Page 38 of Her Coach

Her office door was half open. I could hear the red pen moving before I got there. I stood in the hallway for exactly one second and then turned around and walked back the way I came.

Stay away, I told myself. Don't fucking do it.

I lasted about thirty seconds before I turned around again.

She looked up when I appeared in the doorway. Pushed her glasses up. "Hey Coach."

"Do I need to start checking that you aren't working too hard?"

"I'm almost finished up," she said with a sigh. "I've got a shift later at The Hideout."

"Working here and then a shift at The Hideout is just proving my point."

She let out a genuine laugh and I smiled before I could stop myself.

The telltale sound of heels clicked down the hallway and Victoria appeared behind me. She cleared her throat as her eyes moved between us.

"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" she asked.

"No, Mom," Brynn said. "Just finishing up before I head out."

Victoria nodded. "We have a meeting shortly, don't we Colton?"

I cleared my throat. "Yup. Let me just grab my things."

I stepped back to let Victoria pass.

Staying away wasn’t happening.

16

BRYNN

Mom’s office light was still on at six-thirty.

I turned back down the hallway the way I always did when she was still there.

The door was open about eight inches. I raised my hand to knock and stopped.

Colton was in the chair across from her desk. Not the stiff first-day chair, sprawled back a little, forearms on his knees, clipboard on the edge of the desk between them. Mom had her reading glasses on and her laptop open and she was nodding. Not the polite nod she gave people in meetings. The real one. The one where her pen started moving on its own because her brain was already three steps ahead.

“The fourth line has no identity,” Colton was saying. “They’re playing scared. No one’s told them what their job actually is so they’re trying to do everything and doing none of it well.”

Mom pulled her glasses down her nose. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing yet. Just wanted you to know it’s on my list.”

She pushed her glasses back up. “I appreciate that.”

“You’re not used to coaches keeping you informed.”

She looked at him over the rims. “No.”

“You will be.”

The corner of Mom’s mouth moved. Just barely. The thing that happened in the neighborhood of a smile in someone who had stopped expecting to do that.

I knocked on the door frame.