Stealing Home(25)

He wouldn’t though. His jaw stayed locked as his stare seemed capable of almost melting the wall in front of him.

“Archer?” Coach’s voice boomed in the room. “You’re sitting out tonight.”

Three annoyed sighs sounded through the room, but all Archer did was give a small tip of his head in acknowledgment.

“We’ll reconvene before the next game, but you’d better make sure you’re listening to the medical team and getting this leg fixed. No more of this tough guy shit, Archer. This team needs you, and not in the form of you riding the bench, you hear me?”

Archer lifted his gaze to Coach’s, his hands gripping the armrests of the chair. “Understood.” Then he shoved out of his chair and left the room without so much as a sideways look in my direction.





WE’D LOST. BY a run.

A few of my colleagues who had been in Coach’s office earlier made no attempts to dull their pointed looks of blame my way. Yes, the Shock may very well have won if Archer had been playing, but they also could have been looking at losing a hell of a lot more had he played and injured himself worse.

I shouldn’t feel guilty—I’d made the right call—but I couldn’t fight the sliver of it I felt. Of course second-guessing came into play too, making me question if I should have said something to Coach about the way Archer had been favoring his leg during those last few innings of the game against the Rays. But if I had and Archer had been benched the last few innings, he wouldn’t have been able to make a hit that brought in two runs in the ninth and won the Shock the game.

Second-guessing was part of the job. It was part of life. I tried to make the best decisions I could and not let myself get hung up in the what-ifs. Which was harder to do when it came to Luke Archer than with anything else in my life.

Even though he’d ridden the bench the whole game, cheering his teammates from the dugout, we hadn’t exchanged more than a few clipped words and bags of ice. I told myself that this was the way we’d have to act around each other when we were with the team, but it still felt odd when the man I’d slept with two nights ago wouldn’t make eye contact when I held out a fresh bottle of water for him.

Whether or not this was part of his act to keep our relationship—whatever it was exactly—hidden, I knew one thing for sure—he was angry. I hadn’t sided with him and the rest of the Lip Service Crew, and as a result, he’d had to sit out a game. In his entire professional career, Luke Archer had never sat out a game. Knowing who he was, I guessed that was how he had been planning on retiring from his career.

So he was upset at me for making the right call. That was fine. I could handle a player pouting because I had to tell him he wasn’t immortal and that mortal instruments like flesh and blood were vulnerable. The more time I’d had to think about it, the madder I’d gotten over the whole thing.

Who was he to get all upset at me for making a good, honest call? I’d only been doing my job, and I’d do it again if I felt it was in his best interest to sit out a game. I didn’t care who he was or how he made me feel—my job came first. It had to. It was all I could count on at the end of the season, because I wasn’t sure Archer would still be there. I might have hoped he would be, but I wasn’t a total fool. A relationship as new as ours, as forbidden as ours . . . the probability of it enduring wasn’t on the promising end of the scale.

Since my thoughts had been a bit flustered, I paused to study the wrap I’d just finished on Reynolds’s ankle. “Is that too tight?” I asked, testing beneath the bandage with my finger to make sure I wasn’t cutting off the circulation to his foot.

“Nothing could ever be too tight, Doc.” Reynolds was no doubt grinning down at me with his brows in his hairline.

“You might change your mind if your toes fall off from lack of blood flow.” I tested the wrap on the other side to find it was okay. Reynolds’s toes would live to see another day.

It was a little after the game, and the Shock were dotted around the locker room, not making their usual post-game noises and chest bumps. The mood was somber, if not downright depressing. The sound of the showers and the squeak of locker hinges were about all of the noise spilling about the room.

Well, and of course Reynolds’s unending soliloquy of innuendos.

“While you’re down there, Doc . . .” Reynolds bobbed those raised brows when I looked up at him with a sigh.

“Watch your mouth, Reynolds.” A looming frame towered up behind me.

I didn’t need to turn around to know who it was. The tone of his voice might have been unfamiliar, but the way my body responded when his came near was not.

Reynolds’s face creased. “Whoa. Ease up there, Archer.” He lifted his hands. “I meant no disrespect. Sorry.”

I pretended to still be busy testing the bandage to keep distracted.

“It’s not me you owe an apology to.”

Reynolds continued to study Archer like he was confused, which he had every right to be. Archer was known for being laid-back and easygoing. There was nothing laid-back or easygoing about his tone or words.

“Sorry, Doc,” Reynolds said as I stood. “I was just being my usual * self. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know you didn’t,” I enunciated slowly, more for the man behind me than the one in front of me. “Forget about it.”