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Josh Corning was in the same boat as me and he gave me a resolute nod as he soaped off.
The stall wasn’t horrible by any means, but it was a tad smaller than the rest and the tiles never seemed to warm up no matter how hot you set the water. Then there was the pressure. While the rest of the guys were putting their showers in the jet setting and letting it pound away at their stiff muscles, the shower head in my stall had only one setting: trickling rain shower.
Turning the knob as hot as I could get it, I showered off quickly, letting the boiling water ease the stiffness in my neck and shoulders.
By the time I stepped out, the guys were already back in the main part of the locker room joking around as they dressed in their regular clothes.
The mention of Ciara’s name amongst the rumbling talk immediately made me perk up and focus in on one of the guys—who I was pretty sure was named Richter.
“I saw Callaghan this morning, I swear she’s the hottest woman in this entire damn place,” the man was saying as he combed his hair in the little mirror magnetized to his locker door.
“Oi, Rich, I thought you weren’t supposed to talk about her anymore,” said the guy standing at the locker next to him. “Didn’t the coaches tell you off last time?”
“Yeah, I swear this guy has been rejected more times than I can count and yet he still keeps coming back for more,” another guy shouted and the locker room erupted into a mass of rumbling laughter.
“Successful people reject rejection,” Richter said, putting on a lofty accent that made the guys around him burst into another fit of chuckles. “One of these days she’s going to say yes. She rode the quake once and she’ll do it again.”
“All right, Tolstoy, shut the fuck up before you get yourself in trouble,” his locker neighbor said, giving the man a playful shove.
Something about the way he was talking about her grated against my skin and I tilted my chin up, ready to tell the asshole off. But I never got the chance because Nash was passing me by with a towel still wrapped around his waist.
Nash crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the other man. “Hey, what part of leaving my sister alone did you not get, Richter? I like you, but even this is starting to get weird and creepy.”
Dutch hovered just behind me and when I turned to look at him he just shook his head as if to tell me to let Nash do what he was going to do.
“Is that stepsister or sister-in-law, Nash?” one of the other guys asked jokingly, probably trying to lighten up the situation.
The laughter was much more muted now as Nash continued to stare Richter down.
“Nash, man, you know I don’t mean it like that.” Richter put his hands up in front of him in surrender.
The tendon in Nash’s jaw ticked with irritation. “Then how did you mean it? When someone tells you no, then I highly advise taking it at face value.”
“Or what?” Richter asked, abandoning his contrite attitude entirely.
“Or Ciara will tear your balls off. I don’t need to defend her, she’s perfectly capable of doing it herself.”
There was a beat of thick silence as the two alphas glared at one another.
“Is there a problem?” Casper, the team captain, asked as he was the last to step out of the showers.
In the few weeks I’d been playing for the Stallions, it had become evident that the broad-shouldered alpha was the peacekeeper of the team.
As if on cue, Dutch passed me and put a hand on his packmate’s shoulder, a silent request to just let it go.
Nash’s jaw finally unclenched and he shook his head. “No. No problem here.”
The two alphas left Richter alone and made their way to the other end of the locker room where their lockers were.
Richter muttered something under his breath, his eyes finding mine.
“You got something to say, newbie?” he barked.
I wanted to put my fist in his face, or at least tell him off, but Casper’s dark eyes were locked on to me and I couldn’t risk getting in trouble while I was still on probation.
So instead, I just rolled my eyes and went to join Dutch and Nash.
“Do I sound like that guy?” I asked as I tugged my sweatshirt over my head. “When I talk about her?”
