Page 8 of Coach
“Or seen their collection of discarded bras,” Saint added with a smirk.
It was a relatively short walk to town, where we grabbed quick burgers at the diner before hitting up the pub, doing rounds and shots until the mood between everyone lightened up and we found a few women to head with us over to the pool hall.
Where I promptly forgot they even existed when a back door to the building opened.
And out walked the fucking prettiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
She was average height and dressed in a tight black jumpsuit that subtly hugged her gentle curves. The color set off the bright, coppery red of her hair as the ends dangled down in long waves from her ponytail. She had a gentle oval face with generous lips and bright honey-brown eyes.
She had her shoulder stuck through a ladder and a determined look on her face as her head angled up to look toward one of the air vents.
Clearly, she worked there.
But since when?
I was relatively sure I would have noticed her around town before. That kind of pretty couldn’t just blend right in.
“Cooooach,” one of the club girls cooed at me, making me turn to look at her. She was her own kind of pretty too. Brown hair around a sharp, cat-like face, big blue eyes that promised a good time if I would give her the attention she wanted.
“You guys get started without me,” I said. To the side, the girl was starting up the ladder. And something was tugging at me to move closer. “I’m going to grab a coffee first.”
She shot me a pout but was quick to lavish her attentions on Syn instead. That was the way of the club girls. And Syn, after living in a secluded storage unit for God-knows-how-long, ate up the interest of a pretty woman.
I made my way over to the snack bar just for an excuse to be closer to the woman, following that little internal nudge that was telling me to get closer.
I was all of five feet away when some idiot rammed right into the ladder and kept on walking.
I was close enough to hear the woman’s gasp, to watch the way her muscles tensed and her hands flailed. Finding nothing to hold onto to stop the fall, she gripped the sides of the ladder instead, her fingers going white.
I closed the distance in a few quick strides, grabbing the ladder just before it had a chance to fall backward—likely not only injuring the woman on it but also a whole table full of off-duty corrections officers.
“I got you,” I said as the ladder knocked gently back against the wall.
The woman’s breath rushed out of her, and a little shiver racked her whole body before she turned and looked down to see who’d saved her.
Her eyes locked on mine.
The noise around us thinned.
My shoulders unlatched from my ears.
It wasn’t a dizzying rush.
It was the sweet sound of a tuning fork finding the right note.
An unexpected calmness settled in my bones. Yet at the same time, a warm current started just behind my ribs.
Then a spark.
A flame.
The strange desire to reach my hand into it, somehow knowing it wouldn’t burn—just warm, just envelop.
I’d read enough, meditated enough, and believed enough in a higher order to the universe to sense a moment of alignment.
“You saved me.” Her voice was breathless and sweet, and it hummed in my blood like a singing bowl’s soft vibration.
Oh, honey, I think you may have just saved me too.
