Page 2 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Weston

It hurts like a motherfucker.

The cabins we’re staying in are nice. The Squids administration always splurges for this team building shit at this camp.

Our package—the most expensive one money can buy—includes hot springs on the edge of the property, the giant lodge in the center of the camp, and the luxury rooms afforded to the higher ups in the organization.

Now that I’m head coach, that includes me.

My room is nice, and I’m just across the hall from Meyer—the general manager.

I limp past her door, glad she’s still down on the field. Thankful that everyone is preoccupied with the football game, so there’s nobody here to see me hobbling away, moving as quickly as I can to some sort of cover.

But I can’t move very quickly at all, with the pain twisting up my hip and through my lower back like a corkscrew cutting through a wine cork.

I’m doubly thankful that I’ve got my own room. Before, when I was just an assistant coach, I always roomed with Fincher, one of the other assistant coaches.

Back when he didn’t hate my guts.

Slamming through the door to my room, I cross the space, past the king-sized, four-poster bed and to the full-length mirror on the other side.

Outside the window, pine trees rustle happily in the breeze. I can hear whoops and hollers drifting in from the field where the football game is still rolling on without me.

This was supposed to be a chance for us to relax and hang out with everyone before the start of the season. A chance to get to know the new hires, to “mesh” as a group, according to the HR department.

And instead, I’ve spent the entire time trying not to fuck my hip, dealing with Fincher being a passive-aggressive asshole, and avoiding questions about whether or not we’re going to make it to the play-offs this year.

Obviously, it’s in the plan.

It’s always in the plan.

If I could snap my fingers and secure us a spot to fight for the Stanley Cup, I’d do it in a heartbeat.

Shaking the thoughts away, I strip the grass-stained shirt over my head and pull down the waistband of my shorts, twisting to the side to get a good look at the bruise already forming over my hip.

It’s like just looking at it makes it hurt worse, my brain catching up to how bad that impact rocketed through me. How quickly it turned from a dull, constant ache into something more like a ripping sensation.

Of course I had to land on this fucking hip. Apparently, I don’t have a single shred of self-preservation in my entire fucking body. Why didn’t I twist to the other side? Land on my back?

Why didn’t I just crush her?

Stupid, pointless question.

I would have killed that girl if I had landed on her.

Tall, but relatively skinny—at least, compared to me—she would have snapped like a toothpick under my weight. Even though she was fucking fast, and strangely mesmerizing to watch as running back.

If the other guys on the team hadn’t been quite so hypnotized watching her, or too busy staring at her ass, they might have been able to get to her before I did, before she got up to terminal velocity.

Elsie Montgomery.

Only been a part of the team’s staff for a few weeks, and I already can’t wait for her to move on to something different.

Maybe she’ll go work for the Bruins, follow in her father’s footsteps. Would be nice to have her somewhere across the country, where I can’t hear her laughing, don’t have to see her ponytail bouncing around the arena every day.

I hit a particularly tender spot on my hip and suck in a quick breath through my teeth at the sensation.

I pause for a second before tracing my fingertips over the path of the bruise, trying not to wince at the exquisite, searing pain.

After a second, it dies down, settling into a consistent, body-rocking throb.

It’s not that Elsie is a bad person—it’s something of the opposite. Always bright and shiny, bouncing into the weight room and calling players in to work with her. Laughing and twisting the end of her braid around her finger while she talks.

Fucking distracting.

And frustrating.

Nobody is that happy.

Which means she’s a liar.

“Hear me out,” Bernie, one of my assistant coaches, had said, when I muttered a complaint about her whole bright-eyed, bushy-tailed thing the other day. “Maybe she’s just in her twenties.”

Right. Except it’s not like I was that happy in my twenties. And back then, I was married to a fucking movie star. I should have been that happy.

While looking at myself in the mirror, I try to calculate how long it would take me to come back here and go to the bathroom. Have I already taken long enough that they’re going to worry about me? Send someone in here after me?

I need to get myself together, get back out to the field before they start to suspect something is wrong.

As I was walking off the field, desperately trying to keep my limp from showing, I heard Fincher mutter, “Guess I can take over as coach, then.”

Fincher getting to big for his britches is the last thing I need. The only thing he’ll be head coach of is touch football, no matter how much he throws a fit about the fact that the Squids picked me over him for the head coach position.

“Weston, I—oh—”

There’s commotion in the mirror's reflection, coming from right behind me, and I freeze.

The smart thing to do would be to grab my shirt, cover the bruise, but I don’t want to look like I’m hiding something. If it’s anyone but Fincher, I’ll swear them to secrecy.

I raise my eyes.

It’s not Fincher.

It'sElsie Montgomery,bursting through the door to my room—which I realize I didn’t get fully shut—her eyes widening as her gaze wanders down my body, then back up, lingering on the exposed skin above my waist band.

She’s wearing a little pair of pink shorts, a white t-shirt that reads Eagle’s Landing Camp. It’s too short for her long torso, revealing a little strip of skin between the top of the shorts and the hem of the shirt.

Her blond hair is tied up hastily into some sort of bun, bits of it poking out and falling into her face, her eyes locked on me, wide and glinting in the light.

Fucking hell.

How did this woman come from August Montgomery, of all people? The guy is a legendary player, but he looks like a fucking thumb.

And Elsie does not.

She’s all long limbs and smooth skin.

In another life, she easily could have been a ballerina, a dancer, and with the grace she has, it’s a wonder that she didn’t opt to do something with that athleticism and beauty, instead of becoming a PT.

Her cheeks are scarlet, the flush spreading from her face and down to her chest in splotches.

It sends a shot of heat through me, like I’m catching it from her.

I’ve never met another person who wore their feelings on her sleave the way she does. You never have to ask her what she’s thinking—she’ll laugh, smile, frown, or blush her way into telling you.

Just another infuriating thing about her. The least she could do is shove them down, like the rest of us.

But she’s not covering it up at all.

Not the dark look in her eyes.

Not the way her chest rises and falls.

Not how her lips part slightly, her hand slipping limply off the doorknob.

“I’m—I’m sorry—”

“What the hell are you doing?” I get control of myself at the sound of her voice, snatching my shirt off the bed, fumbling, trying to find the arm and neck holes.

Distantly, in the back of my mind, the primate side of me is preening, proud of the fact that one glance at me apparently got her this hot and bothered.

But the other part of me—the part that’s much more worried over someone finding out about this injury—pushes that guy to the side, taking front and center stage.

“I—” At first, she looks like a chastened girl, but something thunders over her face, and she quickly turns into a pissed-off woman. A determined set to her eyes, her soft mouth going hard. This is a look I’ve been on the receiving end of many times before. “You’re hurt.”

“I’m not,” I counter, thinking that should be the end of it. But she just crosses her arms and leans against the door jamb. Her proximity to me scrambles my thoughts, like some sort of signal jammer.

“You were limping,” she says, swinging her arm toward the field, as though she can summon up an instant replay. Did she see me limping? I thought I’d hidden it pretty well. Does that mean the other guys saw it as well?

Fuck.

“I was not,” I say, and now it’s my turn to cross my arms. I don’t miss the way her gaze drops down to my chest, her throat bobbing for a moment as she takes me in, then seems to gather herself and force her eyes back up to mine.

“What is this, gas lighting one-o-one?” She steps closer to me, crossing the threshold into my room, her eyes locked on mine. “I’m a physical therapist, Wolfe, I know pain when I see it. What was it? From the fall?”

I should have covered that wince when I first fell. I should have thought about the fact that she was right there, practically nose-to-nose with me, and she was going to see it.

And, knowing what she’s like from the past few weeks of having her on the team, I should have known she wouldn’t drop it that easily.

“I’m not talking to you about this—”

“If you just tell me where it’s hurting, I can take a look at it,” she insists, taking another step toward me.

And already I know this is getting into dangerous territory.

Young woman. New to the team. Found with me alone in my bedroom—just the thing we need.

The last Squid’s coach got himself fired because of a scandal like this. In a way, I’m grateful for it—the guy was kind of an ass, and it left an opening for them to offer me the position, instead.

But it also means HR has been up my ass—and, actually, everyone’s—to avoid any more legal gray areas. And having this girl—a Montgomery, nonetheless—alone in my room with me, is definitely not the up-and-up they’re hoping for.

“Listen,” I start, trying to harden my voice, trying to cover up the way her presence is affecting me. “I—”

But she’s still talking, her eyes drifting down to my hip, now covered by my shorts again. “Is it bruised? It could be something serious—”

Then, in a moment that seems to stretch time, she reaches forward, her fingers grazing against the bare skin of my hip, then over the waistband of my shorts.

I want to grab her wrist, yank her into me. Get her shirt off and over her head, like a trade.

She got to see me topless, so it would only be fair for us to make it even. In fact, I should get to touch my fingers to her skin, too.

No—I should grab her wrist, push her back, tell her to get the hell out of here before I do something I regret. Tell her nothing. Just tell her to get lost without showing her how much her presence is affecting me.

But, in the end, I don’t end up grabbing her at all. I hold myself perfectly still, my voice coming out as little more than a growl. “Get the hell out of here, Montgomery.”

“R-right,” she stutters, pulling her hand back, apparently just as affected as I am by that jolt of contact. She takes one step, then another, backing up out of the room with a grace that many people couldn’t achieve walking forwards.

Then, the door shuts behind her.

And I’m left standing in the center of the room.

Half-naked and fully, completely hard.