Page 28 of Her Coach

She gave me a once-over with those slate gray eyes of hers that shut me up silently many times as an unruly teenage girl.

“I saw the way you were hovering on Friday. You followed that tour like you had nowhere better to be.” Those gray eyes didn’t blink. “Don’t try to set me up with him, Brynn. It’s not going to work.”

On the one hand, relief coursed its way through my veins. Relief I had no rhyme or reason to experience. But I couldn’t help the next question that popped its way through my lips. “Why?”

Her face hardened before she drew in a deep breath and pulled me into a hug. I wrapped her up tightly, burying my face into the crook of her neck as she swayed me side to side. It didn’t matter that the heat from her shower made me sweat. It didn’t matter that she was still damp. It didn’t matter that her hair dripped all over me.

She tucked my head beneath her chin like all of those times when I was a child and cried over a skinned knee, or a bruised elbow, or a friend that wouldn’t stop teasing me.

Then she kissed the top of my head before her whispered voice poured forth. “Because there’s no one on this planet made for me the way your father was.”

I squeezed her as tightly as I could. I didn’t want to look up at her because I didn’t want to think of my mother being alone for the rest of her life. Maybe that’s why I moved home. Maybe it wasn’t to help my mother get better, but to help her find a better life. Maybe I just didn’t want Mom being alone.

I sure as shit didn’t like being alone.

“Now, come on,” Mom said with a soft sniffle before she placed her hands on my shoulders.

When I looked up into her face, I felt ten years old all over again. “I love you, Mom.”

She smiled through her tears as she carded her hands through my tangled hair. “Love you, too, princess.” Then she cleared her throat and released me. “Now, get on down to that stadium. I’ve got a meeting in fifteen minutes, a phone call after that, and then I’ll be down.”

When Mom disappeared into her closet, I resolved myself to my morning tasks. I made my way into the hallway bathroom, cleaned myself up quickly, and threw on some comfy clothes. I forwent my contacts in favor of my squared-off black glasses and slipped into a pair of fuzzy slippers that Mom would chastise me about wearing in public later.

Then again, she always did have a thing about nice shoes.

After snatching up my purse and grabbing my keys, I made my way to the stadium. The drive over was short enough that I had just enough time to swing through a coffee drive-through first.

My phone buzzed before I even got to the car. Rhett: she doing ok this morning? I hadn't even told him about the shower. I stared at the text for a second, then typed back she's fine, and didn't let myself think too hard about how he already knew to ask.

It didn't shock me that the stadium was already buzzing by the time I got there. I could hear the team on the ice from the corridor — skates and sticks and Jett's voice carrying over all of it the way Jett's voice always did. I'd watched them Saturday and I already knew what I'd find if I walked down to the stands. Colton moving between lines, no clipboard, just his eyes and whatever he said that made guys reset and try again without needing to be yelled at.

I had community relations work to do. I went to my office.

I settled in at my desk and pulled up the sponsorship emails I'd been putting off since Friday. Three of them needed actual responses. I worked through the first two without looking up.

I was halfway through the third when I heard footsteps in the hallway and looked at the clock. An hour had passed.

"Coach?" I called out.

"Yep," his gruff voice came from just outside.

He appeared in my doorway a second later, still in practice gear, skates off, a towel slung over one shoulder. He looked at me the way he always did — that quick, thorough once-over that didn't feel like checking you out so much as checking you in.

"Didn't know you were here," he said.

"Community relations stuff." I held up the email on my screen as evidence. "Mom said she'd be in by lunch. Anything you need before then?"

He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. "No. Just checking who left the light on."

"That would be me. Sorry."

"Don't be." His eyes moved around my office for a second, the framed team photos on the wall, the stack of sponsorship folders, the half-finished iced coffee sweating on my desk. "You do all of this from here?"

"Most of it." I leaned back in my chair. "Sometimes from the bar between customers, which my boss pretends not to notice."

The corner of his mouth moved. "Efficient."

"I prefer to think of it as multitasking."