Page 149 of The Offside Rule
Mom’s face softened. “Oh, sweetheart.”
I dropped my hands. “I worked so hard. I studied. I volunteered. I finally got a chance to be with the team, and now it feels like if I choose Hunter, I compromise all of it.”
Mom’s eyes glistened.
“And if I choose my career,” I whispered, “I lose him.”
She reached for my hand.
I let her take it. “I don’t know what to do,” I admitted.
Mom squeezed gently. For once, she didn’t have an answer.
CHAPTER 27
Hunter
By the first week of August, Catherine’s silence was killing me. I saw her across the treatment room, standing beside Wren with a tablet in one hand and her hair pulled back from her face. She was listening while Wren explained a shoulder mobility sequence to Luca. Catherine nodded, asked a question I could not hear, then adjusted the angle of Luca’s arm with careful hands. Catherine had earned her place in that room. She knew the rhythm of it now. And I had become the thing that could knock her off it.
I stood near the hallway, gym bag over my shoulder, waiting for Wren to finish with Luca so she could check my shoulder. Captain. The word sat wrong in my head. I watched Catherine laugh at something Dax said from the next table. It was quick, there and gone, but it still hit me low in the ribs. I had not had that laugh directed at me in a week. Not in my kitchen, my bed, or against my mouth.
Her gaze flicked up suddenly like she felt my eyes on her. For one second, the room narrowed. Then she looked away. LikeI was something she had trained herself not to touch. My hand tightened around the strap of my bag.
Wren glanced over. “Russell. Are you waiting for an invitation?”
“No.”
“Then get over here,” Wren said, waving me over to her table.
I moved because that was easier than standing there like an idiot. Catherine stepped back before I reached the table. It wasn’t an obvious move, but it was enough for me to notice and feel the blow in the center of my chest.
“Dr. Patel needs the updated notes,” she said to Wren. “I’ll bring them over.”
She left the room without looking at me again. I sat on the treatment table and stared at the floor.
Wren watched me for a beat. “Shoulder ache or heartache today?”
I looked up. “What?”
She grabbed a resistance band from the counter. “Arm up.”
I did what she asked. For the next twenty minutes, she worked my shoulder and pretended not to notice that my attention had followed Catherine out of the room. When she finished, I thanked her and went to the locker room. It was mostly empty. A few stalls had gear in them from guys who trained in Dallas year-round, but the room didn’t have the energy it carried during the season. It was just me and a silence that meant I was in my head all the time. I pulled out my phone. Catherine’s last message to me was from a week ago.
We’ll figure it out.We had figured out nothing.
Since then, I had texted her every day. I opened our thread and typed before I could talk myself out of it.
Me: I miss you.
My thumb hovered over the keyboard.Then I added the truth that sat heavy in my chest all week.
Me: I miss us.
I should’ve stopped there.
Me: I know you need space. I’m trying to respect that. But I hate this.
I sent it before I could delete it. I waited longer than any grown man with a career and a child should wait for a text bubble to appear. Nothing came, which was becoming sadly predictable. Eventually, I locked the phone and shoved it into my pocket. My stomach felt hollow. That was when I decided I needed to talk to management. Every time I looked at the C stitched onto my training gear, I thought about Cole. About him trusting me with his room. His players. His family. I broke that trust. And I couldn’t stay captain and have Catherine. Not like this.
