Getting Inside Read online

  I lose the battle. He’s standing with his arms crossed, smirking. He catches me looking and raises one eyebrow, as if to say, You get to tell us what to do all the time.

  I ignore the pointless girly flutter in my stomach, and with a big sigh for show, I accept the ball.

  It goes pretty smoothly the first few plays. I complete a couple of passing plays, hand off a couple of runs and—throw an interception to O.

  “Aw, it’s okay, Coach,” O says. “You’re a girl.”

  I give him the finger, and everyone laughs.

  Calder Blake, a corner who hangs a lot with Ty and his crew, says, “Let’s try the read, Coach Thomas.”

  So we run the read option. I can hand it off to a running back or hang onto it, depending on what I see. I keep it.

  Before I can clear the line of scrimmage, I’m on the ground, tangled up with a ton of linebacker.

  It smells like earth and grass, which isn’t a thing you smell a lot when you play football mainly on turf, but it brings back every high school and college football memory I’ve ever had. Except those memories didn’t also smell so overwhelmingly of soap and tea tree and deodorant and clean sweat.

  “Bet you didn’t think you’d be the one on your back all day long, didja?”

  Not sure whether it’s the heat and weight of Ty or the whisper of his breath past my ear, but my body reacts immediately, my heart pounding and blood flushing everywhere. I feel suddenly panicky, and I start to struggle out from under him before—

  Before I register that his muscular thigh is wedged between mine and my thighs seem to have involuntarily clenched around it. He lets out a huff of breath and his muscles flex and mine clench and another breath, and fuck—we’re in some kind of inappropriate dirty feedback loop. Plus, is that—?

  No. No way.

  But a split second’s exploratory wiggle reveals the truth.

  Yep.

  Whatever Ty Williams is wearing under his practice shorts, it’s not a cup. And it’s not restrictive enough to keep his secrets.

  Being wrapped around me is turning him on.

  Oh, man.

  I scramble out from under his gloriously well-muscled form and get to my feet, red-faced, hoping that the eternity I just spent on the ground didn’t feel nearly as long to our audience as it did to me.

  It can’t have been too obvious that I was doing Kegels under Ty Williams, because aside from high-fives and butt-slapping in Ty’s direction and ribbing and consolation pats in mine, no one seems to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

  I look over at him, intending to concede the play and high-five him like everyone else, but he won’t meet my eyes.

  And a thrill of triumph shoots through me—so hot and fast I think I’m going to pass out.

  He wants me.

  Then he looks up at me, shrugs, and grins, and a backlash of shame floods me. Come on, Iona, I chide.

  No way Ty Williams’s hard cock was just pressed against my thigh. No way I made him pant like a dog.

  No way he wants me.

  I don’t have that effect on men.

  Especially not men like him.

  Chapter 13

  Ty

  “I bought a condo.”

  The look Zach and Calder give me, you’d think I’d just confessed something a lot more interesting. We’re hanging out, drinking, at the Bear’s Den, our favorite watering hole when we’re in the mood to be seen. Most of what goes on in here is a hell of a lot more interesting than my new place.

  “You spent money?” Zach demands.

  “I spend money,” I growl back. “What about the Hellcat?”

  But of course Zach has it nailed. I bought a condo in Renton, not some killer Puget Sound view on the Seattle waterfront. And the car is the hottest sports car you can own for cheap. I’m careful with money, which is a bit of a rarity in the PFL. Guys earn their first big checks and go totally nuts, not realizing—or not wanting to admit to themselves—how short their careers are likely to be.

  Not me. I want to leave this world with enough money never to have to worry about money again. I did enough of that for the first twenty-one years of my life.

  I tell them about the condo, which isn’t too far from McElroy, our training center. I can move in Tuesday, which sucks only because I’m getting kicked out of my current place on Saturday. No matter. If I can’t crash easily with one of the other guys, I’ll get a hotel room.

  “Let me grab another pitcher,” says Zach, “and we’ll toast.”

  He comes back with the beer and says, “Don’t look now. Unless you want to. The Halle Berry look-alike at the bar wants to know if you’re busy later tonight.”

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “I told her she’d have to ask you.”

  I’m not doing anything tonight except helping Zach and Calder finish this pitcher and probably a few more. So after we toast and drink to the new condo, I raise my eyes in the direction of the bar. She gives me a little wave. She’s pretty—creamy, pale brown coloring, straight hair to her shoulders, slender frame, long, slim legs under a short flippy skirt—and she’s wearing my number in rhinestones on a tight baby-doll T, so I have to guess I’m her type.

  I love this part. The part that starts with a wave or a smile or a wink and ends when I say, “Hey, can I give you a ride home?” I guess you’d call it the hunt, or the chase, even if, truth be told, there’s not much up in the air about situations like this. We both know where it’s headed. Still, I’ve always liked the rituals. So I head toward the bar.

  She grins up at me and I smile back. But I’m not feeling it yet. The rush that goes with the game.

  “Hey, beautiful. What’re you drinking?”

  “Grizzly Cosmos,” she says.

  “One Grizzly Cosmo and a shot of Don Eduardo Silver, please.”

  Sheila is tending bar. She’s one of the Bear’s Den regulars, fortyish but stacked to the teeth and still hot as fuck. Where she might normally flirt like mad with me, she’s used to the drill, and seeing what’s going on between me and the fan, she only says, “Hey, hon,” and gets businesslike, dropping the drinks in front of us in seconds flat without any banter. Which is perfect.

  “Ty,” I say. “But you probably knew that. I like your shirt.” I gesture in the general direction of my fan’s chest. We both look down and back up again at the same time. She giggles.

  I raise both eyebrows.

  “Thanks,” she says, almost shyly. Cute. She tilts her head back to make a big deal of how much taller I am. “I’m Carly. I’m a big fan.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I saw your sack Sunday.”

  Her face falls as soon as she says it. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the double meaning if she hadn’t reacted, but I have to laugh now. I could be really crass and come back at her with some awful line, but that’s more O’s style. Instead, I say, “Yeah, that was a good moment.”

  “What’s it like? Being out there? In front of all those people?”

  “Amazing,” I say. And I think about the parts I love—how it feels to come out of the tunnel on game day for warmups, before the stadium has filled, when you feel the hugeness of the space and the openness of the sky and the thrill that never goes away.

  I wonder if it’s the same for Coach Thomas, if coaches get that same feeling. And then I remember that she was a player, too, and I bet it was the same for her, even if it wasn’t the Sunday night game or a hundred thousand fans under one roof. I bet she does get that same rush when she goes out on the field for PFL games. I bet she knows.

  It’s everything.

  “Do you get nervous?”

  “Nervous, pumped, yeah, of course. Especially for big games. Sunday, Monday nights. Or rivalry games. Or ones toward the end of the season that matter for getting into the playoffs. And, of course, postseason. Hey—so, what do you do, when you’re not watching Grizzlies games?”

  “I’m an eighth-grade English teacher,” she says.


  “Yeah? No kidding. That was my favorite subject.”

  “I tutor, too,” she says, tipping her head to one side.

  We’re definitely flirting, and my pulse picks up. This could work. I decide not to tell her that English was the one subject I consistently got A’s in, in both high school and college. When I applied myself anyway. “You do, huh?” I ask, picking up her tone. “In just English? Or in other subjects?”

  “I’ve got a few other areas of expertise,” she teases.

  Hmm.

  The guy next to her stands up and she says, “Grab a seat?”

  I walk around to her other side, and that’s when I see Coach Thomas with the journalist—Julia, I think?—sitting at a table near the back. They’re talking and laughing, and, man, she has a great smile, a broad flash of gleaming white. And she’s wearing lipstick, a deep plum-red that’s glossy even from across the room. Slick.

  My mouth goes suddenly dry and something seizes in my chest, like someone slammed the brakes too fast, and I think:

  Uh-oh.

  Iona

  “So…” says Julia, as we’re starting our second round. “What’s it like to be flat on the ground underneath Ty Williams?”

  We’re at the Bear’s Den, which sounds like it should have animal heads on the wall but is actually a sports bar where Grizzly players drink from time to time. It was Julia’s choice, since she asked me to grab a drink. I would have stayed as far away as humanly possible from any place I thought Ty Williams might be.

  “On or off the record?” I ask.

  “On the record.”

  “He is an impressive football player,” I say. “I barely saw him coming, and I know what to look for. It was a little like being run over by a freight train.”

  I’m not just talking about the force with which he hit me. I sigh.

  She scribbles something in her little notebook, then closes it with unnecessary emphasis and leans close and murmurs, “And off the record?”

  I shake my head. “Nah. That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

  She gives me a look. “I’m not buying it.”

  “I’ve been burned before by on-the-record, off-the-record bullshit,” I tell Julia.

  She nods. “I know. But I mean off the record. We’re not going to be able to get through the next few months together if we can’t actually have a conversation off the record. And there might be times I’ll ask you, afterward, if we can add something back to the record, but I swear I’ll respect you if you say you don’t want to.”

  “You know what’s hard about this?” I ask Julia. “I’m not me.”

  “On the record?” she asks, tentatively lifting her notebook open again.

  I laugh. “Yes. On the record. One of the things that’s hard about being one of the first female coaches in the PFL is that whatever you do, you’re not just acting as an individual. You’re acting as a representative. So whereas if a guy coach uses bad judgment or talks out of line or gets quoted saying something racist or sexist or whatever, that’s him. He’s an asshole. If I screw up? Womankind screws up. You know what I’m saying? It’s a lot of responsibility. And God, I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that I’m never really off the record.”

  She finishes scribbling that down and tilts her head to one side, considering me carefully. “Never really thought about that aspect of it. And what about race? Does that enter into it, too?”

  “Yeah, totally. There’s still a huge race gap in the PFL when it comes to coaches and quarterbacks. We need to do a lot better about hiring and promoting black coaches. And yeah, you’re totally right—in both cases, I succeed and fail not just as an individual but also as a member of the groups I represent.”

  Julia writes a few more lines, then closes the notebook and puts her pen down. “Okay, so what you’re saying is that even if getting tackled by Ty Williams was the hottest thing that’s happened to you since you had sex with your best friend’s older brother, there’s not a chance in hell you’ll ever tell me that.”

  I laugh. I really like Julia. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Damn,” she says. “You’re really going to make me imagine the rest.”

  “Yep,” I say.

  “Oh, and speak of the devil,” she says.

  Sure enough, when I raise my head, my gaze finds Ty Williams at the bar, leaning flirtatiously in toward his female companion.

  Long before I knew I was going to work for the Grizzlies, I followed Ty’s career. Maybe it was his forty-yard dash times out of college, maybe it was how good he looked at those post-game press conferences; I’m not really sure what exactly drew me to him. But one of the things you find out pretty quickly if you pay attention to Ty is that there’s always a woman. Always a different woman.

  The women are diverse in race and ethnicity, yet they have certain things in common. They are usually famous—models, actresses—once, an ex-president’s daughter. They’re often rich. But the number one thing they have in common is that they’re stunning. In a feminine, expensive-looking kind of way. No Amazons, not even really any five-foot-ten super models. Lots of hard-to-achieve hairstyles, jewelry, dresses and flowered tops, delicate features, refined manners—

  This one’s no exception.

  There’s no call for the way my heart suddenly feels heavy. I mean, what? Did I think that the fact that our bodies made horizontal contact was going to cause him to realize the error of his ways, give up womanizing, abandon delicately beautiful in favor of strong, bossy, and ripped?

  And even if our thirty seconds of mud wrestling had permanently changed his taste in women, did I think I’d ever get a taste of the fruits? I’m his coach, for fuck’s sake.

  I am so irritated with myself I could spit.

  Julia mistakes my grimace, understandably, for disgust with Ty or maybe with the mating habits of male celebrities. “They’re like magnets,” she says. “They pretty much have to fight off their female admirers.”

  “Poor babies,” I say, and Julia laughs.

  We take a few more sips of our drinks, but the fun has gone out of it for me, and Julia knows. We settle up and say good night, and as we walk back to our cars together in a fine Seattle drizzle, I’m thinking about how much I want to be different from the woman who’d gone to the bar wearing his number on her chest. But the truth is, if I could do something that would make him cross a room to buy me a drink—I’m pretty sure I would.

  Chapter 14

  Ty

  I watch Coach Thomas and her shadow leave the bar. She’s wearing a pair of skinny jeans and high black boots, but she doesn’t look like a stick insect in them. She’s got a delicious round ass and gorgeous juicy thighs, and—

  I flash back to practice. It’s those fucking thighs, I think.

  Taking Coach Thomas down was nothing more than instinct. She was running with the ball and it was my job to stop her. That’s what I told myself anyway.

  But as soon as I had her wrapped up, I knew I was full of shit. I tackled her because I wanted to feel our bodies collide. I wanted to know how much of her was muscle and how much soft curves. And I found out.

  God.

  The perfect balance of strength and sweet give, and I was hard as a rock just like that. We hit the ground together, and she would have had to be carved from stone not to feel what I was packing.

  How fucking awkward is that?

  Hello, Coach!

  There are good reasons professional contact sports are single-sex, I’m telling you.

  I couldn’t look her in the eye afterward. I don’t know how I’m going to face her tomorrow and Sunday.

  “Ty?”

  I wonder how long I’ve been lost in my thoughts.

  Carly doesn’t seem pissed. It would be awfully convenient if I could take her home, burn off some frustration, and chalk up the hard-on-for-coach incident to bad timing and too much recent celibacy.

  “Sorry! I was just thinking about a play.
So—you like teaching?”

  “Love it,” she says.

  “What’s your favorite part?”

  “When I reach a kid, you know? When I get through to someone who’s struggling or get a kid engaged who’s maybe tuned out. It’s a great feeling.”

  Right? I like her already. She’s cute, funny, seems like a nice human being, but—

  I know I’m not going to get my head back in this game. I don’t know how I know, but I know it.

  Carly says, “You want to get out of here—?” and makes a wrap-it-up gesture.

  “Aw, hell,” I say. “I wish I could, but—” And I’m not bullshitting her. I’m genuinely disappointed in myself, like a motor that won’t start when the cord is pulled. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be saying yes to her right now. God knows Coach Thomas herself would probably want me to go home with this one and get my head on straight.

  Right. I can only imagine how horrified Coach would be if she knew what was going on inside my head, instead of defensive schemes.

  “I told the guys I’d hang with them tonight. Another time, maybe.”

  Because Carly probably really is as nice as she seems, she looks disappointed but shakes the hand I offer her and says, “Another time would be great.” She writes her phone number on a grocery store receipt from her purse pocket and hands it to me.

  You would not believe how many phone numbers I get handed. I should have a specialized filing system. Tag them based on where I was when I got them and, I don’t know, what color hair the woman has or her cup size or even how attracted I was.

  I don’t call very many of those phone numbers, though. If I don’t go home with someone, there’ll be someone else next week, and I’ll have forgotten last week’s phone number.

  It never struck me as particularly sad before tonight, that drawer full of slips of paper in every size, shape, and color.

  I head back to Zach and Calder and they give me these looks, like, What the fuck?

  “Ty Williams struck out?” Calder demands.

  I shake my head. “Nah—I just didn’t—”