Kulti(64)

He shrugged.

Reiner Kulti shrugged like ‘oh, my ACL took a long time to heal’ was reason enough to explain why he hadn’t played his beloved sport in two years. He wasn’t fooling me. He still loved it. You didn’t give up a great love so easily. I could tell by the look in his arrogant eyes when he watched the team. He looked at some players like they were complete pieces of crap he wished he could shake until they got things right. You didn’t look like that unless you still cared.

He wasn’t fooling me.

“That took what? Six months? Eight months?” I asked, blinking at him slowly.

When he said, “It hasn’t completely healed,” it was proof enough for me he was full of shit. He didn’t strike me as the type to want to make a big deal about his injuries.

So I said something I would have said to any other player I had a decent relationship with—he didn’t exactly count—“Bullshit.”

“Excuse me?”

I laughed. “That’s bullshit. Your knee still hurts? Come on. Do I look like I was born yesterday? I’ve been in some sort of pain since I was sixteen, and I’m sure you have been too.” I shook my head and laughed again before focusing back on the road. “Jeez. Next time tell me to mind my own business instead of telling me something so ridiculous.”

What the hell else had I been expecting? He’d said more than I would have bet my life on to begin with.

“You don’t know anything,” he snapped back.

Once again, another thing I shouldn’t have been surprised at. “I know enough.” Because I did, his bullshit was evident from a mile away.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Kulti’s voice was laced with just a bit of anger.

He’d finally dropped a ‘fuck.’ How about that.

I was almost in awe—almost, and I definitely couldn’t find it in me to get all bent out of shape at his ugly tone and words. “You know what I mean. Look, you don’t need to get an attitude. All I was asking was why you haven’t played in so long. It’s none of my business, fine. Sorry I asked.”

There was a pause. “Explain what you meant.”

He wanted to understand, but I knew in my heart he didn’t really want me to tell him. I kept my attention forward and shook my head, the laughter and amusement dying off my face. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” he insisted.

I kept my mouth shut.

“Say it.”

Yeah, I wasn’t saying anything. Nobody was handing me the shovel to dig my own grave.

“You think I’m lying?” Kulti asked in a cold voice.

I swallowed. Well he asked, right? I picked my words carefully and answered. “I’m not saying you’re lying. I’m sure your knee hurts, but there is no way that’s why you haven’t played. Even if you’re only back at sixty percent, fifty percent, it doesn’t matter; you still would have played with friends at least, or something. Kicked the ball on your own. You have the money to build your own field, I’m sure, if you don’t want everyone in your business. It seems like you’re selling yourself out. You already told me you miss playing. I just don’t believe something like a little pain would stop you from at least… you know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you finally started kicking some balls around. Good for you.”

Hours later, I’d realize how differently I could have handled the situation. How horribly I’d actually gone about it. I knew better. I knew better. I understood people who held their pride and arrogance like a shield and how they handled someone attacking them. Or worse, someone feeling sorry for them.

I knew because I was well aware how much I hated anyone feeling sorry for me.

Pitying a man with the ability to make my life a living hell on the field, a man who had once upon a time held a passion for soccer that seemed to light him up from the inside out, it was like I turned a force of nature against me.

Forget that I’d tried to be nice to him, that I’d driven him home and never insisted on knowing why he had me take him instead of his driver or a taxi or Gardner or Grace, or just about anyone else that had more of a relationship with him than I did.

In the words of my brother, I did it to myself. I brought the attention of a perfectionist down on me, and there was no one else to blame for it.



* * *



The next two weeks of my life could be summed up in three keywords: physical and emotional hell.

Any kind of bond I’d formed with Kulti had been shattered the day I pressed him for answers in my car. Proceeding to give him shit for using his injury as an excuse was just the icing on the cake.