Page 56 of Coach (Heartstrings of Honor #4)

Shane

M ateo had barely spoken in two days.

Since the buzzer sounded on their Regional game, he’d moved like a ghost, still showing up, still teaching, still working as hard as he always did; but there was something hollow in his voice. That spark in his eyes hadn’t vanished, but it was definitely dim—and God, I missed it.

So I made a decision.

It was one he tried to argue against, of course, spouting nonsense about watching the State Tournament out of obligation, keeping tabs on his rivals, or honoring the season.

But I wouldn’t hear it.

“We’re going,” I told him Thursday night. “Bags are packed. Car’s full. You’ve got the weekend off, and I’ve already warned Stevie to lie if you try to call her to talk me out of it. ”

He glared.

I kissed his cheek.

He didn’t glare quite as hard after that.

The drive out of town was quiet for the first half hour, nothing but highway and low-volume indie music. Eventually, he reached over and laced our fingers together.

The bed-and-breakfast sat on the edge of a vineyard that looked like it belonged on a postcard with its old stone walls, wisteria crawling up the porch columns, and a wraparound veranda with enough rocking chairs to host a Baptist church social.

The room they gave us smelled like lavender and lemon furniture polish, with thick quilts on the bed and a fireplace I planned to light the second the sun went down.

Mateo stood in the center of the room, looking like he didn’t know what to do with all the peace.

“This is . . . nice,” he said, then exhaled like he hadn’t breathed in days.

I stepped up behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Love you.”

His head fell back against my shoulder. “Sorry I’m in a funk. I thought this was our year. I wanted it . . . for the kids . . . you know?”

I knew the feeling—at least, I knew it from a player’s perspective. My high school football team had been amazing, winning State and State, year after year. My senior year, we were ranked number one in the whole damn country.

And we’d lost in the second round of the District Tourney to a no-name team who hadn’t won more than three games in two seasons.

Losing sucked. There was no way around it.

But losing when you were supposed to win?

Beating yourself? That was beyond any level of sucking possible.

Ask any athlete; they’ll tell you the same.

I suspected it was no different for coaches.

“I just hate it for kids like Gabe. He’s graduating this year. This was his last shot at a title.”

We hung out in our room for a while, Mateo flipping mindlessly through TV channels neither of us cared anything about, and me pretending to read a book someone had left on the nightstand.

It was a romance, of all things. When I got to a sex scene in which the author described the sexual act with the man mimicking a parent feeding a child, complete with, “Open wide for the choo-choo,” I couldn’t take it anymore and tossed it aside.

“This is a vineyard,” I said, not exactly an earth-shattering pronouncement.

“And?” Mateo cocked a brow.

“We should be drinking wine.”

“Tasting,” he corrected .

“Tasting with swallowing, a little like—”

Mateo coughed a laugh. “Let’s go taste some wine before you get us both into trouble.”

“Trouble was Plan B, but wine works.” I shrugged and checked my watch.

“Got somewhere else to be?” he asked through a smirk as we approached the door.

“With you and old grapes. Nowhere else.”

“A perfect afternoon.” Mateo grinned. “After you, good sir.”

We strode down the narrow halls of the bed-and-breakfast, a building likely erected in the early part of the twentieth century, to step into a sprawling room that was only separated from the rows of grapes outside by a massive window wall.

It looked as though we could step directly off the living room floor onto the rich dirt of the vineyard.

“We need a window wall,” Mateo said.

“Nah. I’ll take a TV that size. You can have the window.”

Mateo shook his head but grinned. Already, his mood was lifting.

When Sisi stepped into the room, his grin fell into a curious gaze.

“Sierra?” he asked, using her full name, something he rarely did.

She beamed, running across the room and tumbling into him with open arms. “Hi, hi, hi! Aren’t you thrilled to see me?”

Mateo chuckled, glancing up at me, as though piecing a puzzle together.

“Always,” he said, “but why—”

“We’re here!” Mike and Elliot strode in, Matty and Jeremiah in tow. Each held one of those little bags people gave party gifts in. Matty’s looked like a glitter fairy had exploded and left her remains all over the paper.

“Dane, and Patrick send their love,” Matty said. “The two gorillas had to work, and Patrick wussed out. You know how he is without his man on his arm.”

Indeed, we did.

Mateo hugged each guy in turn before whirling and spearing a finger at me. “Shane Douglas, what have you done?”

I raised my hands in the international “don’t shoot” gesture. “We need wine. Sisi, can you—”

“On it,” Sisi snapped, a blur of motion toward the door where a staff member appeared.

Moments later, servers bearing trays of fruits, cheeses, and tiny triangles of buttery fried bread stepped through the doors.

Two others followed, each carrying several bottles of wine or a handful of long-stemmed glasses.

By the time they’d finished setting up their spread, it looked like a reception for twenty rather than the handful of us.

Sisi tore into the tiny rolls of prosciutto and mozzarella, while Matty grabbed a bottle and filled a wine glass to the rim.

“I don’t think that’s how you pour a tasting,” Sisi said.

Matty shrugged. “I want a good tasting. How can I do that if part of the glass isn’t filled?”

As usual, Matty made no sense—and all sorts of it.

Sisi nodded as though he’d just defined the Pythagorean theorem. “Try these. They’re heaven,” she said, shoving a roll into Matty’s mouth and earning an appreciative hum.

Silverware clinking against a glass drew everyone’s attention. Mateo turned, a wariness entering his gaze as he sipped wine.

“I don’t speak,” Shane said.

“No kidding!” Matty jabbed.

I glared until he slouched back into his glass and salted meat.

“I don’t do speeches, but I need to explain to Mateo why you’re all here.”

“He doesn’t know?” Jeremiah asked Omar a little too loudly. An anticipatory giggle threaded his words .

“He knows we needed a weekend away. Hell, we all knew that.”

A chorus of nods and grunts of agreement.

“He didn’t know you would be here. And, well, he didn’t know why I really wanted to come.”

“Because he stroked it right,” Matty chirped.

Sisi spit wine.

Omar elbowed him, his brow furrowing until it became one giant, fuzzy caterpillar.

I ignored them all, setting my glass down and turning to face Mateo, who stared at me through narrowed eyes.

“I’m not great with people. You know that. And still . . . for some reason I’ll never understand, you keep following me around.”

A few snickers from our friends.

“I tried scaring you off. You wouldn’t run. You subjected me to Mrs. H, and for some insane reason, I didn’t run either.”

More snickers.

“I guess, along the way, I kind of fell for you.”

Sisi blinked away tears.

Matty clutched his glass and said, “Aww.”

“Mateo, you make me happy. More than that, you make me . . . hell . . . you make me want to be better. I see you with your kids, with their parents, how you live your life in the open and inspire those around you. Who wouldn’t want to be more like that?”

Mateo took a step forward and reached out a hand.

I stepped back. “Let me get this out, okay.”

He nodded and lowered his hand.

“I love you, Mateo, more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything.

I don’t know what we’ll face next, how your team will do next season, if my furniture will continue to sell; but I know one thing: I want to face all of it with you.

I never want to wake up alone, without your messy-ass hair leaving its oily stain on my pillowcase—”

“Eww,” Matty said, earning a shoulder shove from Sisi.

“I want to live my life knowing every day, before the sun sets, you will be in my arms. I want to protect you, to support you, to . . . fuck . . .”

“Yeah!” Omar bellowed.

Mateo rolled his now-watery eyes.

“And fuck, lots of that. Omar’s right.”

“Damn straight!” Omar barked.

“Okay, he was right. But there’s nothing straight about how I’m going to fuck you.”

“Okay, eww again. Moving on,” Matty said, waving his glass in the air.

I smiled at Mateo. “Mateo Ricci, we have a long road ahead of us, but I want to walk it together. Will you . . .”

“Say it!” Omar shouted.

“On your knee!” Sisi added.

I looked over Mateo’s shoulder and flicked her a bird.

Everyone laughed, including Mateo.

“I’m not proposing,” I whispered, as much for myself as for Mateo. He sucked in a breath and blew it out. I wasn’t sure if relief or disappointment filled his eyes. “That day may come, but I want to enjoy each one leading to it, too.”

Mateo nodded.

“I guess what I’m saying is . . . I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m sure I want you, Mateo. I want you by my side, no matter what. Will you be my boyfriend?”

Mateo’s face lit up, and laughter tumbled out of his mouth.

“What? What’s funny?”

Mateo set down his glass, stepped forward, and wrapped his arms around my neck before saying loud enough for everyone to hear, “We’ve been boyfriends for a while now. Thanks for keeping up, big guy.”

And just like that, our tear-filled moment was shattered in the most classic Shane-Mateo way possible. It wasn’t a perfect moment. I didn’t believe in such things. But, like the two of us, it was perfectly imperfect.

And the best part?

I knew we were just getting started.