Page 27 of Coach (Shady Valley Henchmen #8)

PAST

Este

I was excited and terrified as I slipped into my blue and yellow shorts and t-shirt, half-listening to the chatter of conversations around me in the locker room. It seemed like some of the girls knew each other from before college or had simply become besties since showing up on campus.

I was still trying to figure out the layout, how to get my books, and get to know my roommate. I hadn’t even attended a party yet.

Before I could shake off my uncertainty and strike up a conversation with one of these girls who would become integral parts of my college career, everyone was moving out onto the field.

Nerves skittered through my belly.

This would have been bad enough if I was walking out to greet the kind, warm, amazing coach who had recruited me, who had been with me through orientation and fitness testing.

But the team had all gotten word that our former coach had a family emergency and she’d needed to leave ahead of the season.

So now I had no idea if the new coach was going to be that warm and supportive or someone who was going to ride me and degrade us.

My grandfather’s words sounded in my head. You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

Words to live by.

Whoever they were or however they treated me, I would make the best of it. I had to. My college career depended on it.

“Alright, team,” a voice called, making me try to glance over the head of one of the taller girls standing in front of me.

“I’m Coach Dover. I know the timing of this isn’t what anyone expected.

You thought you were starting the season with Coach Tyler, and now you’ve got me.

Change isn’t easy. But here’s what I can promise you: I’m here because I believe in this program… and I believe in you.”

Annoyed that I couldn’t see, I moved around the crowd to spot the man speaking.

He was a big guy.

He had to be over six-five and carrying around a fair amount of extra weight.

He had thinning hair and a round face with almost see-through blue eyes and ruddy cheeks.

“I’ll push you hard because that’s what it takes to—” he continued.

But the words stuttered and fell as his gaze landed on me.

It was like watching a mask fall.

He went from reasonably sure of himself to sweaty, shifty, and stammering. “I, uh, um…”

His gaze slid away. “Right, because that’s what it takes to compete at this level. But we are going to have good times too as we learn to work as a unit. We are going to build a season we can be proud of. Now, let’s—”

His gaze slid to me once more.

The words once again failed him.

He cleared his throat. He looked away.

“Let’s get started,” he said. “Cleats laced, heads up, and show me what you’ve got.”

That was… weird.

But I shook it off as we took to the field, getting warmed up.

Until, of course, I noticed that the coach’s gaze was almost pinned to me. He tracked my progress up and down the field, his head moving like a sphere in a pinball machine.

I’d been horrified for a while, worried that my high school practices didn’t put me on par with the average college-level athlete.

But there hadn’t been any criticisms.

Just the awkward, unrelenting eye contact.

I tried to convince myself that maybe it was just how Coach Dover operated. Perhaps each practice, he chose a different girl to focus on, to get to know her strengths and weaknesses.

But the second practice was more of the same.

Then the third.

The fourth.

When I went down hard one day, he ran across the field to drop down beside me, his hands prodding my ankle, then tracking up my calf.

A sick sensation moved through my stomach, making me feel awkward and slimy.

“Everything feels real good,” he said as a bead of sweat from his head dropped onto my leg. “I mean, fine. I don’t… there’s not… you’re okay.”

I tried to shake it off.

But it wasn’t a one-off.

Once he got his hands on me that first time, it kept happening. A shoulder rub here, hands on my hips to fix my stance there.

I tried to keep my distance. I tried to blend in.

But it was no use.

He was always there, breathing down my neck, whispering in my ear.

It was maybe only halfway through the season when his words went from entirely focused on the game, on my performance, to things about me personally—my body, my hair, my smile.

I distracted myself with friends, with school, with guys my own age whose gazes lingered, whose hands grazed. But with permission. With my mutual enjoyment.

It wasn’t until my grandfather died that things with Coach Dover ratcheted up to new heights.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just seeing him at the field or around the fitness center.

He was in the food hall, the library, the student health center where I was getting therapy for my grief. He was outside my dorm building. He was happening to walk by parties where I was with friends.

“He’s such a fucking creep,” my roommate said when we saw him in a third location on the same night. “You should report him to the dean or something.”

I’d considered it. In fact, between sobbing over my grandfather, all I did was think about trying to turn in the coach.

The problem was, I was on scholarship. And without my grandfather, I had no safety net at all.

If the dean didn’t believe me, if Coach Dover somehow managed to try to spin this on me, I could lose my scholarship.

If I lost that, I was out of school. And without school, I was homeless and directionless.

Besides, I had a lot of other things on my plate to worry about. Like what the hell I was going to do when school was over for the year.

There was a small amount of money left over once my grandfather’s estate was settled.

Enough to give me first, last, and security plus a buffer for furniture.

But I would need a job to cover the rest. Not to mention to sock away for the next year when I would be too busy with school and soccer to work.

And since the coach wasn’t hurting me in any way, I decided to do something really stupid.

I kept my mouth shut.

Soon enough, the school year was over. And I was glad to get away from the pressure. But also from the coach.

I didn’t go back to my hometown. There was nothing left for me there. Instead, I moved just off campus, snagged myself a cheap apartment, and started to work at a local sports bar, where I learned a pair of tiny shorts and a tight top had men opening up their wallets and paying my bills.

It took all of three weeks for Coach Dover to find me there.

After that first night, he was a regular. He camped on a barstool from opening until closing, his gaze traveling over me, occasionally trying to catch my eye so he could stumble and stammer at some inane attempt at conversation.

I got good at avoiding him, pretending he simply didn’t even exist. I didn’t even take the tips he tried to leave for me.

But it wasn’t long before he was following me home after my shift, before he was standing outside my apartment building with binoculars.

My world, already smaller thanks to no classes or soccer and all my friends going back to their hometowns for summer break, narrowed further.

I didn’t leave my house except to go to work.

I accepted rides home from the bouncer or other servers.

I tried to have Coach Dover blocked from the bar. But my boss claimed he never did anything wrong.

Too quickly, the next school year began.

Then there he was again.

Hands moving over me under the guise of training me, of checking me for injuries.

It was around then, too, that he found me on my socials. Then came the messages. Hundreds and hundreds per week. All of them unanswered.

My roommate finally got sick of it, dragging me to the dean and demanding I tell him what was going on.

The investigation went on for weeks, and I’d started to lose hope that anything would change.

Until we showed up to practice to find the assistant coach was now taking over as the head.

I’d been so focused on getting him off the soccer field that I never stopped to consider that without a job, he would have nothing but time to follow me, to send me increasingly scary messages.

About how we were meant to be together, how he was going to marry me, and what he was going to do to me on our wedding night.

That was when I finally did it.

I went to the police and begged for some help.

I got a meeting with a judge.

I was granted a restraining order for a year.

And I finally, finally felt like I could breathe.

Not only couldn’t Coach Dover get close to me physically, but he was also banned from contacting me online as well.

I was finally free.

For a few blissful months, it seemed like everything was finally on track.

Then summer break came around.

My roommate went home to her family.

I picked up shifts at the bar when they found themselves short-staffed again.

It was all just very normal.

Happy, even.

Until I came home one night at nearly three in the morning with a migraine hammering behind my eyes, reeking of booze, but almost four hundred dollars richer.

I’d been thankful for the dark apartment as I walked through, stripping out of my beer-stained shirt and shorts, ready to take a quick shower, down some pain meds, and fall into bed.

I was in my bedroom when something made the hairs on my arms stand on end.

Something felt wrong.

But I couldn’t place what.

Not until I saw a shadow moving out of the corner of my eye.

Only it wasn’t a shadow.

It was a man whose restraining order had expired.

A man who had a year of pent-up obsession to express.

I tried to rush toward the door.

But he was right there in front of me, blocking my way, telling me to hear him out, demanding I acknowledge how perfect we were together.

The more I insisted he leave, that we talk somewhere else in the daylight, the more agitated he became that I wouldn’t hear him out.

When I tried to move past him, he grabbed me.

It was like the second his fingers touched my skin, he lost any control he had left.