching the ground, and Cole throws it immediately to Moxie behind him, who makes a run for it but tosses the ball to the side to another player—Sharkie—who bolts forward but is tackled only a few feet later.

Cole is right there in the mess of men, grabbing the ball and doing it all over again. Every time a player goes down, he's there to keep the ball moving.

Why don't any of his teammates like him? Even I know he's good at what he does, and I don't have a clue how the game works.

Mel clears her throat, pulling my attention back to her. "I'm just noticing a shift," she says.

I'm going to be spending a lot of time with this woman, so I sigh and lift my shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "I guess we became friends last night. Just friends," I add when her eyebrows fly high. "He's letting me use his car so I can get to work every day."

"Interesting."

I want to ask what is so interesting about it, but at the same time I don't. I already know Cole's relationship with his teammates is strained, and he doesn't need me gossiping about him. The tabloids do that enough.

I Googled his name again last night after I drove to my apartment, both to revisit that article with me in it and to see more of what people say about Cole Evanson the rugby player. Honestly, they don't talk about his game much. Most of the stories are about his ex getting married soon or tedious blathering about his friendships. I came across a few older stories that speculated about Cole's reasons for leaving football, and I quickly moved away from those.

I know Darcy would love to get the scoop on why Cole switched to rugby, but I don't want to betray anyone's trust the way I accidentally did hers. Her secret is safe for now, but I won't do anything to risk that. Cole's secrets have to be safe too.

Especially when he looks over at me every once in a while and gives me a quick smile. Whatever has changed in him, I want to make sure it stays.

For the rest of practice, Mel walks me through what will happen at the game tomorrow, and I'm glad for the distraction. If I watch the beautiful men on the team for too long, my heart starts to get wild ideas. Mostly about a specific beautiful man. The game will involve a lot more potential for injury than practice does, so I force myself to pay attention to my job.

Difficult though it may be.