Kulti (7 page)

She sighed and shook her head before taking off behind me.

We arranged three different mini-fields for our games. I went into the first group to play a five-minute game. The game finished a blink of an eye later and the groups switched places, the girls off the field replacing the ones who just played.

I spotted Harlow walking toward the sidelines and started to make my way toward her, bypassing Kulti and Coach Gardner standing together. The other man held out his fist for me to bump the side of mine against. “Have you been working on your left foot?”

I grinned at him. I’d worked on it a lot.
A lot
. It was the result of hours and hours spent running with the ball during our offseason. It had always been pretty good, but I wanted it to be better. “I have. Thanks, G.” I bumped my fist against his once more and honestly, I’m not positive why I paused afterward.

What was I expecting? Maybe a compliment from The King
or at least a look, a tiny fraction of acknowledgment? Any of the above would be nice. But it was just a blip of a second too long, long enough to be noticeable, for Gardner to glance at the German out of the corner of his eye like he was expecting him to say something too.

But he didn’t.

Those almost-hazel eyes, like a murky pond, didn’t even
look
at me.

Embarrassment bled through my insides, my belly and my throat specifically. What could have been acid or just overactive nerves in my cheeks made them feel weird as I forced an easygoing smile on my face that told Gardner it was fine that I’d just been ignored. But really, I was seething and dying a little inside.

I knew better. Damn it,
I knew better.
Hadn’t he done the same thing to me before?

I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had just looked right past me like I didn’t fucking exist, and I didn’t mean that in some vain pretentious way. Most people I met were friendly, and if they were shy at least they’d look me in the eye before looking away. Most assholes were at least dismissive after a quick glance. But this ass-wipe hadn’t even spared the calories he could have burned turning his neck in my direction.

Nothing, he’d done nothing.

I smiled at Gardner a little tighter and gave him another quick nod before striding toward Harlow, this ugly feeling clenching my gut.

“What’s wrong, Sally?” Har asked me in a concerned voice the minute I made it to where she was waiting.

Was I that obvious? I guess so.

T
wo weeks went
by in the blink of an eye, just like I knew they would. Days became a repetition of each other. They were a steady, reliable daily battle that had to be perfectly planned.

If you really wanted to get down to specifics during practice, you could add: make sure I won daily sprints, fart around with Harlow, have Jenny mother me, help out the younger girls and stare at the mute that stood in the corner every once in a while. I mean,
every once in a while
. No one had time to do it all practice, every practice.

I mean, come on.

Then off to burn under the sun, despite wearing shirts and a hat with designed to protect against UV rays. The one shower a night was probably the reason I was still single, but what was the point in showering twice if I knew I was just going to get sweaty from practice and work? Nothing said sexy like long jeans, a long-sleeved shirt and work boots. During work, Marc would harass me about Kulti and if I had any gossip to share with him. Needless to say, he was disappointed I didn’t have anything to complain about.

The man everyone was so curious about hadn’t said a single word to me. Whomp, whomp, whomp.

In between all of the ways The King had saturated my life, was the annoying conversation I finally had with Eric, my brother, that went along the lines of “blah, blah, blah, that guy is a fucking asshole, blah, blah, blah, don’t listen to a goddamn thing he has to say to you—“ I didn’t even get a chance to tell him that Kulti had forgotten how to speak “—blah, blah, blah, no one here can believe he decided to coach for the WPL. Someone told me he got offered an eight-figure contract to coach for one of the Spanish teams—“ more blah and a little more wah.

On top of everything else I didn’t get to tell him, he didn’t find out during that biweekly conversation that I’d begun getting passive-aggressive messages from Kulti fans… all because of him and his damn leg.

“…
a
n idiot
.” I looked up at Gardner and noted, “He is an idiot. I’m not going to argue that.” Then I continued reading the email I’d gotten the night before. “
Casillas had it coming to him. I’m tired of Kulti getting blamed when he was doing what he needed to be doing. You seem like a sensible lady, so I really hope for your sake you don’t start talking a bunch of shit about The King and learn to regret it.”

Gardner sat back in his chair with a shake of his head. “Jesus, Sal. I’m sorry.” He blinked a few times. “Let’s get someone in here so we can come up with a strategy to get this crap figured out because I’m really over my head here.”

“I’m sorry too, G. I hate to bother you with this crap, but I don’t know if there’s something I should do, or if I should keep ignoring the messages.”

He waved me off with one hand, already dialing numbers on the conference phone on his desk. ”Don’t think twice about it… Sheena? Can you come down to my office? I have Sal Casillas in here. She’s been getting some strange emails regarding Kulti, and I’m not sure what the best route to take is.” A second later, the phone was back on its cradle, and he raised both eyebrows up to his hairline. “She’ll be over in a second.”

I nodded and smiled at him. “All right.”

Gardner gave me the gentle smile that always reassured me. “How’s your family doing?”

“Good. How’s your fam—“
and
I’d forgotten I’d heard through the grapevine that his divorce had been finalized in January, “—kiddo?”

“Great. Twelve going on eighteen,” he answered with an easy smile. “You? Planning on taking some time off to have some of your own?”

I stared at him. Then I stared at him a little longer.

The fuck?

“I’m messing with you, Sal,” Gardner laughed dryly.

“I really thought you were serious,” I said slowly. Jeez. Not that you need a boyfriend to have a baby but… My eyebrows went up. “Yeah. No.” I hadn’t had a date in…. a year? And I hadn’t had sex in…? A long, long time. Not that I didn’t want to—because I did—but because I had a vibrator, and a vibrator never left you hanging. Or had a wife or a girlfriend you didn’t know about.
Anyway
.

He snorted. “I’m just messing around. You’re still young.”

I thought about the other girls on the team and winced a little. Not that long ago, I was one of the new girls, the really young ones that had just finished college and been drafted. Now I was one of the girls that the other ones looked up to. I rolled my ankle and let the stiffness in it answer back, reminding me how precarious its health was.

Someone knocked on the door, and Gardner welcomed them in.

Sheena peeked her head through the cracked door. “Hi.” The door swung open and a second later, I spotted the head that appeared above hers.

My stupid, stupid, stupid traitorous heart remembered what it was like to be thirteen.

My brain, apparently the only logical organ in my body, said to all of its brothers and sisters: Get your shit together and calm down.

I put my Big Girl Socks on, took a deep steadying breath, and managed to smile at the two people who made their way into the office, right toward the chairs next to mine. I swallowed and said, “Hi, Sheena, hi, Coach Kulti.” All right, that came out a lot dumber than I would have liked. My cheeks decided right then that they were going to get hot, real hot.

Damn it.
Get it together, Sal!

“Hello, Sal,” Sheena greeted me as she took the seat right next to mine, glancing over her shoulder for a moment to say, “I asked Mr. Kulti—“

Mr.
Kulti? Really?

“—to come along.”

I blinked at the same time my bones froze.

The short-haired man, who resembled someone in a branch of the military, shook his head, still silent.

My knees felt stiff and traitorous as I planted my feet solidly on the ground and got to my feet, thrusting a surprisingly steady hand toward the man that had shaken hands with—

Poop. Poop, poop, poop.

Why should I care who he’d shaken hands with? I didn’t.

With a slow quiet breath through my nose, I tipped my chin up higher, like that would help me keep my dignity intact more. And like that wasn’t enough, I blurted out another “Hi, I’m Sal Casillas, one of the forwards…?”

Was it time to shut up? Yes. Definitely.

A large, warm masculine hand gripped mine almost immediately, and I filled my lungs with another steadying breath, smiling at the man standing on the other side of Sheena. It was a normal handshake; he wasn’t limp-fishing it, but he wasn’t trying to break my hand either. He was just a man. He was just a normal man with interesting eyes and a serious face.

“Can you tell me a little about the emails you’ve been getting?”

Drawing back the hand that had just touched Reiner Kulti, I settled my gaze on the woman next to me and nodded. I summarized the messages I’d been getting. Insults aimed at my brother, warnings that I should do everything I could to learn as much as possible from the German, and a bunch of other crap that stressed me out a whole lot.

Sheena’s cheek hitched up high, and it was easy to see on her clear dark skin that she was thinking. Then she nodded sharply. “Okay. I’ve got it—“

“Your brother was that imbecile?”

‘That imbecile’ had been the fourteen-year-old to my seven-year-old who held my hand when I crossed the street, let me tag along when he’d go play soccer with his friends even though he grumbled, kicked the ball back and forth with me in the backyard before he would go out, and he was the same person that would be on his feet in the stands, yelling at the top of his lungs when I had a bullshit call made against me. I
loved
my brother. Was he an arrogant jackass who thought he was gifted with a talent straight from heaven? Yes.

But he was the one that had held on to my shoulder when I’d made a horrible play in my younger years that cost my team a championship and told me that it wasn’t the end of the world. While I looked at Kulti as the type of badass I wanted to aspire to be one day, Eric had been the one to assure me I could be better.

When Kulti had broken my brother’s leg, I made my choice.

I would choose my brother every single time.

Except as my lips formed the shape it took to enunciate the letter ‘b’ for bitch, I
remembered
.

I remembered what Gardner had warned us of two weeks ago during our first Pipers meeting.
If I hear any of you call him Führer, you’re out of here.
Fuck me.

Calling him a bitch wasn’t better, was it?

A bag of dicks wasn’t much better either.

My lips sealed themselves together and in response my nostrils flared.

“He isn’t an imbecile, but Eric
is
my brother,” I answered him carefully. My eye was starting to twitch.

From ten feet away, someone’s green-brown eyes narrowed. “What else would you call someone—“

My eye went full speed twitching and before I thought twice, I cut him off. “That purposely swept an opponent’s leg harder than necessary?” I shrugged. “You tell me.”

My throat clogged instantly and the twitching in my eyelid got worse once the words were out. I’d done it. Jesus Christ. I’d insinuated he was an imbecile but hinting at it wasn’t the same thing as outright calling him one, right?

Sheena let out a low, ringing laugh that had ‘awkward’ written all over it. “Okay, I’m sure we can avoid the name-calling, yes?” She didn’t wait for an answer from either one of us before going on. “I have an idea, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work to calm things down a little. I spoke to Mr. Kulti’s publicist a week ago and he made it clear to me that his party has been receiving some similar messages, but we were hoping things would calm down eventually. Since they’re not, let’s do this: Sal, we’ll release your part of the press conference we had a few weeks ago—“

My jaw dropped and I’m pretty positive that my heart skipped a single beat. I choked, loud and clear on my saliva.

The PR employee shot me a look. She’d been there. She’d seen what an ass I made of myself. “I’ll make sure it’s edited. We have videographers coming in to film some of the practices for the website, and I’m sure they can catch some footage of the two of you getting along. There are also some promo shots coming up, and with some easy placement,” she grinned and waggled her fingers like she hadn’t just spouted out one of the worst ideas I’d ever heard, “problem solved for both of you.”

I chewed on my thoughts for a minute, glancing at the German sitting four feet away. Mouthing and discarding the curse words that ran through a loop in my head.

The press conference video? No. Hell no.

The filming? I glanced at Kulti again and almost snorted, remembering how he had yet to speak to anyone that wasn’t on staff besides Grace. So the likelihood of that happening? Ha.

The pictures? Those were doable.

But…

The press conference. A shiver used its spindly legs to crawl up the length of my spine. I made a hocking noise in my throat.

“Sheena,” I said steadily, hoping that I wasn’t going to sound like a bitch. She was trying; I knew and appreciated the effort she was putting in. “That video…” I tried to remember the words I was capable of, but all I could do was settle for a shake of my head. Then, just to make sure she really got my point, I shook my head really quickly, too adamantly maybe. “Maybe not the best idea, don’t you think?”

Gardner didn’t even bother to try and mute his laugh. He just went for it.

“It will be fine. I won’t let them use any of the parts you’re worried about. I promise.”

Taking my silence for exactly what it was—wariness and distrust—Sheena said, “I promise, Sal. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Trust her? I had this rule about trusting people until they gave me a reason not to. When you play soccer with strangers on a regular basis, leaving your health and safety in the hands of others out of need, being too cynical doesn’t work for anyone. Was it a little intimidating? Yes. But in the words of my sister, ‘you only live once.’

“All right,” I ground out, though some part of my consciousness called me an idiot for not fighting harder.

The smile she gave me in response was wide and bright.

I smiled back at her.
Idiot, idiot, idiot.

“Mr. Kulti are you onboard too?” the nice woman asked.

Eventually he nodded. His lightly tanned face didn’t exactly look like he was jumping for joy, but he didn’t tell her to fuck-off like I would have bet my life on him doing years ago. I wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or not.

“We’ll get this all sorted out in no time, Sal. No need to worry,” Sheena added.

What she didn’t know was that telling me not to worry was like telling me not to breathe.

I
had been
asleep for at least an hour when my phone rang. For a couple of rings, I considered not answering it. Because, really? Who the hell would be calling at almost midnight during the week? It was pretty common knowledge that I had an early bedtime.

Marc’s name flashed across the screen and I narrowed my sleepy eyes. He wasn’t usually a drunk-dialer, so what if it was an emergency?

“Salamander?” This man that was more my friend than my boss spoke. We’d grown up together. He’d been friends with Eric for as long as I could remember and somehow transitioned from being his friend, to being a brother figure and a great friend to me. He’d moved to Houston to get his doctorate, and once I moved too, he’d said, ‘Why don’t we start our own business?’ For two people with insane schedules and my degree and experience to help us out, it worked as an easy way to make our own money and not have a boss who didn’t understand we had other things that came first.