Page 61 of Her Coach

She snickered. “Don’t be ridiculous, princess. I know you. I know you’d never⁠—”

“Why can’t you just let me be happy?” I asked.

She sighed. “This has nothing to do with whether or not you’re happy, Brynn. He’s an older man. An older man with a history, if the news articles of his forced retirement are any indication of⁠—”

I scoffed and made my way to the small jewelry stand on my vanity. “He’s not taking advantage of me and he’s not putting me into any sort of position I don’t already want to be in with him.”

“Brynn.”

“What!?” I squealed as I whipped around, sliding earrings into my ears. “Mom, it’s just a date.”

Her voice grew stern, and I didn’t like it. “What was going on in that office wasn’t just a date.”

I slipped on the matching necklace and dainty bracelet. “No, Mom,” I said, giving her a huff, “Coach Colton isn’t pressuring me into anything. I’m going out on this date because I want to. There isn’t anything that happened in his office the other day that I didn’t enjoy.” I turned to face her. “Satisfied?”

She looked me up and down before her jaw pulsed. “Don’t give him something you’ll want to take back later. That’ll do a number on anyone’s self-confidence and self-image.”

“My self-image is fine.”

“Not if you’re⁠—”

I grew frustrated and threw my hands into the air. “And what would you know about it? You haven’t even been on a date since Dad died! And maybe you’ve made the decision to be miserable without Dad for the rest of your life, but that doesn’t mean I have to make the same one!”

The second I watched my mother’s jaw drop open, I knew I fucked up.

“Mom,” I said with a soft voice as I tried reaching for her.

It broke my heart when she stepped back.

The silence between us felt different from the silences Mom usually let sit. Those were controlled. Deliberate. This one was something she didn’t have a word for yet, and I watched her work to find it, the way her jaw moved once and then stopped, the way her eyes went somewhere that wasn’t the room.

“Mom,” I said again, softer. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it like that.”

She didn’t answer right away. She moved to the window, just a step, and looked out at the street the way she did sometimes when she needed a moment to decide something. Her hands were clasped in front of her. Her shoulders, always so straight, had dropped by exactly one degree.

“I know you think this is about me,” she said finally. “That I’m projecting, or stuck, or whatever word you want to use for it.” She turned from the window and looked at me directly. “It’s not.”

“Then what is it about?”

She crossed back toward me, stopping close enough that I could smell her perfume — the same one she’d worn my whole life, the one Dad used to say he could find her by in any room. “I hired that man, Brynn. I read everything there was to read about him before I made that call. I know exactly what happened in New York and I know exactly why he said yes when I offered him this job.” She held my eyes. “He didn’t come here because he wanted to be here. He came here because it was the best option available to him after everything fell apart. This city, this team — it’s a rebuilding ground for his reputation. A stepping stone. And the second a better offer lands on his desk, he is going to take it. Because that was always the plan.”

The words landed somewhere uncomfortable. I didn’t let it show. “You don’t know that.”

“I know men who coach at this level,” she said. “I’ve been in this business long enough to know what a man looks like when he’s passing through and what he looks like when he’s staying. Colton Mercer is passing through, Brynn. And I think part of you knows that and you’re choosing him anyway, and I understand that, I do — but I need you to understand what you’re walking into.”

“So your concern is that he’ll leave.” I kept my voice even. “Not the scandal. Not his age. He’ll leave.”

“The scandal tells me he makes decisions with his heart before his head and pays for it later.” Her voice wasn’t unkind. That was almost worse — when Mom was unkind it was easier to push back against. “What keeps me up at night?” She shook her head once. “It’s that he is going to leave this city when something better comes along, and you are going to be standing right here in the middle of a life you’ve already put on hold once, trying to figure out how to start over.”

I didn’t say anything for a moment.

She reached up and tucked one curl back behind my ear, careful not to disturb the rest of her work. Her voice dropped. “I’m not trying to take something from you, princess. I’m trying to make sure you go into this with your eyes open. That’s all.”

“My eyes are open,” I said quietly.

She looked at me for a long moment. Long enough that I felt her really looking, the way she had when I was small and she was trying to decide if I was telling the truth or just telling her what she wanted to hear.

Whatever she found, she accepted it. She straightened up. Rolled her shoulders back. Became Victoria Caldwell again, every inch of her.