Page 17 of Her Player

I didn't move.

“Miss C,” Rhett said quietly.

“I know.” I reached for the door handle. “I'm fine.”

I wasn't fine.

I was sitting in my own driveway in the middle of a crisis that had everything to do with my daughter and not one single thing to do with me, and somehow all I could think about was a Tuesday afternoon in April. A realtor apologizing for peeling wallpaper. A row of willow trees that Ryan Caldwell never got to stand beneath.

I got out of the car.

The night air hit me, cool and carrying the smell of fresh grass from the rain we'd had earlier that week. The wind moved through the willow branches overhead, that soft sound that had lived in the back of my memory for seventeen years without me ever quite meaning to keep it there. Brynn was already moving ahead of me toward the front door, Coach's hand at the small of her back, her shoulders hunched the way they only got when she was trying her damnedest not to cry in public.

My daughter was hurting.

That was the only damn thing that mattered right now.

I straightened my spine. Squared my shoulders. And followed them inside.

Everything moved in a blur after that. I didn’t register anything else until I felt something cool blowing against the nape of my neck, and I came back to myself in a room I recognized immediately.

Of course Rhett had put me in this one.

It was the largest of the guest rooms, or it had been designated as a guest room in my head in the years since, because calling it the master suite felt like something I hadn’t earned the right to do yet. I had picked out the four-poster bed myself. The chandelier. The crown molding had been my specific request to the contractor, an ornate pattern I’d seen in a magazine and circled in pen and handed over like it was the most important decision I’d ever make. Ryan would have teased me for caring so much about crown molding.

I stood very still in the center of it and breathed.

I stood in a very opulent bedroom that was practically the size of my damn living room.

My tired eyes took in the ornate crown molding and the chandelier hanging tightly from the ceiling. I turned toward the French double doors cloaked in heavy blackout curtains that I knew led out to the terrace. The plush carpet beneath my feet had clearly been replaced since I last sent someone in to maintain the place. My heels sank into its softness, and had my ankles not been trained over a multitude of years to withstand any surface in my heels, including ice, I would’ve probably rolled and busted my ankle on that carpet.

It wasn’t until my eyes swept over the four-poster bed and roamed toward the bedroom door, however, that I realized I wasn’t alone.

“Rhett,” I said, caught off guard, as I watched him leaning against the doorframe.

I heard my daughter sniffle in the distance, and the hairs on the nape of my neck prickled. I heard Coach’s murmured voice floating through the air as Rhett pushed off the doorframe and started a slow walk toward me. His shadow loomed in front of him, his body illuminated by the warm white light of the hallway. And as he crossed the dark of the massive guest bedroom, lit up only by the light from the hallway and the slivers of light streaming through the blackout curtains, I drew in a deep breath.

I let out an equally heavy sigh.

“Hey there, Miss C,” Rhett said as he came to a stop in front of me.

I stared at his chest as I heard my daughter’s sniffling stop. I heard Coach’s murmured voice overpower the tears, until eventually, I no longer heard Bry crying at all. Even though Coach was the exact reason why we were in this fucking mess, I was thankful that he could at least dry my daughter’s tears. Even if he was the reason for them.

No, it’s not Coach’s fault. It’s the media’s fault.

“Don’t worry, Miss C,” Rhett said as he reached over and brushed his thumb along my cheek, “it is kind of his fault.”

I didn’t even try to hide my shock as I whipped my face up to his. I ripped my hair out of its bun and shook out my limp, straight hair. I gathered it at the crown of my head, moving my hands through the twisting motion for my locks, and effectively pinned it back to my head just like I always did.

But all it did was make Rhett chuckle. “You know, you’re a lot easier to read than you realize.”

I snickered. “Then stop looking.”

He smirked as he moved closer to me. “Not a chance.”

His body blocked the light from the hallway as he crossed the room toward me. He stood in front of me, his massive form blocking my sight of the bedroom door. I felt the pad of his thumb slide across my cheek once more. The warmth damn near took me out at the knees. However, I didn’t even realize another tear had escaped down my cheek until I felt him brush the wetness away.

However, when his finger lingered a little too long around the edge of my lips, I shook my head softly.