Page 59 of Her Coach

I checked the time on my desktop before clapping her ass softly with my hand. “I’ve got endurance work with the boys in thirty.”

“Text me when you’re done?” she asked.

I grinned as I begrudgingly relinquished her. “If you want.”

She beamed up at me with a smile. “I do.”

I nodded. “Then I will.”

“Good,” she said as she took a few more bites of her food and then scooped up her root beer. “Mm, getting me another one of these before I head out.”

I chuckled as I watched her saunter toward my office door. “Be safe heading home.”

“Oh, we only live a few minutes⁠—”

“Be safe. Going home,” I stated again with a bit more gruffness in my voice.

She swallowed hard before nodding. “You have my word.”

I winked. “Good girl.”

A flush that worked its way across her cheeks before she slipped out of my office was a pretty little picture that I knew would hang in my head during the team’s afternoon endurance work.

Which was more than I deserved from an angel like her, if anyone asked me about it.

24

BRYNN

I smoothed my hands over my dress as Colton’s echo reverberated through my head. I was nervous for tonight. Nervous for what was coming. Not sure why, it wasn’t as if I didn’t know what to expect.

Scratch that, I didn’t have a fucking clue what to expect.

Despite his promise that he’d show me how to do things right, I enjoyed my first date with Colton. He may have felt a bit self-conscious regarding what happened between us, but I knew it felt right. And whatever I had to do to convince him that he didn’t take something from me, even if I gave myself over to him again, I’d do it.

The thing that sat wrong with me was the conversation that never happened. Mom’s heels had saved me from having to say it out loud, and part of me had been grateful for that. But a bigger part of me had spent the last two days replaying that look on his face. The way his eyes went hard. The way he said my name in that coach voice that meant business. He knew. And he hadn’t said a word about it since, which could mean a hundred different things and I’d cycled through every single one of them.

Tonight, I was going to say it. Out loud. Like a grown woman. I was going to tell him that I’d been a virgin and that I’d chosen him on purpose, and that I didn’t want him to make some big protective deal out of it and go weird on me. I just needed him to know. Because if we were doing this, whatever this was, I didn’t want us building it on something I’d been too scared to say.

Because let’s face it, giving myself over to Colton was a breeze. I hadn’t even thought twice about it.

Somewhere along the way I had stopped building that particular future for Mom. I wasn’t sure exactly when. I just knew I had, and I wasn’t sorry.

I wouldn’t think twice about it tonight, either.

“Knock knock.”

Mom’s voice came from the doorway, and I turned my head toward her, smiling softly. “What do you think?”

She tilted her head as she leaned against the doorframe. “Haven’t seen you in that dress in a while.”

I shrugged as I turned back to my mirror. “Haven’t had a chance to wear it.”

“Come here, your tag’s out. Let me help.”

I stood there as Mom came behind me, her heels clicking behind her. Why she wore her heels, even in the house, I’d never understand. It was one of the things I always remembered Dad commenting on. “Victoria, honey, you’re home. Why are you still in those shoes?” He always teased her about it, and I’d always expected the playful banter between the two of them as she clopped around in her heels, even while in her nightgown sometimes.

I felt her tuck the tag back in before she worked my zipper up the rest of the way.