Rock Bottom Girl(15)
“Did you just bite me?” the voice demanded.
Shit.
The grass under those weird shoes changed to sweltering pavement and then… Oh, God. No. The industrial tile floor of a high school hallway. It smelled like polish and antiseptic.
I heard a thudding and wasn’t sure if it was just in my head.
“Testosterone incoming. Get decent,” that voice boomed. A second later, I was facing concrete floor. The smell of cleaner and perfume tickled my nose.
Someone yelped. A barefoot blur to my right shrieked.
“Hi, Mr. Weston,” a girl purred.
“Stay covered up, ladies. I’ve got a few gentlemen with some luggage coming through.”
There was giggling. And then my body was floating through air up, over, down. I felt cool tile beneath me and at my back. There was the tell-tale screech of a twisting faucet. But before I could muster the energy to threaten my attacker, cold water pelted down on me.
“You stay there,” the finger in my face ordered. And then those shoes were squishing away from me.
I did as I was told because I had no other options. Besides, the water felt pretty damn good.
There was a ruckus coming from outside the showers.
I heard him triaging my team. “You, shower. You, cold, wet towel.”
“Carpenter, you and Kerstetter bring the water cooler down.”
“On it, Coach.”
One by one, my girls were helped into the shower fully clothed.
It was one of those gross old-fashioned shower rooms so everyone could make uncomfortable eye contact while they tried to wash the sweat out of their genitalia and pray that the popular girls wouldn’t notice them.
Angela was propped against the wall in front of me. I raised my hand in a half-assed wave, and she started to giggle. It set me off, and one after another, we all ended up in hysterics.
“I’m so glad you ladies find heat stroke hilarious.”
My vision had cleared enough that I got my first good look at Jake Weston looming in the doorway, shirtless and still sweaty. My God, that body had only gotten more delicious with age.
“Let’s go, Coach,” he said, dragging me to my feet.
9
Jake
Bedraggled Marley Cicero propped her elbows on her knees in front of me.
“What were you thinking?” I demanded, beyond annoyed. Hell, I was moving into seriously pissed off. “It’s ninety-four fucking degrees and a thousand percent humidity, and you decide it’s a great day for ball busters?”
“Ovary exploders,” she muttered.
“Ha. Hilarious,” I snapped. The anger made me antsy. I snatched a hand towel from the neatly folded stack on the shelf and stomped out of her office. In the locker room, I took inventory. My cross-country runners were fanning and rehydrating the girls soccer team.
My fastest runner, Ricky, was staring into the wide brown eyes of Ruby as he held a wet towel to the back of her neck. That looked like trouble to me.
“Everyone all right out here?” I asked, holding the towel under the sink faucet.
“Everyone’s back on their feet, Coach,” Ricky reported, jumping back from the girl. He was tall and fast as fuck. Also one of the nicest kids on the planet. And the very pretty Ruby was looking like she might eat him up for dinner.
Good luck, kid.
“Great. Everyone take five and then meet me out front on the steps.”
I grabbed a cup of water from the cooler my guys dragged down.
“Us, too?” Morgan E. clarified.
“Soccer team, too.” I headed back into the office. It had a creepy glass window that looked out on the lockers. There was a big, industrial gray metal desk, a bookshelf with several tomes on physical fitness from the 1980s, and one green-around-the-gills coach. “Here.” I dropped the towel on the back of her neck, moving Marley’s not-so-perky ponytail out of the way.
“Thanks,” she rasped. She took the cup of water I offered and downed it too fast.
“You’re gonna puke again,” I predicted.
“So thirsty. The girls okay?”
“They’re fine. You’re real freaking lucky. What the hell were you thinking? First of all, it’s too fucking hot to run sprints. The body’s main priority is to keep itself cool. Pushing everyone like that in Pennsylvania August doesn’t build endurance or speed. It makes kids sick.”
“I noticed,” she said, rubbing a hand over what was probably a big-ass headache.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered under my breath. I dug through the dinosaur desk drawers until I came up with a bottle of expired aspirin. “Here.”
When she fumbled the bottle, I took it back, shook out a couple of caplets. She took them, downed them dry.
“I repeat. What the hell were you thinking? These girls went through enough last year. Now you’re trying to kill them on the field?”
She didn’t answer.
Grumbling to myself, I refilled her cup and brought it back. “Better?”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“You’re a real hot mess, you know that?”
She looked up at me for the first time, and I remembered those eyes. The kind of light, warm brown that made me think of brownies and bourbon.