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He hummed.
I scratched my cheek, feeling oddly vulnerable at him reading over the skills I planned on teaching the kids. He kept reading and it got worse. It wasn’t like he was a fantastic coach, he wasn’t. I had no doubt he could have been a great coach if he wanted to, but he didn’t.
I scrunched my toes up in my socks and watched his face.
“Did your parents have money?” I found myself asking.
Kulti “uh-huh”ed.
I pulled my knee up to my chest and put my chin on it, careful not to rub the yogurt all over it. “There was no scholarship for you at the academy?”
He glanced up. “FC Berlin covered the costs.”
No shit. They’d recruited him at eleven? It happened, but I guess it still amazed me.
“And you, Taco?”
I smiled at him from behind my knee, surprised he was asking. “You’ve been to my house, Germany. We weren’t poor-poor, but I didn’t have a pair of name brand shoes until I was probably fifteen, and my brother bought them for me with his first advance from the MPL. I have no idea how my parents managed to swing paying for everything for so long but they did.” Actually, I did know. They cut a whole bunch of things out of the budget. A lot. “I just got lucky they cared, otherwise things would have gone a lot differently.”
“I’m sure you haven’t made them regret anything they did.”
“Eh. I’m sure I’ve made them wonder what the hell they were doing a time or two.” Or three. Or four. “I used to have a terrible temper—“
The German snorted. Straight-up snorted, lips fluttering, too.
Ass.
I nudged at his hip with my toes. “What? I don’t have a terrible temper anymore.”
Those awesome almost-hazel eyes looked up again from over the notebook. “No, you don’t and neither do I.”
“Ha!” I nudged at him again and he grabbed my foot with his free hand. I tried to yank it back, but he didn’t let go. “Oh please, my temper isn’t anywhere near as bad as yours.”
“It is.” He pulled my foot back toward him, getting a better grip around the instep.
“Trust me. It isn’t.”
“You’re a menace when you’re mad,schnecke. Maybe the refs haven’t caught you pinching girls, but I have,” he said casually.
I sat up straight. “Unless you have any physical proof, it never happened.”
Kulti stared at me for a beat before shaking his head, his thumb pressing a hard line down the arch of my foot. “You’re an animal.”
My shoulders shook but I managed to keep myself from laughing. “It takes one to know one.”
The corners of the German’s mouth tipped up. “Unlike others, I have never pretended to be nice.”
“Oh, I know.” I smiled at him. “There was that time you bit a guy—“
“He bit me three times before I had enough,” he argued.
I raised an eyebrow but kept going. “Don’t get me started on the thousand times you elbowed someone in the face.” Once the words were out of my mouth, I reeled back. “How the hell didn’t you get banned?”
The fact he shrugged at that claim said just how much of a crap he still didn’t give about the staggering number of noses he’d broken and eyebrows he’d busted.
“All the fights you were in—“
“I usually didn’t start them.”
