I laughed to myself, tucking my face into his chest before tilting it up with my chin against his collar to look at him. “I guess you are the coach who seduced his athlete,” I noted, not really believing it for a second.
He cringed slightly. “Okay, maybe I had it backwards. I was a decent human being before I met you. Then I started preying on innocent—”
“Stop!” I laughed, shoving his chest enough to make his body rock back.
“Come on,” he whispered, letting a smirk creep back onto his previously fake-distraught face. “Let’s just go for a ride.”
I nodded furiously, my agreement overwhelming my ability to give a normal response.
I wanted to just settle in and be close to him for a little while, feel the coziness of him seep straight into me, and I didn’t feel like being in one spot.
I wanted to move and live and flit and wander.
And I wanted to do it with him.
“Calia,” my dad called from the kitchen as I crept into the house that night.
It was starting to become a routine, the creeping and sneaking followed shortly by the scare of my life.
I had to think that one of these times my heart would actually go into palpitations.
As it was, I’d been lucky enough to keep it to a practice of skipping a beat or two.
“Hey, dad,” I greeted back, turning the corner to see him sitting at the table going over some sort of paperwork. “What’s up?”
His eyes met mine quickly before bouncing back down to the surface of the table in front of him. His reading glasses sat perched at the end of his nose, so I figured he was in the middle of something important.
“You don’t need to come in early in the morning. I have some paperwork and meetings to take care of, so you can just come in in the afternoon for your workout, okay?”
“Are you sure you don’t need help?” I asked, wanting to butter him up now for the day when I told him I wasn’t everything he wanted me to be. If I ever got the courage.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” I smiled, thinking I could text Nik or go by his apartment in my free time so we could get together again in the morning. Free time was a commodity, especially these days, and I wanted to use it.
As I turned to leave, my dad burst my bubble.
“Actually, maybe you wouldn’t mind helping your mother bake a few dozen cookies for a team gift? Since you have the morning off?”
His meaning was clear, and his words, despite the phrasing, weren’t a question.
“Sure,” I agreed, slightly disappointed but accepting all the same. I’d see Nik when I went in for practice in the afternoon and that would have to be enough.
Turning to go upstairs, he called me back once more.
“Whoops, almost forgot, Cal. Sign this real quick.”
“What is it?” I asked, no stranger to my dad handling paperwork for meets and endorsement offers and the like.
“Just something for the Olympic committee.”
“Oh, okay.”
I grabbed the pen off the table and daydreamed about Nik.
And at least we’d had—
Today.
I felt rejuvenated in my purpose, and I planned to use all of the hours provided to help Callie find her form.
She’d told me she’d had trouble concentrating at camp without me there, and as much as I enjoyed the flattery, I hated that that was the case.
I wanted success for her every day whether I was there or not and the training for that would start today.
I tucked my helmet into the saddle bag, snapped it closed, and walked with a bounce in my step to the front door and through it.
My mind a tunnel of focus, I paid little attention to anything and everyone else and headed straight for the bathroom to change.
“Nik,” Frank called from his open office door, stopping me in my tracks with surprise.
“Yes, sir?” I asked, turning to face him but not changing the direction of my lower body.
I didn’t want to give him the idea that I wanted to stay and chat, but I could hardly disregard him either.
His eyes narrowed.
“Come in here, please.”
“Okay,” I agreed, pointing to the gym. “I’ll just go tell—”
“She’s not here,” he interrupted, waving me toward the office with large, snappy swing of his hand.
My eyes shrunk and pulled together at once, knowing by the tone of his voice and Callie’s absence that something was up. I just didn’t know what yet.
Dread boiled like hot lava in my stomach, coating the inside and slowly sliding its way out in an attempt to take over everything. My breath caught before I could answer, half wondering if I was ready for what waited beyond his door.
We’d had meetings before, but this one felt notably different. It felt ominous and obscure, and I wasn’t sure if that feeling was completely contrived or a vivid depiction of my intuition.
Whatever it was, it wouldn’t wait.
It wouldn’t disappear or change, and the best thing I could do for my nerves and sanity was get it over with.
“Okay,” I finally agreed, turning and heading for his office right then.
He stood in the door as I entered, shutting it resolutely behind me and rounding the desk.
“Sit,” he ordered.
Slowly, I sat.
Moments passed with nothing but the muted sounds of a full gym whispering through the glass and the whirring of his desk fan behind him filling the air.
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to force my hand with the stress of the wait, but it wasn’t a good plan for me. I didn’t plan to say one fucking word unless prompted.
“You know, Nik, I brought you here because the prospect of having someone of your caliber coaching in our gym was beyond appealing,” he finally started, clasping his hands over the tent of elbows on his desk.
I didn’t like where this was going. Sure, his words were mostly positive, but the tone…well, it was not.
It leached acid and spewed disdain and spit out a healthy dose of accusation just in case the first two weren’t enough.
“I thought you’d be able to relate to Callie, help her learn to listen and apply what her coaches enforced.”
“Yes, sir.” And I thought I’d done a pretty damn good job. She’d been better than ever at the Olympic Trials and every day besides, her practices in the gym as well as her performance on the world stage a testament to how well my coaching style jived with her talent.
“If she could listen to you, I figured she’d listen to me and her National Coaches.”
I didn’t move, didn’t speak because, to me, there was nothing to say.
He was talking about her like a dog or a child, a basic skill set like listening and obeying something to be learned instead of accepted, and Callie sure as hell wasn’t either of those.
I could see his jaw hardening in time with my own, his inference and my non-response pushing each other’s most sensitive buttons.
When the tension broke, he finally put it all out there. “I didn’t give you permission to date her.”
Leaning forward slowly, I settled my elbows onto the arms of the chair and linked my steady hands together.
“All due respect, sir,” I enunciated clearly, slowing down each word to make sure there was no confusion or misunderstanding when it came to my answer.
“But I didn’t ask for it.”
The rubber band on his cool snapped, bringing his body up and over the flat top of his desk until all of his imposing weight leaned viciously into his hands.
“Doesn’t consent mean anything to you?” he asked, angry, his veins standing out in his neck and a purple hue under-lighting the thin layer of skin.