Page 27 of The Thing About My Rival

She sighs like she can’t believe how dumb I am. “Yoga studio, downtown. The guys will be going there once a week from now on. I’d prefer twice, but I figured the vein in your neck that throbs every time I speak might combustat that idea. So I’m trying to keep the peace.”

Jesus Christ. She’s done it again. Gone behind my back and arranged some new-age nonsense. Well, I’m definitely not apologizing now. Nice Hugo can fuck off.

“Training is every morning.” I step up to her desk and rest my hands on the edge. “On the pitch, Monday to Friday. That’s how it works.”

She doesn’t look up, leaving me staring down at the top of her ponytail that’s held together with sky blue and orange ties.

“If you want to do other things with them,” I tell her, “like baring their souls and downward fucking dogging, then that needs to be done at other times.”

She leans back to meet my gaze and, keeping her eyes locked on mine, slowly closes the laptop and clasps her hands on top of it. Hands that have been Lord knows where on my body.

Christ, I wish I knew whether we’d shagged.

“Flexibility is a vital part of training.” She’s obviously trying to control her anger too, because her voice is like an emotionless robot. “It prevents injury. It’s good for their long-term careers.”

I push off the desk and stride along the tape line toward the window, shoving my hands through my hair and gripping my skull to try to stop what’s inside it from exploding.

“My only concern is for the game on Saturday. It’s only forty-eight hours away, for fuck’s sake. We need to come out of the gates fighting and win the first match with us in charge.”

“Exactly.” The serenity of her tone is a sharp contrast to the words I just spat out. “The first match withusin charge. Notyou.Us. And if you want to win and go on winning, you’ll want them flexible, resilient and less prone to injury. Something yoga gives them that skills training doesn’t. Not only that, it also nurtures them, and they need that too.”

“Nurture?” I spin around on the line. “I’m not their fucking mother, and neither are you.”

“Yoga’s good for their mental as well as physical health.” How is she remaining so impassive?

I bet under that calm, still exterior, she’s suppressing a rabid desire to slap me in the face. I saw that fire, that passion in her, in our fight during yesterday morning’s training. I know it’s in there. Not least because, right now,the flames are leaking out of her pink cheeks—something she can’t control.

“We’re caring for all aspects of them as humans.” She reopens her laptop and taps some keys.

It’s impossible not to be impressed by the self-control it must be taking not to blow her stack at me. It’s also really fucking maddening.

“I stretch them out in training.” My attempt at calming my tone isn’t going so well. “That’s all they need. They don’t need to be as bendy as fucking pipe cleaners.”

I turn away again and stare out of the window at the rubbish bins and old cars.

“Not to mention,” she says, “it’ll do them good to have some training that doesn’t involve you yelling at them to push themselves further and further until they break.”

My attention is suddenly caught by the plant on the windowsill. It’s been moved so it’s sitting directly on top of the line I taped down the center.

“You don’t fucking kidnap my team and send them to yoga without telling me about it.” I stride up to the plant and shove it back to her side of the line, its long curly tendrils trembling from the movement.

“They are notyourteam, Hugo.” Her voice is louder, closer. “They areourteam. Yours and mine. We are co-head coaches, remember?”

I turn around to find her standing behind my shoulder, just about still on her own side of the line.

“I’m doing my best to forget.” I rub the spot on the back of my neck that’s been a ball of tension since the moment Drew Wilcox walked into the locker room wafting the exact citrus scent that’s filling my nostrils with her proximity now.

Unable to meet her eyes, because the last thing I need isanother flashback to what little I remember of that Paris club, I stare past her. “You can’t have the players engaged in all kinds of hippie bullshit without telling me and then in the next breath say we’re supposed to be working together. Strikes me, it’syouwho’s not the team player.”

“I didn’t tell you I was sending them there because it’s obvious you’d never agree to it.” She flings her arms wide and thrusts her defiant chin toward me—a chin I’ve probably cupped in my hand. “But if we don’t have this stuff running in the background to support your hard-as-nails physical training, we could lose any one of them any second to injury or some sort of breakdown.”

I lean so far toward her that my torso must be over the line. “Are you deliberately trying to screw up my comeback?” Now I force myself to look into those green eyes. “Because I’m not going to let you.”

“I am not responsible for your comeback. My only responsibility is to this team.” She moves directly opposite me, squaring off in a head-to-head battle of wills. “So you can try to stop me all you like, but I know what I’m doing. I have credentials too.” She points at the photo hanging behind her desk.

I can’t say that seeing her in the same shot as that trophy doesn’t hurt my pride, but I’ll be damned if I let it show. “It’s not the same. What you’ve done is nothing like being out there on the field, with everyone’s hopes pinned on you, with the crowd roaring for you to take a strike at goal, and then hurling abuse when you miss. You have no fucking idea what that responsibility feels like.”

“I know how the business is run.” The angrier she gets, the more her eyes sparkle. “And I know how to take care of the players. So they don’t crack under pressure like you clearly did.”

---