Page 326 of The Coach

“What happened last year?” Joanie asks.

“They did it in some office at this ball,” Sam whispers, and Joanie starts to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I ask, narrowing my eyes at her.

“Troy and I did, too,” she admits. “We found some door unlocked, and we walked in, and the first thing Troy said was that it smelled like sex and he thought someone else beat us in there.”

“It was us,” I admit, waving a thumb between my husband and myself.

We all get a good laugh out of that, and I feel much more relaxed as the evening kicks off.

Everything is set in place, and there’s nothing else for me to do but enjoy the night. I mostly stick with Lincoln, who fields questions left and right about the upcoming season, the players newly drafted to the team, and who the starting players will be considering who’s returning. He’s become an expert at dodging those types of questions, especially since he himself won’t have those answers until training camp or later.

We head home after the event, chatting the entire way about whether having sex at the event in the same office we managed to find unlocked for the second year in a row constitutes a tradition. Ultimately we agree that yes, it is, and we agree that charity ball office sex will continue to be a tradition as long as we attend the ball.

Our suitcases are packed for tomorrow barring the items we’ll use in the morning, and my parents are waiting on the couch for us. “How was the ball?” my mom asks.

We glance at each other and share a secret chuckle.

My parents decided not to attend this year so they could spend the evening babysitting their grandchildren since we’ll be gone for the next two weeks and they’re used to seeing them a few times a week.

“Incredible,” Lincoln answers first. “All thanks to your amazing daughter.”

I smile. “It was perfect. We raised a ton of money and got lots of footage for the podcast. I’m so excited to put it all together. How were the kids?”

“Jonah stayed up until eleven,” she says, and she makes a little I’m sorry face because she knows he doesn’t stay up that late when it’s Lincoln and me running the house. “And Josephine was a perfect little angel.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I say, and they head out. We climb the stairs to check on the kids. Jonah is fast asleep, and we walk into Josephine’s room and find her cooing softly in her crib. She’s ready to eat again, and I lift her out of her crib and take her to the chair in the corner. Before I sit, Lincoln presses a soft kiss to her forehead, and he looks at her with all the pride in the world.

“We’re so lucky,” he says softly, and I couldn’t agree more.

Gone are the days of our family rivalry, replaced with laughter and love, and I could not be happier that the Aces selected Lincoln Nash as their coach. After all, it’s what brought him back to me.

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