Kulti(55)

The German made a face when I told him I needed to get to work but didn’t say another word. I got the wheel lock key out of my glove compartment, jack out of my trunk and pulled the spare out, just to be safe. Was I actually going to change it? No. But I’d go through all the steps and make it seem like we did.

We gave each other side glances as I crouched down on the concrete, as he did the same. I handed him the tire iron and let him loosen a bolt.

“I know how to change my own tire,” I felt the need to tell him for some reason, as if not knowing made me less of a person.

Those green-brown orbs slid back over in my direction as he loosened the rest of the bolts.

I slid the jack to him and watched as he put it under the axel.

“Don’t turn around,” he said once he’d gone through the long act of raising the car and pretending like he was taking the bolts completely off. What a freaking actor.

No argument or question came out of my mouth. I just crouched there with him as we pretended to change my tire for a few more minutes. Eventually he finished and we stood up. It wasn’t until then that Kulti turned around to look back at the field.

“The coast is clear?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded in that low voice that caught my interest a little more than it should have.

I nodded and lifted up my shoulders. “All right.” What was I supposed to say after that? I wasn’t sure and from the looks of it, he wasn’t either. Okay. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” I offered up, unsure.

Kulti gave me a sharp nod. No thanks, nada.

One awkward smile and two retreating footsteps, I deposited the jack and the spare into the trunk. I got into the car and let myself grip the steering wheel for a second. Just as I was pulling out of the parking lot, I looked in my rearview mirror and watched Kulti make his way toward a black car parked off the curb in the lot.

He got into the back seat, not the driver’s.





Chapter Eleven





“Casillas!” Gardner yelled.

I stopped, just like that, in the middle of the game I was in. The ball was right by my feet after I’d taken it away from one of the defenders I was playing against. Said defender was now on the ground.

Things had gotten a little intense.

I held my hand out to the girl and helped pull her to her feet. She knew there were no hard feelings. She’d gone for the ball at the same time I had, and obviously only one of us was going to get it. Needless to say, we both really wanted it. With only a few days left before the start of the season, we all thought we were Highlanders. At one point, I had been the one knocked to the ground, I mouthed to Jenny ‘There can be only one.’ She didn’t even bother trying to be discreet when she burst out laughing.

But it was true, mostly.

When Gardner didn’t get to the point, I yelled, “What is it?”

He held up a hand before turning around, discussing something with the German. He was standing a few feet to the side and behind the head coach, facing the field I was on. Gardner’s posture changed, he leaned forward a little bit as they spoke, his hand occasionally jabbing backward for emphasis.

I rolled the ball onto the top of my toes and tapped it into the air, bouncing it up and down.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the special edition RK running shoes coming toward me. I looked up so quickly I lost control of the ball and let it drop. Those light-colored eyes were focused in on my face, making me so incredibly self-conscious.

How the hell had I gone from someone who didn’t really pay a lot of attention to my looks, to suddenly asking myself if I should start slapping some make-up on?

Wait. Poop. Poop. Poop.

We’d been squatting right next to each other when he ‘changed’ my tire, and that was close enough to see pores.

If I could go without make-up ninety percent of the time in front of practically everyone, I could do it in front of him. Easy. I might not be the one on the team with a cosmetics deal, but I wasn’t a troll either. And if I was, so what?

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t that above petty things, but beauty was way down the list of characteristics in life that really mattered to me. I was a good soccer player and a pretty good person. I repeated that to myself a few times before holding my head up a little higher. That mattered more to me than whether or not I had a line of men who wanted to date me.

At least that’s what I kept telling myself.

I took a deep breath in through my nose and took in those hazel-green orbs straight on. “Yes?”

He tipped his head down at the ball, still looking me dead on. It wasn’t the first time I’d talked to someone who looked at others so intensely, I’d been around high-strung self-confident people who didn’t know how to communicate in any other way. “It’s better if you do this…”