Page 5 of Sexting the Coach (Pucking Daddies #6)

Elsie

Ididn’t get a bit of sleep last night.

Instead, I was up until four in the morning, Googling about sexual harassment at work, and how to unsend a text, and what to do if you accidentally sext a guy who is kind of sort of your boss but also old enough to be your dad.

Unfortunately, the internet didn’t have much in the way of help.

Mabel scared the shit out of me around four thirty, when she appeared on the other side of my laptop like a dark specter, her eye mask propped up on her head and her red braids fuzzy from sleep.

“What are you doing?” she’d asked, and then, before I could answer, “Did you even go to sleep last night?”

And at that moment, I came clean to her about everything—what happened with Wolfe, the running away, then the thoughts, and finally, the horrible, horrible fact of the text that I didn’t mean to send.

“Hattie is going to flip,” Mabel said, shaking her head and handing my phone back to me. I didn’t want it. It felt like a bomb. “She’s always told you that texting thing is stupid.”

“I know.” I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my face in my knees. Voice muffled by my pajama pants, I asked, “What am I going to do?”

“Well, first, you’re going to take a shower,” Mabel said, grabbing my arm up and hauling me out of bed, pushing me toward the bathroom.

After that, we came up with the plan that I would just avoid and deny—if Wolfe tried to come near me, I’d avoid him. And if he brought up the text, I’d act like I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

Except I’m a terrible liar. And also, apparently, terrible about subtle avoidance.

Now, I sit cross-legged on my bed, Mabel across from me, our knees touching, as Mabel’s phone rings Hattie between us.

“Hey-ay,” Hattie says, in the way that she always answers the phone. I don’t know whether to burst out laughing or crying. “What’s up? How is camp?”

“We have a def-con one,” Mabel says, voice deadly serious, and Hattie laughs.

“Wait, is def-con one the bad one? I can never remember which way the scale goes—”

“Five is the bad one, Hats,” Mabel says, rolling her eyes and throwing some of her hair over her shoulder. “Elsie sexted the coach.”

Hattie is quiet for a long moment, and Mabel and I stare at the little picture of the three of us in Cape Cod for a second, the static from the other side doing nothing to show her reaction.

Then, finally, a squeal, “You did what?”

“Not on purpose!”

“Oh my god, those stupid text drafts!” I can hear her standing up, getting ready to march around our apartment, her righteous indignation finally finding a place after all these years. “I told you those were a bad idea! Elsie, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” I practically wail, grabbing a pillow and flattening it into my face. I already feel like I can’t breathe—might as well suffocate to death.

Mabel grabs the pillow and throws it over to her bed, scowling down at the phone. “That’s kind of why we called you.”

“What—me? Mabel, you’re the one who’s good in a crisis.”

“We already tried my way,” Mabel says, shrugging. “And Elsie is not good at playing it cool.”

“Duh,” Hattie says, sounding, at least a little bit, like she’s calmed down. “I could have told you that.”

“Oh, please,” I fire back, sitting up slightly, feeling a little less sorry for myself. “As if you would have done a better job, considering the position I’m in.”

“And who got you in that position?” Hattie asks, her voice practically singing with I-told-you-so through the phone. “You never should have drafted those texts, Elsie.”

“Guys,” Mabel says, putting her hand out to both me and the phone, as though Hattie can see the gesture. “This is not the time to fight. This is the time to bring the council together to figure out what Elsie should do.”

“What do you mean?” Hattie asks, her voice rising. “Do nothing. Don’t send any more texts—and don’t draft anymore either. Stop acting weird.”

“We already tried that,” I say, ruefully.

“I know,” Mabel says, and when she smiles, I recognize it as her mischievous smile, the one that means she’s going to do something I won’t—and Hattie especially isn’t going to—like. “Which is why I’m saying, go for it.”

“Wha-at?” Hattie screeches, at the same time I say, “No way, Mab, that’s crazy.”

“She should not go for it,” Hattie says, winning out and talking over me. “At most, Elsie should either deny that she sent it, thank him for not turning her over to HR, or maybe both.”

“Who says I want to go for it anyway?”

Mabel grins, “What’s the point of the drafted texts? All the things you wish you could say, but didn’t?”

My face flushes hot, and I feel it all the way at the tips of my ears, “Okay, but that doesn’t mean that I actually want to do it—”

“Okay, I’m not even there and I know you’re lying,” Hattie says. “But you should not. No matter how persuasive Mabel is being.”

“I’m just saying,” Mabel says, her deep voice practically dancing. “That based on that tug-of-war scene, it’s pretty obvious Wolfe wants you, too. What could be the harm in just—getting it out of your system?”

“Losing her job!” Hattie calls, “Losing her job, losing her credibility. Her dad would be pissed. Uh, he’s like—way too old for you, and not in a hot way—”

“—who says it’s not in a hot way?” Mabel interjects, but Hattie rolls on through.

“—pretty sure it’s going to be against the code of conduct, and also, didn’t the Squids just have some big scandal last year?”

“It was the year before last,” Mabel corrects. “First, since when are you a Squids fan? And second, that was totally different. It wasn’t consensual. That coach was a total fucking perv.”

“And don’t you think Elsie is kind of acting like a perv?”

“Hey!” I say, but Hattie talks over me, “And also, I’ll have you know I did a whole Wikipedia deep dive when you guys were hired there. I’m a good friend.”

“Yeah,” Mabel laughs, “that, or you just love gossip.”

“I thought this wasn’t about fighting,” I say, weakly.

“It’s not,” Mabel says, sighing and leaning back on her arms, lolling her head to the side, and looking at me like I’m a half-finished painting, and she’s trying to figure out how to get me to the final landscape. “I’m saying go for it. Hattie is saying no—”

“Emphatically no!” Hattie supplies.

“—so, I guess you just have to decide what you’re going to do.”

“Choose between avoiding him or—what? Showing up at his door tonight?” I ask.

“Did he answer the first text?” Hattie cuts in, and I flush again. It’s not like I haven’t thought about that fact—no, he did not answer the text. Which probably means that even if I was up for that kind of thing, he would not be interested.

“No,” Mabel says, wincing at the screen. “He did not.”

“Oh, god, Elsie!” Hattie says, and I can picture her pushing her bangs back away from her face in exasperation. “This isn’t even a question. He’s not interested! Plus, isn’t he married? To that actress?”

“No,” Mabel says, “he got divorced a long time ago. Can you imagine fumbling Leda Temple?”

“He was dating Leda Temple?” Hattie basically whistles. “Pack it up, Elsie.”

“You guys are the worst,” I whine, falling onto my side and reaching over to Mabel’s bed for the pillow again. I still don’t get to suffocate myself with it, because she wrenches it away and holds it tight.

“You can’t die right now,” Mabel says, her eyes cutting to the clock on the far wall. “It’s almost time for team dinner.”

“Yeah,” Hattie says, “I mean—I don’t have dinner. I’m watching Love Island and eating popcorn, but I’m there with you in spirit.”

“Have protein, too!” Mabel orders.

“You can’t make me!” Hattie cackles, cutting herself off when she disconnects the call.

“Oh, fuck,” I mutter, falling back so my head is hanging off the end of the bed. “I’m screwed.”

Team dinner is even worse than I thought.

It’s the final night we’re here, so they’ve pulled all the stops—prime rib and roasted potatoes, definitely not food they had to cook around a campfire. The room is jovial, faces red from drinking, laughter filling the space. Maybe it’s because the week was fun.

Or maybe it’s because everyone is so happy to finally go home.

“What is wrong with me?” I hiss under my breath, putting my hands over my eyes and forcing myself to look away. “It’s like—I can’t stop looking.”

“You are very un-chill,” Mabel agrees.

Wolfe is sitting on the other side of the dining hall, talking to some of the other coaches, and it’s like no matter how hard I try to focus on Mabel, and get my mind on other things, I can’t stop my eyes from wandering over to him instead.

And I can’t stop my thoughts from wandering back to his arms around me when we hit the ground during football. His body against mine during the tug-of-war.

The sight of him standing in front of that mirror, his thumb in the waistband of his shorts, pulling them down to reveal his hip, and—

“Elsie,” Mabel hisses my name, tugging on my elbow, and I realize too late that I was staring at him again., because now he’s looking at me, too, something complicated in his expression.

“Jesus,” I mutter, standing a little too abruptly, the other people at our table looking up at me when I do. “Sorry—I’m just going to get some air.”

I push through the dining hall, keeping my head down and hoping Karlee doesn’t notice me leaving, or she might follow me out. I know how protective she can be of me, and right now, I just need a second to breathe and push the image of Weston Wolfe out of my head.

When I find a door in the back of the room and push through it, I’m relieved to find it leads me out back, under a little copse of trees just behind the building.

There’s a white folding chair against the wall and an overturned bucket someone could sit on.

It looks like a little area the kitchen staff might use for their breaks.

“I won’t take long,” I mutter, to nobody, because I’m apparently losing my mind.

“Good to hear.”

“Oh—fuck!”

When I spin around, I see Wolfe pushing through the door, his eyes locked on me. “Are you okay?”

“No—why did you follow me out here?”

“Really?” he stops, letting the door shut behind him. I wait for him to say more. We stand quietly under the yellow light from the lamp, the bugs and moths fluttering around it above our heads and casting massive shadows on the ground below us.

Infuriatingly, he out-waits me, and I’m talk again, “I mean—I just needed a second.”

“To stop staring at me?”

“I wasn’t staring at you.”

“Elsie, I think we need to talk about that text.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie, and I feel the heat on my cheeks, knowing that even in this light, it’s obvious that I’m blushing hard.

Weston raises a single eyebrow at me, tilting his head appraisingly, “What is this, gaslighting one-o-one?”

I press my lips together, looking away from him, trying to keep myself from laughing.

This is not a laughing matter. In fact, other than that brief moment of levity, it kind of feels like my heart is trying to claw its way out of my chest. Maybe having a heart attack is the avenue we didn’t consider earlier when Mabel assembled the council.

“Okay,” I admit, holding my hands up, because the heart attack escape is clearly not coming, as much as it feels like it. “I sent it. But it was a mistake.”

“Oh, really?” his brow furrows, and he looks at the brick wall to our left like he could see right through it and to the dining room beyond. “Did you mean to send it to someone else?”

Was that jealousy that flickered over his face? No way. It’s not possible.

My ears and neck are on fire, and I would give anything to not be the blushing type of person.. “No—well, I didn’t mean to send it at all.”

“What does that mean?”

“I was just doing it to—like—relieve some—”

What am I doing? This is the opposite of playing it cool, denying, avoiding. Here I am, alone with him, and somehow, we’ve gone from ten feet apart to about two, him staring down at me intently like he’s trying to help me figure out what I’m trying to say.

His hat is backward again, and his eyes are dark blue, a kind of intense I don’t know how to explain. It makes something in my stomach feel soft and sticky.

“Relieve some what?” he whispers, his eyes flitting down to my lips, and when I suck in a breath, he seems to catch it, breathing in at the same time, our chests brushing and sending a shiver through my body.

Bad idea.

I try to step backward, but three things happen in quick succession. First, the back of my heel catches on the handle of that stupid, overturned bucket, and I start to trip, arms flailing up and out.

Second, I grab hold of Weston’s shirt, like I might keep from falling on my ass by clutching tight to him.

And third, the both of us stumble, him only barely managing to steady me and keep me from smashing my head into the brick wall behind me.

“You are very clumsy,” he breathes, not stepping back from me, and I realize I can smell his cologne—something a little spicy, black pepper and rosemary. It’s the same smell from football and tug-of-war.

“Earlier was your fault,” I whisper back, trying to ignore the way his cologne is infiltrating my senses. “You should have moved out of my way.”

He’s up against me, boxing me into the wall, one of his arms up so he can lean in close, his head tipped down so close to me that less than an inch would have us touching.

I have no idea what I’m doing, but it feels so nice to be near him that it’s like my logical brain leaves my body.

“I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of football,” he whispers, his eyes darting back and forth between mine, and for a wild, crazy moment, I think that he might kiss me.

But before that can happen, the door to our left slams open, and the worst possible person appears under the golden pooling glow of the light.

“What the fuck,” Karlee asks, her eyes instantly landing on Wolfe, “is going on here?”