Page 70 of Kulti

“Give me yours.” He had his phone out of his pocket a split second later, and I rattled off my number. Another long moment later, he nodded. “Now you have it.”

It didn’t hit me until much later what exactly he said and what it implied.

I had Reiner Kulti’s phone number, for one.

And I was going to text him—two.

But three seemed to be the one that really snuck into my chest cavity; he had asked me if I wanted to play with him.

He had asked me to play. With him.

Instead, he was going to play softball with me and a few of my friends. Huh.

Seven P.M. at Hershey Park. I’ll wait for you by the bathrooms near the parking lot.

I checked my phone one more time to make sure that the message really had gone through. Then I checked it again to make sure that I hadn’t missed a text in response. I hadn’t.

With my bat, glove and bottle of water in one hand and armpit, I fidgeted with my headband with the other. I’d accidentally grabbed a thick one from my glove box, which fit over my ears, and those made me feel a little claustrophobic. I messed with it some more as I looked around the nearly full parking lot. It was only five minutes before seven, and Kulti still hadn’t shown up.

It then hit me again with the same strength it had the first time, Kulti was coming to play softball, only after he’d asked if I wanted to play soccer with him. Why hadn’t he asked anyone else to play with him?

Well I was probably the most aggressive forward on the team, so we had that in common. Harlow didn’t count because… she was a defender, right? I was the fastest. Without really tooting my own horn, it was a fact. So really, who else would he play against? My style was the closest to his, and he’d enjoyed beating me the first time.

So there.

No big deal.

I was an obvious choice.

Plus, maybe he had asked someone else? I doubted it, but you never knew.

Possibly another minute ticked by, and I looked around the lot again, anxiously. I was nervous. Why was I nervous?

For Kulti’s sake I’d already decided not to tell anyone who he was. I wasn’t positive how they would all react, especially Marc and Simon, or even if they’d let him play, and I didn’t want him feeling under a microscope from the start. I was going to tell them he was my friend who had recently moved to Houston.

That wasn’treallya stretch, I figured.

The headlights of a car illuminated my body for a split second, before the car pulling into the lot turned and then finally took a spot one row down. It was the same nondescript plain black sedan that wouldn’t have called my attention, even with the Audi emblem on it.

Of course he’d be in an Audi.

I smirked to myself as a long body folded out of the vehicle’s back passenger door, slamming it shut before heading to the back and grabbing a bag from the recently opened trunk. His tall lean body seemed even more imposing without his team T-shirt or polo. The graceful lines of muscle that lined his shoulders and arms for the first time since he quit playing soccer full-time were delineated perfectly in the shadow of the setting sun. What I really caught a good eyeful of though, was the wide earband he had on that looked similar to mine, matting down his short hair and making him look like a different person. Not like himself at all, unless you really knew who you were looking at. The length of his hair on top of his larger frame and facial hair was an excellent disguise.

Poop. Poop, poop, thisisyourcoachstupid, poop.

He gave me what could have been considered a smile, if you closed your eyes and looked sideways, the minute he spotted me standing there, which was almost immediately.

“Hi,” I greeted him.

That sort of smile grew maybe a millimeter. He grunted his greeting, looking around at the three fields that seemed to form a U-shape. Two of them were already full, but the one that my friends usually played on was mostly empty, with only a few people gathered.

“Come on, before we get stuck on a shitty—“ I winced at myself. Was I allowed to cuss in front of him even though we weren’t on Pipers hours? “—crappy team.”

He tipped his head down in a lazy nod and followed after me as I led him around the outskirts of the field. “They’re all really nice,” I told him, not that he’d care, “but I think we should keep your identity a secret.”

Kulti shrugged but didn’t say a word as we approached what I quickly counted to be seventeen people. Damn it. Recognizing more than half of the people hanging around, I waved at the ones I knew and headed toward Marc and Simon, who had their backs turned to me. As soon as I was close enough, I kicked each one in the ass with the side of my foot. “Hey guys.”

Marc turned around first, frowning at getting kicked until he realized I’d been the one to do it. “You shit, you could have told me you were coming.”

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