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She gave a small snorting laugh.
“Did I say something amusing?”
She smoothed her face. “It’s funny when you swear, like hearing your dad or a teacher swear.”
Is that how she thought of me? Hardly flattering, but then I supposed I was probably more like someone’s dad than I was like Sean Wallace.
“What the fuck is wrong with me, Reece? I never miss. I don’t panic. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. I couldn’t think straight. I just felt so… stressed. I usually feel confident taking penalties.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you. Our emotions are messages. Your body is communicating something. You’re under a lot of pressure right now in your professional and personal life.”
She lifted her head, and her pretty eyes flashed with fire. “It’s nothing I can’t handle. I’m not scared of anything on the pitch. It wasn’t the penalty. A captain needs to be good under pressure. We’re so close to success and I’m fucking everything up. What if it happens again? What do I do now?”
“You’re not fucking anything up. There are ways to manage stress. Mindfulness. Creative activities. Talking therapy…”
She sunk her head into her hands. “No. I haven’t got time for fucking meditation and yoga. This is my team. They need me now. Everything is on the line.”
“If you don’t make time, then your feelings will make themselves heard however they can. You can see they won’t always choose the most convenient times.”
She blew out a slow breath and shook her head. “Fuck! We’re done for then, aren’t we? No promotion. It’s over.”
“I thought you still had another chance at promotion?”
“We do, but it’s not in our hands anymore. We need to win the next two games, and we need City to lose both of theirs.”
“So you still have a chance?”
“City never loses. Three wins would have made us masters of our own fate. Now, it’s out of our control.” Her hands clenched into tight fists at her sides, her mouth set tight and grim. “Every woman on the team has put so much into this. This is everything to me. It’s all that matters.” She raked her fingers through her damp lilac hair, pulling it high and letting it fall. “This can’t be happening to me right now. It just can’t. I’m the captain. Everybody is relying on me to get us there.”
Her chin set in a stubborn line. Everybody liked to win, but for Skylar this was all or nothing. The real question was why this mattered so much.
“It sounds like a lot of pressure.”
“I can handle it.”
“What would it mean to you if you didn’t get promoted?”
Her brows drew downward in a frown. “That’s not something I think about. We have to be the best.”
“What happens if you’re not the best?”
A touch of uncertainty flickered in her proud expression. I leaned into the silence until it took on its own energy and pulsed around us.
“My brothers all play football. They wouldn’t let me play with them when I was younger, even though I begged them. Mum wanted me to be a dancer. She dragged me to these awful tap dancing lessons until I threw a fit. Dad was the only one who took me seriously. He took me to training every weeknight. I was the only girl in the whole region good enough to play with the boys in the junior league. People took me seriously then.”
Ah. So, she’d spent her early years fighting to be taken seriously as a footballer. Fighting to be good enough to play with the men. Always fighting to be the best. No wonder she put so much pressure on herself. It’s hard to believe you’re good enough when you’re always striving to be better.
She rubbed her eyes and her shoulders slumped. “Football is all I ever wanted. Men don’t have to prove themselves like this. I still feel like I’m fighting all the time.”
I kept my tone soft, seeing if I could offer her a different way of thinking. “It sounds exhausting. Failure is a part of life. We win some and we lose some. Sometimes you’re going to miss a goal.”
“Exhausting, yes.” She sank deeper into the chair. “But a captain shouldn’t miss a penalty like that.”
“Even captains miss sometimes. What if you don’t have to be perfect? What if you’re good enough as you are?”
She titled her chin. “Do you think I’m good enough?”
I hesitated. The question had caught me off guard. Of course she was good enough. Skylar Marshall was perfect. As a professional, I needed to help her explore where her insecurities had taken root and help her work with them. As a man, I wanted to show her the truth. To tell her she was so beautiful it made me ache. To worship her body and leave no doubt in her mind that every inch of her was divine.
