Page 17 of Caught Up In You (Indigo Royal Resort)
“Yes, in Atlanta,” he offered.
“Atlanta…” Cullen repeated, trailing off at the end of the word.
“Yes, it’s in the state of Georgia, the southeastern part of the United States.”
“I know where Atlanta is. They hosted the Olympics.”
“Ah, yes, that they did,” Oliver responded. “Well, they are starting a team there.”
“In Atlanta?” Cullen said. “The American league? You want to send me to play in the retirement league?”
“About that…” Oliver trailed off.
“What are you not telling me, Oliver?”
“They aren’t interested in you as a player,” he paused. “They want you to be their coach.”
Cullen paused, beer bottle halfway to his lips. Coach? They wanted him to coach? Well, wasn’t that a kick in the nuts. Even the American league didn’t think he was good enough to play anymore.
“Cullen, hear me out,” Oliver started. “It’s a damn good offer. I know it’s not playing like you had been hoping, but you are thirty-eight, almost thirty-nine. You’ve had a better run than most. You were going to have to retire at some point. I think you should seriously consider this.”
Bringing the beer bottle to his lips again, he chugged the remaining half. Coach. They wanted him as the fucking coach. What did he know about coaching a team? Sure, he’d spent years as captain, guiding players on the pitch, reading the game to try and anticipate moves, but that wasn’t the same as actually coaching. He was a player. He belonged on the pitch, not standing next to the bench with a sweater tied around his shoulders.
“Cullen, are you there?” Oliver asked after the extended pause.
“Yup, still here,” he answered, swallowing hard.
“Look, I know it’s a lot to think about, and I know it’s not what you had been hoping for, but seriously, I think it could be an excellent career move. Oh, and the compensation is more than decent.”
Cullen didn’t care about money; he certainly didn’t need more. In fact, he could probably take the job as a volunteer and still have more than enough to live stupidly comfortable for the rest of his life. He might have grown up poor, with his mother working two jobs to make ends meet, but all that had changed at the age of nineteen when he signed his first major football contract. Unlike most kids in that situation, he’d been smart about his money and invested most of it. Of course, there had been a series of major purchases along the way—a flat for his mother, as well as an account that had money funneled into it every month so she could quit those jobs she had been slaving away at, and another flat for himself, because a man with his money wasn’t going to be living with mum. Furniture for those flats, a
fancy car for each of them, as well as some other miscellaneous frivolities had rounded out the shopping spree. Other than some charitable giving each year, the vast majority of the money made from his player salary and his endorsements was all invested in some way or another.
“You know I don’t care about the money,” he told Oliver.
“Indeed, but nonetheless,” Oliver said, brushing off Cullen’s comment. “I’ll send the offer over for you to take a look at. No major rush, but they would like an answer in the next couple of weeks.”
Cullen hung up with his agent and rested the phone on his thigh as he slid down the lounger a bit. His brain was firing a thousand thoughts a minute trying to wrap itself around everything Oliver just said.
Atlanta.
New team.
Coaching.
All of it was making his head swim, or maybe that was just the beer he’d chugged so quickly. Coaching professionally was never something that had been on his radar—hell, coaching on a volunteer level had never been either. Oliver had been the one to come up with the idea of the skills clinic in the first place, not him. The thought occurred to him that maybe this offer wasn’t recent news to Oliver, that maybe it was why he had cooked up the idea of the skills clinic. But Oliver was a rules follower, and would never even think to pull something like that. He would never dream of lying to Cullen; it was part of why Cullen had stuck with him all these years.
So maybe the man did have a point. Maybe the coaching thing was something to consider. He was enjoying this camp. Teaching the kids skills and running through drills with them had been fun. But this job would be professional players, not kids. These guys would have a style of play already and wouldn’t be looking to change that just because some former player told them to. It wasn’t like he’d have a team full of kids like Josef hanging on his every word, trying to soak up his “words of wisdom” like a sponge.
Waiting for Josef to arrive this morning had left Cullen feeling anxious. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was because of kissing Leona, or because he wasn’t sure what the kid had heard him say the day before. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought it through, why he’d had to confront her right then. What if it had been true? Even though in the moment he really was expecting her to confirm it, he wasn’t ready to deal with all the fallout of Josef’s reaction to it. Would he even have wanted the kid to know? As the rest of the group had started to arrive, he had noticed Josef wasn’t actually one of the first ones today. It made him worry slightly that Leona had said something to him, and he didn’t want to come back, or that she had put a stop to him coming to camp. But then he had bounded out of an older model Toyota Camry and onto the pitch like nothing was wrong, ready and willing to do whatever was asked of him.
Standing up, Cullen slid his phone into his back pocket and grabbed the empty beer bottle to head inside. He wasn’t getting anywhere sitting here letting his thoughts overwhelm him, and frankly, he was starving. Sliding the glass door open, he stepped inside to find Leona coming out of the bathroom, dirty towels in hand.
He flashed back to the last time they were in this situation. The most asshole-ish moment of his life. Scratch that—it was now the second most asshole-ish moment of his life. That moment had just been displaced by accusing Leona of secretly having his baby. She stopped dead in her tracks when she saw him, glaring at him as if she wished she could bore holes into his skull.
This must be what they mean by “if looks could kill,” he thought.
This was hell.
