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He got our attention and the room went silent. Everyone focused on the film. Everyone except me. All I could think about was a ballerina who was in my head.

Two hours later, I ran out of the meeting with the phone to my ear.

“Hey, you made it back okay?” Her voice sounded sweet.

“I drove straight to practice.” I walked to the end of the hallway where I could talk to her privately.

“Good. I’m glad you made it back.”

“What’s going on?”

She sighed. “I want to tell you yes, but I think we’re moving too quickly.”

I slammed my palm against my forehead. “It doesn’t feel like it’s too fast when we’re together, does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. And I think that’s what scares me the most about it, Sam. Is this even real?”

I stared out the window at the indoor practice field. “It’s real for me. I’ve never asked someone to move in with me before. I want you here.” I could feel the tension gripping in my neck.

“I want to be there too, but I think we should try things like this for a while. Can we do that? Plan weekends? I’ll come see you next time. Or we can meet in the middle?”

“The middle? There’s nothing in the middle.” I was pissed, and my voice was getting louder.

“Okay, as soon as you left I started looking up some places and I found these cute cottages on Canyon Lake. We could rent one and no one would see us and we could spend time together.”

I huffed. “This is a fucking first.”

“Excuse me?”

“Most women want to be photographed and seen with me and you’re the exact opposite.”

“Sam, I tried to explain to you how important it is that I do this on my own. I don’t want a handout. If you can’t respect that I don’t want your money, then maybe this isn’t even worth trying.”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to fight with her. I didn’t want to push her away.

“I’m sorry, Natalia. I’m tired and it was a long meeting. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Natalia?”

“Yeah. I was thinking.” Her voice was soft. “I’ll let you go and we can talk after our games tomorrow. Just think about it, Sam. I want to see you again, but if you can’t handle me staying on the dance team, then you need to let me know. I made a commitment to the Goddesses and I’m going to keep it.”

I saw Wes walking toward me. This was the last thing I wanted him to hear.

“Right. Right. Yeah, let’s talk tomorrow.” I hung up to face the quarterback.

“You ran out of there like your ass was on fire.” He eyed me.

“Something back home,” I lied. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to talk to you about a couple of the plays we have lined up for tomorrow. Howell, as usual, is a dumbass.”

I scratched the back of my head. I wasn’t going to get in the middle of Coach and Wes’s on-going argument about who should decide the game plays. Some teams were dependent on the quarterback and some relied on a team of coordinators to decide. Coach Howell liked to be the one in charge and so did Wes.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“What I think is, we use the same shit we did against the Warriors. Start off with an even rotation and then I go to you straight every time.”