Maddox moves in closer. “You good?”
“Fine.”
He watches me for one long second. “Right.”
I ignore him.
The real problem starts near the end of practice.
We break for water, and Carly, being Carly, wanders a little closer when a couple of players ask her about the gear. She starts answering, smiling, clearly thrilled they care enough to ask.
I’m halfway across the field when I hear one of them say, “Did you design what you’re wearing, too? I’ve seen that shirt online, but it had the CU logo.”
She grins. “Yeah. I get to keep the prototypes.”
“Damn,” another one says. “You always come out and personally model it, or is today special?”
A couple of them snicker.
She doesn’t seem to catch the angle right away. Of course she doesn’t. She’s too busy being excited that people want to talk to her about her designs.
“Break’s over,” I interrupt before she can respond.
The group disperses instantly.
One of them lingers half a beat too long, all college swagger and stupidity. “Sorry, man. Didn’t realize you were hitting that.”
The silence hangs, and I swear to god I can feel my eye twitching.
“Jesus Christ,” Maddox mutters somewhere behind me.
I take one step toward the kid. “Go to the cones,” I say.
He blinks. “What?”
“Suicides. Now. Ten sets. More if you open your mouth again.”
His face drains. “Shit, I was just?—”
“Fifteen.”
He goes.Fast.
Carly is quiet beside me.
I drag a hand over my mouth and stare out at the field, trying to get my temper back under control before I do something even dumber.
“This was probably a mistake,” I mutter.When I feel her gaze on me and look, she’s watching me with that unreadable expression she gets when she’s thinking harder than she wants me to know.
“What was?” she asks.
“Bringing you.”
Her brows pull together. “Because some college guys acted like college guys?”
“Yeah.”
“You know I can handle comments from twenty-year-olds, right?”
