Page 74 of Her Player

“Yeah?”

I reached out and pressed my palm flat against his chest, feeling his heartbeat steady beneath my hand. “I’m glad you turned left.”

He covered my hand with his. “Me too, Miss C.”

I closed my eyes.

For the first time in fourteen years, the anniversary of Ryan’s death didn’t end in silence.

26

VICTORIA

Birds chirped outside, pulling me out of bed. The smell of coffee wafted somewhere in the distance. I dragged my ass to the bathroom, shedding my clothes all on my own for the first time in two days.

It was time for me to get the fuck up.

I’d given the anniversary the day it asked for. I’d given the day after to crying in the shower with a man who didn’t apologize for being there. But today was game day. The big day. The day that our team played for their lives in order to get to the championship. I had to get to Caldwell Arena and get things ready. My general manager had the operational checklist handled: the Zamboni, the drink stations, the food kiosk setup with The Hideout. That wasn’t my job. My job was the forty-seven unanswered emails, the league filing Seth had been holding for me since yesterday, the arena security contract renewal I’d pushed to Friday and then ignored, and the three calls I owed to people who had been patient enough not to chase me.

I had completely checked out for forty-eight hours.

My team needed me to check back in.

I hadn’t so much as checked the news in two days, for crying out loud. I didn’t know if my daughter was still in it. I didn’t know if they were still tearing Colton apart. Hell, I hadn’t even checked the headlines on my phone. Fucking Christ, I hadn’t even picked up my phone!

I owed a lot of people a lot of ‘thank you’’s for helping me get through this.

Rhett specifically.

I thought about him standing at the stove stirring soup like he did it every day. The way he’d been in and out of that bedroom for two days without ever once making me feel like a burden or a project. The way he moved through this estate, my estate, the one I’d barely lived in, like he already knew where everything was. Like he’d been learning the layout of my life the same careful way he learned everything else about me. Quietly. Without announcing it. Without asking permission.

I thought about waking up in the dark and feeling the steadiness of him breathing beside me, solid and real and understanding, somewhere below conscious thought, that it meant I was safe. That whatever today was going to bring, I wasn’t going to face it alone.

I thought about his hand covering mine in the car. His thumb across my knuckles. The way he always tucked that same rogue strand of hair behind my ear, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like he’d been doing it for years instead of weeks.

Three years, in his case. Three years of watching. Paying attention. Showing up in the left corridor when everyone else went right.

I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my hands in my lap.

I’d been certain of it for weeks and kept not letting myself say it. But sitting here in the early morning quiet of the bedroom I’d designed and never slept in, wearing the grief of another anniversary, I let myself say it properly.

Ryan would have liked Rhett Calloway very much.

And Ryan, who was always better at the forward motion than I was, would have been absolutely insufferable about telling me so.

I picked up my heels from the floor, slipped them on one at a time, and stood up.

Time to get back to work.

I took my time cleaning up. I took my time slipping into one of my suits. I needed to feel normal again. Even though it was game day, even though I had the option to dress down, I gussied myself up. I piled my hair high, securing it in a claw clip. On went the makeup. On went the pencil skirts that made me feel powerful and alive. I slipped into my blackest, tallest, nicest heels that still shimmered beneath any light that touched it. I slipped on earrings. Put on gold bangles. Plucked my fucking eyebrows.

I emerged a new woman, ready to take on whatever came next for her.

The estate was pretty empty, though. That didn’t shock me. Brynn was probably already at the bar, helping to figure out the menu for the game. Coach and Rhett were no doubt already at Caldwell Arena doing whatever the fuck pre-game ritual those two had going on.

And me?

I snatched up my purse, grabbed my cell phone, and headed straight toward my office at Caldwell Arena.