Page 10 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Weston

Ialmost kissed Elsie in that PT room.

It’s the last thing I think about before falling asleep, and it’s the first thing I think of when I wake up.

I can picture the room around me, the low light, the faint smell of disinfectant.

Can see her staring at me, my body swaying toward her.

Whenever I’m around her, it’s like I have no fucking control over myself.

Like I’m a magnet, always quietly pulling in her direction.

I almost kissed her, and I would have done a lot more than that if Fincher hadn’t interrupted us.

When I got back home last night, I paced my bedroom, one hand on my hip, thinking through the entire situation, strengthening my resolve against doing anything physical with Elsie Montgomery.

I will not be touching her. For all the obvious reasons, and perhaps the most important being that I really don’t have time for a real relationship right now.

I roll out of bed and force myself into the shower, relishing the extra time I have right now. Today is our last practice before the regular season starts, and once it gets into swing, everything is going to feel a lot more hurried.

Half an hour later, I have coffee and breakfast, and I’m rolling into the arena, ready to distract myself from thoughts of her with practice.

There are still a couple of loose ends with the offense that we need to tighten up, and I’m determined to make sure everything is perfect before the first game.

“Hey, man,” Bernie says, a little out of breath when he finds me, his phone loose in his hand. “Have you seen this?”

“Seen what?” I eye him—Bernie is a little older than me, and that means he often falls prey to fake online shit. Donkeys playing the guitar, celebrities dying, that sort of thing. I might be old, but I’m not that old.

“You and Montgomery,” he says, and that captures my attention. Rather than taking his phone to look—which is a hundred years old and in the kind of case you’re supposed to be able to run over with a car—I pull mine out and search up my name.

Sure enough, the first thing that comes up is a gossip rag website. And the first thing I see is a picture of me and her sitting at that cafe. It must have been taken from inside the coffee shop, because I can see that bulldog through the window.

“People have no fucking respect for privacy,” I seethe, scrolling through the article, which is the standard kind of click bait—not really an article, just a collection of linked social media posts and a summary of how people are reacting to the photos.

I was pretty famous as a player. Not quite as famous, so far, as a head coach with half a season under his belt.

Still, for some reason people think I’m famous enough to follow. To take pictures of. And there’s also the lingering fame attached to me from being married to Leda, especially since it happened so early on in my hockey career, before I’d really made a name for myself.

“At least people aren’t being horrible,” Bernie says, but I don’t trust his judgment—he hasn’t exactly been known for understanding how the internet works.

I scroll through the various photos of the two of us. I’m fiddling with a sugar packet, frowning at her.

In one of them, my head is turned away, and Elsie has a look on her face like she could eat me whole. Staring at it is making my jaw clench, my body urging me to do something about that look.

I’d like to do a lot more than just check you out next time.

“Right,” I mutter to Bernie, turning off the screen and sticking the thing back in my pocket. I’m just not going to think about it—at least, not until after practice. Until I can talk to Elsie, see how she feels about it. “Come on—we don’t want to be late when the guys come back from conditioning.”

I can’t imagine the Squids are going to be happy about this. Not after the scandal with Morton. This kind of publicity will only draw attention to the shit our previous coach did, dig up old posts and re-circulate the drama.

Maybe it’s time for us to plan that scheduled break-up. The thought of it makes my chest tight, but I ignore it, heading down to the ice.

I drown out my thoughts by having the guys line up for drills, playing out the Sharks approach in an effort to get out defense ready for them.

Talking the guys through our strategy for the next game, how to get through their defense, which approach we’ll be taking and what our lines are going to look like.

After Elsie told me about her recent break-up, I couldn’t stop myself from looking at social media for an answer, and it was there.

Her and Jonathan Hanley, a defensive player for the San Jose Sharks.

Hanley was supposed to come to the squids, and apparently he changed his mind at the last second, dropping out of a deal.

Guy has built up a name for himself as being hard to work with, and doesn’t really have the talent to back up that kind of attitude.

At least, not in my opinion.

“Break for five!” I shout, realizing that despite my best efforts, I am once again thinking about Elsie. It’s like no matter which way my mind wanders, it finds a way back to her.

After the break, we launch back into offensive drills. Despite Hanley’s presence, I believe the Sharks’ weak point is their defense, so I’ve been pushing hard the concept of playing aggressive against them.

When practice is over, my hip is aching like a motherfucker, and I can’t wait to get off the ice, get my skates off and into the bath at home.

Maybe it won’t be so bad to have Elsie’s help, if she can make some of this pain go away.

I strip off my skates and tie them together, wiping them down and sliding on the guards. The players head off to the locker room and the other coaches—sans Fincher—gather around me, shooting the shit and talking about when we’ll leave for San Jose.

When I get a chance, I slip away and into the hallway, finding Elsie’s contact in my phone. We should talk about staging a break-up before the administration catches onto this and twists my balls for going out in public with her.

But when I call her, she doesn’t answer. It makes me antsy, and I shift, turning and glancing in the direction of the PT center, though I can’t see it through the walls. Is she still up there? Should I go and find her?

Maybe we could go somewhere else and talk this through.

But, before I can think it through and make a plan, my phone starts to buzz in my hand. I answer quick, thinking, at first, that it’s Elsie calling me back.

It’s not her.

“Coach Wolfe,” the voice on the other end of the line says, and it takes me a moment to recognize it as Tamra, the Squids’ Director of Public Relations.

She’s an overly bright and positive kind of person, with a team of PR people who are mostly forgettable.

There’s the younger girl who never says anything, and the man with the nasally whine that sticks in my head even though I only talk to him once a year.

I turn, thrusting a hand into my hair and letting out a quick breath.

Fuck.

They’ve already heard about this thing, and if they’re contacting me, this can’t be good. Are they already talking to Elsie? Is that why she’s not answering?

My heart starts to skip when I think about her losing her job. About that look on her face when we were talking about it before—how important this thing is to her.

“That’s me,” I say, waiting a beat too long to answer. “Something I can do for you?”

It’s just what I expected. “Yes! Actually, we were hoping to catch you before you leave for the day. We’d like to have a meeting with you and Ms. Montgomery, if that’s possible.”

I swallow through the sand coating my throat.

So, this is it. They’re going to rip us to shreds. Possibly even fire me. Fincher is probably already dancing a jig, pre-emptive happiness, a kind of spidey-sense about my misfortune.

“Of course,” I say, my responsible, adult brain taking over and cutting off the hose for everything else I wanted to say instead. Better to go to the meeting and see what they have to say before I start defending myself.

I hang up, slide the phone back into my pocket, and head to the coach’s locker room to get a quick shower. If I’m going to sit in a room with Elsie and the others and get my character and career ripped to pieces, I’m at least not going to smell like skate sweat while I do it.