"Good. Hit the showers."
Bass skates past me real slow. "Three years, bro. She's been here three years." He says it like I'm the one who hid her, like I personally pulled the cloak off the girl.
I don't know. Maybe I did.
I come off the ice last. That's the rule when you're the new guy who just put a teammate on his ass after the whistle. You go last. You don't make anybody feel hunted in the tunnel.
She's still at the boards. Up close, she's all eyes. Dark, careful, almond-shaped, and pretty enough that I lose the thread of my own thoughts for a second. They're also tired in a way sleep doesn't touch. I find myself wanting to know why, which is not information I need.
"Adams," she says.
My dick jumps a little when she says it.
That, right there, is not good.
She says it to my jaw. Not my eyes. And I don't mind, because every coach and counselor and cop who's ever come looking for my eyes was checking for the crazy in them, and she isn't digging for anything. It's the first conversation in two years that doesn't feel like a search I never agreed to.
"That's me."
"Tuesday. Seven forty-five. Conference Room B,” she says in a steady voice, tightly holding onto the clipboard. "Bring your paperwork."
She walks off without waiting for an answer.
I know I should be at least a little worried that the new coach just set his daughter loose in my orbit. It is not how this kind of thing usually goes. But the only thing I'm actually working out, this exact minute, is how a girl wearing that much fabric still manages to make her ass move like that when she walks.
Fucking delicious.
* * *
The locker room is loud, and I want no part of it. The one upside is I get to sit here and eavesdrop on these idiot motherfuckers who call themselves a team.
"A daughter?" Bass announces to the room, half-dressed. "Coach has had a whole entire daughter in this building for three fucking years, and not one of you degenerates knew?"
"She doesn't look like Coach," somebody mutters.
"Yeah, how were we supposed to know?"
"You didn't know either," Shane says to Bass.
"I said good morning to her TODAY of my own free will. By the math, that means I knew her first, which makes her mine to protect. I called it."
"That's not how anything works," Shane scoffs. “Just be quiet.”
Bass is all noise. I've known a hundred guys like him. Harmless, probably. But I've been wrong about harmless before, so I sit at my stall, keep my head down, and let the zoo be a zoo.
Neo doesn't say a word. He's the big quiet captain at the end of the row, untaping his socks like nothing in this room has ever once surprised him. He looks up. Not at Bass. At me. I hold it, because looking away from a guy like that is straight pussy.
And I'm a lot of things, but I'm not that.
He goes back to his tape, making his judgments about me. That's fine. Most guys do. Most of them get it wrong.
Then Shane drops down next to me, friendly the way a repo man is friendly. "So….conditional status, huh?"
"Yep."
"And the coach's daughter holding your leash."
"Apparently."
