“You’ll ruin me, I know. I got it.” I grinned. “If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you, so I guess we’re even, right?”
His expression fell into a flat one. “I won’t say a word.”
I lifted up a shoulder.
He must have thought I didn’t believe him because he kept going. “If you get kicked off the team, I wouldn’t have anyone else to play with.”
My little heart wrapped up that comment in cling wrap to preserve it forever. “What about Gardner?” I offered.
He shot me a look. “Once was enough.”
What? “You played with him?”
“Two days after you.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad.” Gardner had played college soccer.
Kulti sat back against the old wooden bench. “Have you ever played with people that were significantly worse than you?”
That was an incredibly rude way of putting it, but I nodded.
“Picture it, and then imagine that they thought they were a much better player,” he explained.
Ooh. I grimaced and he nodded.
I fought the question that had been living in my brain since that first time he asked me to play and then decided, why not? What if I never got this chance again? “I wondered why you asked me and not anyone else.”
He sat back against the bench and adjusted the ice-pack on his knee, his attention steady, and his words careful. “You play how I like. You don’t hold back.”
“Didn’t you tell me yesterday that I think too much when I have the ball?”
His biceps flexed against the back of the seat. “Yes. You play better when you follow your instincts and not your head.”
Was that a compliment? I thought it might be.
“What about Grace, though? I thought you two were friends.”
Reiner Kulti gave me a look. Yes, I was nosey and no, I wouldn’t apologize for it. “Her husband and I have known each other for a long time. He was a trainer in Chicago when I played there. She and I aren’t on speaking terms anymore. Even if we were, I would not have asked.”
Because of what he’d said to the girls that day? Maybe that question was pushing it, so I dropped it and just nodded in understanding.
The part-time model, who once upon a time appeared half-naked in underwear ads, blinked his long eyelashes at me. “I owe you my gratitude. I never thanked you for what you did that night at the hotel. Most people would have handled the situation differently. I—“ his eyes moved from one of mine to the other, gauging me, “—appreciate it. Greatly.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, though now that we were on the topic I wanted to ask why he’d gotten drunk in such a public place. It was probably a little too soon, so I kept my mouth shut. Wiggling my toes, I sat back against the bench, his hand brushing my shoulder and sighed. “And thank you for the ice pack. Hopefully tomorrow I can walk.”
His index finger nudged me. “You will.”
What he wasn’t saying was that I had to. How the hell else would I explain that I’d taken a hoof to the instep? Accidentally? That definitely wasn’t believable.
That didn’t mean I wanted to have him telling me what to do all the time. “Are you going to boss me around even when we’re not on the field?”
He didn’t even blink before he answered. “Yes.”
Chapter Fifteen
The next day almost immediately after warming up, the German who had shared his ice pack the day before, sidled up next to me discreetly. With his arms crossed over his chest as he prepared himself to rip us new assholes, he asked in a voice so low only I could hear, “Your foot?”
I crouched down and retied my shoes. “It’s bruised.”
Kulti looked unimpressed when I glanced up, like I was a total baby for succumbing to something like bruising. “I have oil that will make it go away faster,” he mumbled his reply. “Find me after practice.”
I almost choked on my saliva. No joke. Somehow by the grace of God, I managed to get out, “Okay.”
But of course nothing with him was easy. If playing softball outside of practice hours was our dirty little secret, then we were going to keep it that way. “Deal with it until then.”
Ding, ding, ding. There was the man I knew and… respected?
Meh. Something like that.
“I will.”
He nodded. “I know.”
I’d been playing for myself for so long because I loved it, that it took a moment to recognize the flare of pleasure I got from someone else believing in me. Like a flash flood, his words from yesterday filled my veins and had me forgetting about the pain in my foot. He might not ever say it to my face, but the fact was Reiner Kulti had sort of worried about me.