“And this,” he said, waving a hand behind him. “Is my daughter — Julep.”
Hesitantly, she stepped up to his side, though she didn’t smile or show any ounce of emotion other than a slight raise of two fingers from where she’d folded her arms across her chest.
“Julep is a junior, and for some reason, loves me enough to transfer from our last university and finish out her degree here. She’s majoring in sports medicine, and she’ll be interning under the training staff on the team.”
My heart rate spiked at the thought of her being around all the time, at the mere inference that she might be the one to stretch or massage me before a game.
Coach paused, something more severe washing over his expression as his jaw hardened, eyes narrowing.
“And let me be extremely clear,” he said, scanning the room. “If any of you even so much as thinks about flirting with Julep, let alone having the balls to ask her on a date, you will have me to answer to. She’s not here for you to ogle over. She’s here to work — just like you. I imagine since you have Riley Novo as a teammate, I don’t need to lecture any further than this about respecting females in the athletic industry.”
Riley smiled a little at that, obviously impressed, and Julep rolled her eyes like she hated that this was a conversation that even needed to happen at all.
All the while, I was burning from the inside out.
Because all my life, football had been my one and only focus. It was all I cared about. It was my reason for waking up in the morning, and the only thought that consumed me when I laid my head down at night. It was my lifeline, my muse, the center of my attention.
But in one fatal moment, that focus shifted.
Julep Lee was the coach’s daughter. She was completely off limits.
And yet, I knew right then and there that I had to have her.
What happens when the role model quarterback has his morals tested with the head coach’s rebellious daughter? Find out this fall in Quarterback Sneak! Pre-order now.
What’s worse than hating your brother’s best friend? Rooming with him. Read Riley and Zeke’s story in Fair Catch – FREE in Kindle Unlimited!
Thirsty for another hot sports romance? Keep reading for a sneak peek inside the Amazon Top 5 Bestseller – The Wrong Game.
Gemma
This is not the conversation we were supposed to have.
On the drive home, I saw every word that would form. I saw how they would be born, first in my mind and then in my mouth, each one standing strong and brave as it slipped from my lips and landed on his ears.
I knew what I’d say. I knew what he’d say. I had a plan.
My particular brand of anxiety was having an ungodly amount of stress over that which I could not control. It’d been this way since I was a young girl, and it’d only worsened with age. I made lists, and plans, and deadlines. I gave myself goals, and when I met them, I celebrated only long enough for me to decide what I would tackle next on the list.
It was all about being in control.
So, unlike a normal woman discovering her husband’s infidelity, I did not cry or scream or throw objects across the room when I learned the truth. No, instead, when I found the first sign of his indiscretions, I made a check list. And I checked items off that list with a mixture of both dread and satisfaction.
Perfume that wasn’t mine staining his shirt? Check.
Text messages from an unknown number, slipping through the cracks of my husband’s technology-ignorant fingers onto our shared computer, but missing from his phone? Check.
Hotel rooms booked on a card I shouldn’t have known about, one I only discovered by receiving the statement in our teal mailbox? Check.
We painted that mailbox together, by the way. It was one of the first things on the list I’d made when we bought our house. We’d both been covered in that teal paint — the color I loved so much in the store, but actually rather hated once it was splashed on our mailbox.
But it didn’t matter the day we painted that mailbox.
On that day, my husband kissed my paint-splattered lips and told me I was the only woman he would ever love.
And I believed him.
My husband was the kind of man who looked at me so adoringly, who said the sweetest things, that I was certain I could have tossed him into a pit of gorgeous super models and he wouldn’t have so much as even looked at them, let alone touch them. In fact, he’d be searching for me, calling out my name, seeking me out.
My entire relationship with him, I’d believed every word he’d said — perhaps blindly, it would seem. I believed him when he cried the day he asked me to marry him, and when he told me over breakfast one morning that no one in this world made me happier than him. There was never any reason to suspect him. There was never any reason to not feel safe.