Page 69 of Her Player

RHETT

Morning came quietly. I heard Coach and Brynn moving through the house before either of them knew I was awake.

I lay there for a while, Victoria’s back against my chest, listening to the sounds of them in the kitchen. The low murmur of Coach’s voice. Bry’s laugh, soft and a little waterlogged still, but present. Real.

She was going to be okay.

I looked down at Victoria. She was still out, breathing slow and even, her hair a disaster against the pillow. The tight, deliberate woman who clip-clopped down Caldwell Arena hallways like she owned every inch of them (which she did) looked nothing like herself right now. And somehow that was the most Victoria I’d ever seen her.

I eased out of bed without waking her.

Coach was at the kitchen window when I got there, arms crossed, staring out at the willow trees. Bry was at the table with a cup of tea she wasn’t drinking.

“How is she?” Coach asked without turning around.

“Sleeping,” I said. I moved to the stove and checked the leftover soup. Still good. “How’s Bry?”

“Better,” Bry answered for herself. She looked up at me. Her eyes were puffy but steady. “Thank you. For yesterday.”

I just shook my head. No thanks needed.

Coach turned from the window. He looked at my ribs, which I’d made the mistake of coming out in a t-shirt, and crossed the room. He pressed two fingers against the worst of the bruising without asking permission, which was very Coach.

I hissed.

“Still just bruising,” he said. “But you’re seeing the doctor after Monday’s practice regardless.”

“Already planning on it.”

He held my gaze for a second. Then he nodded, the way he did when something was settled, and moved to pour himself a coffee.

Bry was watching me from the table. She had that look she got sometimes, the one that was all Victoria around the eyes. Measuring. Deciding something.

“She talked about him last night,” she said quietly. “My dad.”

I sat down across from her. “Yeah?”

“She doesn’t do that. Not with anyone.” She wrapped both hands around her mug. “Not even me. Not really.” She paused. “Whatever you’re doing, just. Keep doing it.”

I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

Coach set a bowl of reheated soup in front of Bry without comment. She looked at it. Then at him. Then she picked up the spoon.

I thought about what Brynn just told me while I watched her eat. She doesn’t do that with anyone. I’d spent years on the outside of Victoria’s walls, learning every crack and seam without ever expecting to find a way through. And somewhere in the last few weeks, without either of us announcing it, I had. Not because I pushed. Not because I wore her down. But because she decided. Victoria never did anything she didn’t decide. That was the thing about her that had undone me from the beginning and kept on undoing me every single day.

She chose to let me in. And now I was sitting in her kitchen eating reheated soup while her daughter watched me with her mother’s eyes, and I understood for the first time what it meant to be accounted for in someone’s life. Not invited. Accounted for. Like I was already in the equation before she even knew she was running it.

Coach set his mug down on the counter. He looked at Bry. “Give us a minute?”

She looked between us. Then she picked up her soup and her tea and disappeared down the hallway without argument, which told me she already knew whatever Coach was about to say.

Coach waited until he heard her door close. Then he turned to me.

“I filed a relationship disclosure this morning,” he said. “With the league office. And with Victoria.”

I looked at him. “When?”

“Before you were up. Went to her office and gave it to her directly.” He crossed his arms. “PHL governance requires it within thirty days of a relationship becoming official. I wasn’t going to wait.”