Page 96 of Coach
There he was.
Same flannel from earlier.
Same white T-shirt.
His beefy arms were crossed over his chest, face unmoving, expression unreadable.
He was staring . . . hard.
Not at the game.
At me.
My throat dried out.
I turned back toward the court before I did something ridiculous, like grin in front of two hundred screaming parents.
“Ethan, get in there,” I barked. “And stop fiddlingwith your jersey like it owes you rent—tuck it in and get out there.”
The boy jogged on.
Our second string could’ve taken the rest of the game and still pulled the win, doubling the other team’s score. That’s how far ahead we were.
Ryan leaned over. “You wanna call off the dogs at some point?”
“After halftime,” I said, my eyes still flicking toward the scoreboard. “Let them run the full playbook. They earned the reps.”
By the end of the second quarter, it was 47–12.
The gym had turned into a party. The student section was doing the wave—badly—and even the opposing fans looked like they were ready to cut their losses and hit Applebee’s.
Shane hadn’t moved.
He was still standing, still watching, still managing to make leaning against a cement wall look like an act of war and poetry all at once.
I blew out a breath, bent over my clipboard, and muttered, “Focus, Ricci. You are a professional.”
Except I wasn’t. Not wherehewas concerned.
Halftime gave our kids a rest and my beleaguered brain a reprieve. I wanted to race out of our locker room, run up the stairs, and wrap that man in my arms, but a few obstacles stood in the way ofthat made-for-Hollywood moment, not the least of which were the female members of the PTA who would never let me hear the end of it if I acknowledged him more than I already had—and that had been barely a wave!
Those ladies were amazing and supportive, but they were relentless when they caught whiff of a juicy rumor—and what could be more juicy than their head coach landing a new hot, super broody boyfriend?
Fucking valley girl and her super whatever.
In the third quarter, I gave the bench the reins. Beating another team was one thing, grinding them into the dust was unsportsmanlike. The crowd didn’t like it. They smelled blood in the water—and on the floor and on the walls—and definitely all over the ball. They wanted us to break one hundred, to score more than any team ever had. They didn’t have to face the opposing coach at conferences or district meetings. Their kids wouldn’t be on the losing end of game-night emotions. At least, not that night.
I knew all those things too well, had felt them too often, to allow a victory to become a slaughter.
“Have them practice killing the clock. No more fast breaks. Everything walks.”
Ryan nodded, then turned and barked orders to the team. They didn’t like it, caught up in the fervorof the night, but they would do as instructed. They were good kids.
The game became a blur of substitutions and clock management. Ryan joked that we should let the team vote on their own plays. I laughed harder than I should’ve.
Every so often, I looked back.
Every time, Shane was still there.
