Kulti(78)

This was going to be fun.



* * *



“Tag him! Tag him!” someone yelled.

It was the last inning, with only one out to go. I was playing second base, and a ball had been hit straight at first base. The player on first was barreling toward me as the first baseman ran up behind him.

One of my legs was braced behind me, the other one out in front so I could tag the runner out, if the first baseman didn’t get him first. I should have recognized the look on the guy’s face—pure determination. I was just a girl in front of someone insistent on not getting out. Muscles contracted, my hand was out to catch the ball in case first baseman decided at the last minute to throw it.

But he didn’t.

A second later the runner was on me, one foot stomping down on mine, in an attempt to make it to second. What did I do? I got the hell out of the way, even though it was too late to avoid the heavy-ass shoe on my instep.

Holy freaking shitttt.

A giant puff of air escaped my mouth, and pain flared up through my foot and shin. It was one thing to get stepped on and another to have an elephant-sized foot try and trample me.

“Out! He’s out!”

“Are you blind? He made it!”

Hands gripping my foot over my shoe, I looked up at the sky and breathed through the pain while I tried to convince myself that I was fine. Some of the players were arguing about the call, but I stood off to the side cradling my freaking foot.

“Are you going to live?”

Breathing out through my nose, I looked just slightly down to see Kulti standing in front of me, his thinner bottom lip pulled into a straight line. “I’ll be fine.” Yeah, that didn’t sound convincing at all.

From the shape his eyebrows took, he didn’t believe it either. “Put your foot down.”

“In a minute.”

“Put it down.”

I should and I knew it, but I didn’t want to.

“Now, Sal.”

I gave him a look that said just how much I disliked it when he got bossy and set my foot down anyway, gingerly, gingerly, gingerly—

I groaned, grunted and whimpered just a little at the same time.

“You’re done,” he ordered.

Yeah, we were. I needed to ice myself because there was no way in hell it wasn’t going to bruise spectacularly. Marc and Simon were two of the people arguing about the outcome of the game, those assholes not giving a crap that I’d gotten practically crushed.

“Losers,” I called out. Sure enough, they both looked up. Ha. “I’m leaving now. I’ll call you later.”

They nodded, with only Marc adding, “Are you all right?”

I gave him a thumbs-up.

With a quick wave at the people I did know, the ones who hadn’t tried to hurt me, I walk-slash-limped around the outskirts of the field, following two steps behind a slow-paced Kulti. He didn’t stop or turn around to make sure I was following after him; he just kept heading in the direction of the lot. As we got closer, he jogged toward his car. In the time it took me to walk the rest of the way toward the bathrooms where I’d found him, he had already opened the trunk of the Audi and set a small blue cooler on the lip of the bumper. He pulled two small white things out and closed it again.

With a large hand, he pointed at the bench right off the curb. “Sit there.”

I squinted to see what he was holding, as I sat dutifully.

“Shoe off.” He continued to order me around and I didn’t fight him on it, realizing he had two ice packs stacked together in one hand.

Toeing my tennis shoe off, I pulled my foot up to rest the heel on the edge of the bench. Kulti handed me one of the packs before sitting down next to me. He didn’t have to tell me what to do; I rolled my sock down until it just covered my toes and placed the still very cold cloth material on what was already inflamed pink skin.

Kulti folded his body so that his leg was partially propped up on the corner of the seat and placed the other pack on top of his knee.

We were sitting on a bench nearly side by side, with icepacks.

I burst out laughing.

I laughed so hard my stomach started cramping and my eyes got all watery and overwhelmed, and I couldn’t stop.

The German raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

“Look at us,” I laughed even harder, unable to catch my breath. “We’re sitting here icing ourselves. Jesus Christ.”

A small smile cracked his normally stern face as he looked at my foot and then at himself.

“And why do you have icepacks in your car anyway?”

His small smile eroded into an even larger one, which eventually cracked into a low chuckle that lightened his face in a way that had me admiring just how handsome something so insignificant could make him. “If I want to walk tomorrow, I need to ice immediately.” There was a brief pause before he added, “If you tell anyone—“