Page 77 of False Start

She swallowed hard and took a step back. Her eyes turning glassy with tears, I knew she'd sooner gouge her own eyes out than shed them in front of me as she headed for the door.

Turning the handle, she gave the door a hard tug, the familiar squeak cutting into the heavy silence of our final goodbye. “So, practice tomorrow, then?” she said without looking me in the eye.

“Practice tomorrow,” I said quietly.

“I hate to admit this and if you remind me tomorrow, I’ll deny I said it, but—he sees something in you on that track.” She turned to me then as the first tear tracked down her cheek. “Despite it, he’s still a bastard for what he pulled today.”

CAIN

“Wow, that was a chilly goodbye,”Lilith said the minute I stepped through the doorway.

“They’re just tired.” And pissed at me, but then, there will be more where that came from.

Coaching had changed in ten years.

Or maybe I’d changed in ten years.

I used to step out there so damn sure of myself, but this time, I silently wore my old mistakes like a pair of wet jeans. I was all jerky movements, barked orders, and I suspected—fucking it up.

My life for the last decade had been ruled by regulation, policy, and law. I held on to the absolute in that. I drew comfort from it.

I sought absolution in it.

But now I wondered if it had numbed me to some of the nuances of human interaction.

The nuances of women.

Because with one move, my team wanted to skin me alive.

My team.

They were mine, dammit. I don’t care if we’d only been out there for a day. Somewhere along the way, after giving in and agreeing to this, I’d started wanting it, too. This was a shot to get it right when I’d gotten so many things wrong.

I could leave this town on a high this time instead of weighed down by regrets and a trail of destruction in my wake.

“Oh, they’re tired too,” she agreed. “Turn around.”

“Why?” I said but turned to hang up my jacket.

She skimmed her fingers over my shoulders, smoothing my shirt. “Just figured I’d count the knives in your back.”

With nothing better to do with her time than cook that little nephew of mine, she was definitely working on that skill of seeing everything.

Every. Damn. Thing.

“It’s fine. They’ll get over it.” But a bit of spark in Mayhem’s eyes died tonight—the exact opposite of what I expected to see when Tilly showed up, making me all but sure I’d misjudged the situation or I was missing something. Something big.

“What did you do?” she said, propping her hip against the counter and popping a piece of chocolate in her mouth.

I glanced over my shoulder as I leaned in to snag a bottle of cold water from the fridge. “What makes you think I did something?”

She gestured with another piece of chocolate. “You’re a man.”

She’d gotten so sassy. It’s a wonder Jordan got her to close her mouth long enough to knock her up. “They’re pissed about Tilly being on the team.”

“Seems kind of stupid to be pissed at you when they agreed to it.”

My skin prickled. I tossed back three long gulps before I turned to her—my throat still dry—with guilt. “I didn’t ask them.”