Page 39 of The Thing About My Rival

How the hell am I supposed to sleep?

Refluffing the pillows hasn’t helped.Counting slowly backward from one hundred hasn’t helped. Not one of the five different sleep sounds on my meditation app has helped.

The bedroom is cozy and comfortable, so it’s not that. There’s no light leaking in around the blackout blind to disturb me. And there are no noises from anywhere.

But there is Hugo Powers. And his vise-like grip on my brain.

If there was an app guaranteed to get incredibly sexy job rivals, whose face you once drunkenly kissed to withinan inch of its life, out of your head, I’d download that sucker right now.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I was lying here hating him.

But once we’d decided it was in both our interests to actually work together until the end of the season, it made me wonder whether we have more in common than I thought.

Not that he’s changed his mind about drilling the players until they’re fit to collapse—he’s still all-in on that particular brand of nonsense.

But he is on board with my plans for more PT sessions and bringing in a nutritionist.

And I’m on board with his idea of getting some giant tubs for ice baths. There’s plenty of evidence that they can reduce post-match fatigue, cut the risk of injury, and speed up recovery. Hugo’s old club used them, and he swears they made a huge difference for him.

As we started chatting, or as I got the first glass of wine inside me, talking with him was much easier than I’d expected. I ended up being able to relax and, dare I say, almost…sort of…kinda…enjoy it. When he ordered us the whiskey nightcaps, I didn’t even object. And, thinking about it now, he wouldn’t have done that if he’d been desperate to get out of there and away from me.

I roll onto my side and ball up the pillow, like that will help me nod off.

But all I can see behind my eyelids is Hugo’s face smiling at me across the restaurant table, a glint in his eye from teasing me. That’s the face I saw in Paris. And the glint that made my chest flutter then, made it flutter in exactly the same way tonight.

“Don’t be so fucking stupid,” I mumble into the pillow,and screw up my eyes and grit my teeth—neither of which is going to help with the whole nodding-off process.

The only important thing I have to focus on, theonlyimportant thing, is winning our first game as head coaches on Saturday. That way, we might take the Fab Four’s minds off sending one of us home to be paid to do nothing for the rest of the season. Because I’m absolutely certain that person would be me.

So tomorrow, I have to show up, smile, get along with Hugo like our lives depend on it—which they actually kind of do—and get this team in a winning frame of mind.

I reach for my phone.

Let’s try “Gentle Jungle Rain” one more time.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HUGO

The last time I had this much trouble sleeping was right after my knee injury when I knew my life was over—my footballing life, that is. But since I’ve eaten, slept, thought, and breathed the game for as long as I can remember, it actuallyismy whole life.

And now the only way to resuscitate it is to play nice with Wilcox.

Fuck.

I shove the pillows to the side and roll over flat on my belly, cheek pressed against the cool sheet covering the mattress.

Man, she looked hot tonight.

The way just the tiniest curve of her breasts peeked out from that neckline made me remember seeing the same thing in Paris. And thinking the same thing in Paris. And feeling the same thing in Paris. I might not recall what it was like to touch her, but the deep internal shudder shestirred within me came flooding right back when I looked into her eyes across that table at dinner.

I do not need to be having feelings about Drew fucking Wilcox—not any that aren’t all about beating her to this job, anyway.

I just need to work with her to get this team winning, then I need to convince the Fab Four to extend my contract and not hers.

But man, after we’d come to the conclusion that working together was the only way to save ourselves at least until the end of the season, she became the woman I vaguely remember from the nightclub.

She got a bit tipsy on the wine and lost some of her sharp edges and pointy corners.

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