Kulti

“How was your break?”

I looked up from my spot on the ground pulling my socks up high to see Gardner standing over me. “Good. I got to spend some time with my family, and you?”

He shrugged, crouching down. “I slept a lot.”

“Nice.”

Gardner made a pleasant face but didn’t reply. He stayed next to me as I pulled my cleat on and tied it. “Sal.” His voice was so low my gut immediately knew something was wrong. “More pictures popped up this weekend. I want you to be smart, okay?”

I didn’t even tilt my head to take a look at him, only slanting my eyes over in his direction as my guts crawled up into my throat. “We’re friends, G. That’s all.”

The grave expression on his face wasn’t exactly reassuring. “Look, I believe you. I’d believe you if you told me pigs flew, but I know Cordero’s going to be pissed, and there’s only so much Sheena and I can do.”

Time seemed to slow down. “What are you trying to say?”

“I want you to think about what you’re doing and what you want from the future.” Gardner put his hand on my shoulder. “I want the best for you, Sal. That’s the only reason why I’m saying anything. I don’t want you to get blindsided.”

Blindsided by what?

Before I could even start to get my thoughts together and ask him for clarification on whether I was over-exaggerating what he was implying, Gardner straightened up and walked off.

There’s only so much Sheena and I can do for you.

Think about what you’re doing and what you want to do in the future.

I don’t want you to get blindsided.

All I did was take my friend home with me. That was it. It.

I hadn’t done drugs, flashed a crowd, stolen anything or killed anyone.

If my guesses were on track, Gardner had just warned me that my career was in jeopardy.

Maybe I should have panicked. Cried. I would have sworn that I would stop being friends with someone who so obviously needed a friend.

But I didn’t do any of those things. Not even close.

While Gardner had just been trying to be a good friend and warn me, I was suddenly pissed. Really pissed.

I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I knew that in my heart. Sure, there was a stipulation in my contract about fraternization, but I hadn’t been freaking fraternizing with anybody. Not even close, and I was being punished? Or at least sort of being punished?

This was horse shit. Absolute horse shit.

And I really wanted to punch Cordero in the face. Repeatedly.

Tension screamed through my shoulders and down my arms. I had to ball up my fists to contain my frustration with this entire situation. Honestly, I liked Rey. It wasn’t easy, and he got on my nerves at times, but I felt a closeness to him that I didn’t feel with anyone else I played with.

The fact that only a few of the girls on the team spoke to me during practice didn’t make things any better. The rest cast me side-glances that I wasn’t a fan of. But they didn’t say anything to egg me on, so I managed to keep my mouth closed. I knew better than to be the one to start anything. You’re only young and dumb once.

When they weren’t giving me snide glances, they were looking at Kulti like they were expecting to find him with my bra around his neck. The thing was, while I could keep my mouth shut, the German didn’t have to.

And he didn’t.

He had met my eyes early on during practice and frowned. His frown had continued to deepen the longer practice went on. Kulti didn’t try to ask me what happening, but somehow I knew that he was aware something was bugging me, and it had to do with the girls looking him up and down.

My favorite thing that came out of his mouth was, ”I don’t know what the hell you’re looking at, but you need to be looking at the field and not braiding each other’s hair!”

It was so sexist and untrue; I couldn’t help but snicker and then try to hide it.

In the long run though, it didn’t help me be any less pissed off.

They were still talking about me, and giving me looks. Murmuring. There was nothing I could do.

Someone was seated at the bottom of the stairs leading up to my apartment by the time I got home from work that evening. It took all of a split second once I got out of the car, to recognize the brown hair and the long body that stood up, brushing off the back of his loose workout shorts.

He didn’t say anything to me as I parked my car a couple feet away from him, and he didn’t say a word as he took my duffel bag, even as he eyed the baggy pants and the long-sleeved shirt I had on. He hadn’t seen me in my work clothes before, and I couldn’t find it in me to care that I had dirt and grass stains all over my knees and that my hair had doubled in volume since that morning.

“Hey you,” I said with a smile as we climbed up the steps to get to the front door.

Unlocking the door, he followed after me, locking it as soon as he was inside and dropping my bag in the same place I always left it. I sat on the floor and yanked off my work boots, too exhausted to even bother trying to do it standing up. They got tossed in the direction of the door harder than they needed to be.

The German held out his hand to me.

I took it and got to my feet, not moving an inch when we stood maybe four inches away from each other.

I’d been telling myself the second half of the day that this was technically his fault. That if I hadn’t been nice to him, we wouldn’t have started spending time together and become friends. If he was anyone else in the world, save for a handful of other people, no one would have given a single shit what we did together. I had spent my entire career trying to get through day by day and improve. I didn’t want fame, and while a fortune would have been nice, it wasn’t what got me going every morning. I’d been careful, always careful, always sacrificing whatever I needed to, to succeed.

Kulti had come in and doomed all that.

I had put time and effort into building a working relationship with the girls I played with. I helped them out, wanting them to do well, and all that hard work was now pretty much in the shitter. No one except Jenny and Harlow had bothered to—

The German squeezed the hand that I hadn’t even noticed he hadn’t let go of. Palm to palm, his thumb rubbed over the back of my hand, once. Just once. “If you would like me to apologize, I won’t.”

I closed my eyes and stood there, letting him hold my hand and not letting myself think about it too much. I was an affectionate person, and even though Kulti hadn’t really been one in the entire time we’d been getting along, you couldn’t be a soccer player and be weird about physical contact. So I would take everything he was willing to give me.

“What do you have to not be sorry about?” I asked him, eyes still closed.

His long fingers squeezed again. “Forcing you to be my friend.”

I felt myself smile. “You didn’t force me to be your friend.”

“I did,” he argued.

“You didn’t. I was nice to you when you were still being an extra-large pain in the ass.”

There was a pause. “Was this before or after you called me a bratwurst?”

I opened an eye. “Both.”

The corners of his mouth tipped up just slightly, but he stayed serious. “I won’t let them bench you.”

I nodded, staring straight at the man who mastered the resting bitch face, and I said, “All right.”

Words hung in the air between us. I felt compressed, squeezed. I was torn between knowing that I wasn’t going to tell him to beat it and knowing that I probably should.

Was this worth it? Was this worth being ostracized by my teammates? Being on my general manager’s hit list? Having my photo plastered on fan pages with the words ‘die bitch’ at the bottom?

I really had no idea.

I hoped so.

“Sal! You got a minute?”

My fingers gripped the nylon strap of my bag, and I felt my insides stir. The day before I had managed to avoid the two reporters loitering off the side of the field by hauling ass while they were busy talking to other people, but now… I hadn’t gotten so lucky.

I’d gotten to the field for practice early, but not early enough. Damn it.

“Come on, one minute. Please!”

With no one to hide behind or any other way to pretend like I hadn’t heard the guy calling out to me, I took a deep breath and resigned myself to getting this over with.

The twenty-something guy looked friendly enough in khaki pants and a neatly tucked in, button-down blue shirt. He smiled at me, his little handheld recorder ready and waiting. “Thanks for stopping. I have a few questions for you.”

I nodded. “Sure. Okay.”

He introduced himself and the website he was doing the interview for, and let me know he’d be recording our conversation. “You’re about halfway through the season now, how are the Pipers looking?”

All right. “Good. We’ve only lost one game so far, but we’re trying to stay focused and get through the next few weeks so that we can move into the playoffs again.”

“At what point does the pressure really start to get to you?”

“At least for me, it never lets up. Before the season even starts, I’m already worried about how things are going. Every game is important and that’s what our coaching staff has really drilled into us. It’s easier to stay focused when you’re worried about putting one foot in front of the other rather than trying to take on a huge obstacle at once.”

He smiled and nodded. “Who are you looking forward to watching this Altus Cup?”

I smiled at him, feeling a little easier. The Cup was starting in September, right after our season ended. “Argentina, Spain, Germany.” Almost absently I added, “The U.S.” Well that didn’t sound sincere at all. “I’m pretty excited.”

“Any plans for rejoining the U.S. Women’s National Team?” he asked.

That now-familiar rope of anger laced my wrists, and I had to shake it off. It was easy enough to live with not being on the team before, when things had been great with the Pipers, but now not so much. I was on my last reserve of patience. “No plans,” I said in a steady voice, even smiling. “I’m focusing on the Pipers for now.”

“You’ve talked about your work with youth players in the past; are you continuing your camps this year?”

“Those camps are starting up in a few weeks. It’s mainly low-income middle school kids and early high schoolers I aim for. That’s usually one of the most influential ages for kids to really stick to sports, so I love doing them.”

“Okay, one final question so you can get going: what do you have to say about rumors about a relationship between you and Reiner Kulti?”

Dun, dun, dun. I smiled at him and eased my little heart to slow down. “He’s a great person. He’s my coach and a friend.” I shrugged. “That’s all.”

The look the guy gave me was incomprehensible, but he nodded and smiled and thanked me.

I couldn’t help but feel dirty. Just a little. Like I’d done something wrong—or at least something that I wouldn’t want to own up to. I could handle accepting my faults and mistakes. I didn’t have a boyfriend; I wasn’t married. I could be friends with whoever I wanted to. And it wasn’t like he was still married or anything, either.

But…

I swallowed back the weird feeling in my chest, that strange indecisiveness that wasn’t sure whether I wanted to handle all this unnecessary attention or not.

I wasn’t a superstar. I was just me, a little-known soccer player. The equivalent of a bobsledder in Houston, as my sister had called me one day.

All I had ever wanted was to play and to be the best. That was it.

What was I doing?

I tried to block out all these things that didn’t matter when I was at practice, but it was a lot harder than usual for some reason. I couldn’t stop thinking about Gardner’s warning, stupid Amber and her equally stupid husband, the national team, Kulti and all his famous-person crap. I felt like I had a noose around my neck, slowly, slowly, slowly tightening. I couldn’t breathe.

Right after finishing my passing drills, I felt a hand wrap around my wrist when I wasn’t expecting it.

I hadn’t even realized he was nearby. To be honest, I hadn’t been paying that much attention to anything besides soccer: passing the ball, blocking, sprinting. Things I had done a thousand times and would hopefully do another thousand in the future.

A deep line creased between his eyebrows as he tipped his chin down to ask, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing” started to come out of my mouth, but I decided against it at the last minute. He’d know. I wasn’t sure how he’d know, but he would know I was lying. “I’m just stressed, that’s all.” Okay, so that was vague and understated, but it was the truth. I was.

Apparently, it wasn’t enough for him. Of course it wouldn’t be. He got that über serious look on his face, the one that smoothed the angled lines of his cheekbones. Kulti met me eye to eye, not caring that we were so close or that whoever wasn’t busy doing drills was more than likely looking at us. He didn’t care. He simply focused on the object of his attention—me.

It tightened something in my chest that I couldn’t really put together.

“Later,” he stated, he didn’t ask.

I shrugged my shoulders.

“Later,” Kulti repeated. “Keep your head in it.”

I nodded and offered him a weak smile.

He didn’t smile back. Instead, he let go of my wrist and put his hand on my forehead before shoving me gently away. It wasn’t exactly a hug or a pat on the back, but I’d take it.

Sure enough when I turned around, at least eight sets of eyes were on us.

Great.

A knock at eight o’clock that night had me setting my latest concoction on the kitchen counter, careful not to let the spoon fall out of the bowl. I’m not sure who else I could have been expecting to show up besides the German, so I wasn’t surprised to find him on the other side of the peephole.

“Come in,” I said, already opening the door wide for him to enter.

Right before shutting the door, I noticed that his Audi was parked behind my Honda, the silhouette of someone in the driver’s seat. All right.

“Don’t mind me,” I explained, walking back to the kitchen where I’d left my face mask.

“You have something on your face,” Kulti stated, standing on the other side of the counter with a curious expression.

I had only managed to cover one cheek before he’d knocked so I’m sure I looked like an orange creamsicle. Picking up the spoon, I applied more of the cool mixture to my cheeks and forehead, watching the German as I did it. “It’s a face mask made with Greek yogurt, turmeric, ground oatmeal and lemon.” I raised my eyebrows as I dabbed some over my upper lip. “You want some?”

He eyed me dubiously. Then, he nodded.

All right, then. “Rinse off your face with hot water, and then you can put it on.”

I blindly finished putting the mixture on my target skin as he went to the kitchen sink and splashed water over his face, dabbing it dry with a paper towel. It wasn’t until Kulti took a seat on the edge of the kitchen counter and tipped his chin down, that I realized he wanted me to put the mask on him.

“Are you serious?”

The German nodded.

“You are really something else, you know that?” I asked, even as I stepped forward and began smoothing the gunk over his nose and across each cheekbone, gentle and slow. The facial hair that had grown in over the day prickled my fingers with each pass over his features.

“Do you do this often?” he asked after I’d covered his chin.

“A couple times a week.” I smiled, noticing his eyes on mine. “Do you?”

“I’ve had a few scrubs before photo shoots,” he admitted.

I nodded, impressed. What a metrosexual. I ran my fingers over the strip of flesh below his nose. “We spend so much time in the sun, you really have to try and take care of your skin. I don’t want to look like an old lady before my time comes.”

He nodded his agreement and let me finish putting the mask on him with watchful eyes. Once we were done, I told him we needed to wait at least twenty minutes before washing it off. “Don’t touch anything either. The turmeric stains everything,” I warned him, but I didn’t really care if I got a stain on my furniture or not.

Grabbing an ice pack from the freezer, I sat on one end of the couch and watched him sit on the other. Propping my leg on the coffee table, I slapped the ice-pack down on it for a good fifteen minutes. My notebook was on the cushion between us, with a whiteboard on the table for my sticky notes, right where I’d left it before I decided to do my first beauty treatment of the week. The reporter’s question earlier about the summer camps reminded me that I needed to plan the lessons for them. I hadn’t finalized a single thing yet.

The German didn’t even hesitate to pick up the notebook, reading over the notes I’d written about the different things that I thought would be beneficial to the kids at their ages.

“What is this?” he asked.

I fought the urge to snatch the notebook away from him. “Plans. I have a few summer camps coming up.”

His eyes flicked up from over the edge of the notebook. “Training camps?”

“For kids,” I explained. “They only last a few hours.”

He glanced back down at the sheet. “For free?”

“Yes. I do it in low-income neighborhoods for kids whose parents don’t have the funds to enroll them in clubs and leagues.”

He hummed.

I scratched my cheek, feeling oddly vulnerable at him reading over the skills I planned on teaching the kids. He kept reading and it got worse. It wasn’t like he was a fantastic coach, he wasn’t. I had no doubt he could have been a great coach if he wanted to, but he didn’t.

I scrunched my toes up in my socks and watched his face.

“Did your parents have money?” I found myself asking.

Kulti “uh-huh”ed.

I pulled my knee up to my chest and put my chin on it, careful not to rub the yogurt all over it. “There was no scholarship for you at the academy?”

He glanced up. “FC Berlin covered the costs.”

No shit. They’d recruited him at eleven? It happened, but I guess it still amazed me.

“And you, Taco?”

I smiled at him from behind my knee, surprised he was asking. “You’ve been to my house, Germany. We weren’t poor-poor, but I didn’t have a pair of name brand shoes until I was probably fifteen, and my brother bought them for me with his first advance from the MPL. I have no idea how my parents managed to swing paying for everything for so long but they did.” Actually, I did know. They cut a whole bunch of things out of the budget. A lot. “I just got lucky they cared, otherwise things would have gone a lot differently.”

“I’m sure you haven’t made them regret anything they did.”

“Eh. I’m sure I’ve made them wonder what the hell they were doing a time or two.” Or three. Or four. “I used to have a terrible temper—“

The German snorted. Straight-up snorted, lips fluttering, too.

Ass.

I nudged at his hip with my toes. “What? I don’t have a terrible temper anymore.”

Those awesome almost-hazel eyes looked up again from over the notebook. “No, you don’t and neither do I.”

“Ha!” I nudged at him again and he grabbed my foot with his free hand. I tried to yank it back, but he didn’t let go. “Oh please, my temper isn’t anywhere near as bad as yours.”

“It is.” He pulled my foot back toward him, getting a better grip around the instep.

“Trust me. It isn’t.”

“You’re a menace when you’re mad, schnecke. Maybe the refs haven’t caught you pinching girls, but I have,” he said casually.

I sat up straight. “Unless you have any physical proof, it never happened.”

Kulti stared at me for a beat before shaking his head, his thumb pressing a hard line down the arch of my foot. “You’re an animal.”

My shoulders shook but I managed to keep myself from laughing. “It takes one to know one.”

The corners of the German’s mouth tipped up. “Unlike others, I have never pretended to be nice.”

“Oh, I know.” I smiled at him. “There was that time you bit a guy—“

“He bit me three times before I had enough,” he argued.

I raised an eyebrow but kept going. “Don’t get me started on the thousand times you elbowed someone in the face.” Once the words were out of my mouth, I reeled back. “How the hell didn’t you get banned?”

The fact he shrugged at that claim said just how much of a crap he still didn’t give about the staggering number of noses he’d broken and eyebrows he’d busted.

“All the fights you were in—“

“I usually didn’t start them.”

“Debatable.” He blinked at me. “And don’t forget about the tibias you’ve broken.”

With that comment he just kept an even glare on me that had me smiling pretty smugly, even if it was at my brother’s expense.

“You win,” I stated. “All I give are bruises,” and then I added, “and an occasional bloody lip or two and a concussion once.”

The German leaned over, putting my notebook down and scooting closer to me, yanked my foot once more before setting it back on the couch next to him. His hand was wrapped around my ankle. “I’m positive you’ve thought about doing worse and in the end, that’s what matters.”

He had a point, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to admit it.

Instead I just sat on my end of the couch and gave him a flat look of irritation, until he smiled just the slightest bit wider and finally looked back down at the notebook. I went back to the sticky notes on the poster board and reviewed what I had jotted down already.

In the middle of making a few new notes, Kulti tapped the top of the foot I still had right by him. “Tell me how I can help with this.”

If anyone thought for one second that I would ever say no to help from him, they would have been insane. It wasn’t just the endless endorsements he had access to. If he wanted to do any actual work with the kids, it would be like having Mozart give a kid a lesson in musical composition.

I swallowed and felt my entire body brighten. “Any way you can.”

“All you have to do is ask.” Then as if he thought about what he said, his eyelids hooded low. “You aren’t going to ask, I don’t even know why I bother. Let me see what I can do.”

“All right.” I smiled at him. “Thanks, Rey.”

He nodded very solemnly and I found myself just studying him.

“Can I ask you something?”

“No,” he said in a pain-in-the-ass tone.

I ignored him. “Why did you take the Pipers position when you hate coaching?”

The notebook he’d been holding was slowly lowered to his lap. The muscle in his jaw flexed, and his expression became very even. “You think I don’t like coaching?”

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure that you freaking hate it.”

Kulti relaxed a whole millimeter. He just kept looking at me for so long I thought for sure he was trying to intimidate me into changing the subject or hoping I’d forget. Maybe.

The hell I was.

I blinked at him. “So?”

The German’s lips peeled back into something that was a mix between an incredulous smile and an amazed one. “Is it that obvious?”

“To me.” I shrugged my shoulders at him. “You look ready to strangle someone at least five times each practice, and that’s when you don’t even say anything. When things actually come out of your mouth, I’m pretty sure you would light us all on fire if you could get away with it.”

When he didn’t agree or deny anything, I blinked.

“Am I right or am I right?”

He mumbled something that could have been “you’re right” but it was said so low I couldn’t be sure. The fact he was avoiding my eyes said enough. It had me grinning.

“So why are you doing it? I’m sure they’re not paying you a quarter of as much as any of the European men’s teams would. I’m definitely sure the MPL would have paid you a lot more, too. But you’re here instead. What’s up with that?”

Nothing.

It felt like a few hours had passed without him saying anything.

Honestly it was really kind of insulting. The longer he took to not answer, the more it hurt my feelings. I wasn’t asking him for his bank account number or for a freaking kidney. I had taken him home with me, brought him into my house, told him about my grandfather and he couldn’t even answer one single personal question? I’d understood from the beginning he had trust issues, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him. My brother got all cagey around people he didn’t know. At some point, you never knew who was your friend for the right reasons and who wasn’t.

But… I guess I had thought we were past that.

I swallowed back my disappointment and looked away, scooting forward on the couch so I could get up. “I’m going to make some popcorn, do you want some?”

“No.”

Averting my eyes, I got up and headed into the kitchen. I pulled a pot out and set it on the stove, lighting it. Collecting my extra-large tub of coconut oil and bag of kernels, I tried to suppress the feeling in my chest that I was suddenly not so fond of.

He didn’t trust me. Then again, what the hell did I expect? It wasn’t like anything I found out about him wasn’t given out in drips. Tiny, tiny drips.

I’d barely scooped some oil into the heated pot when I felt Kulti standing behind me. I didn’t turn around even when he got so close that I couldn’t take a step back without touching him. His silence was incredibly typical, and I didn’t feel like saying anything either. I scooped a few of tablespoons of popcorn kernels into the pot and set the lid on, giving it a shake which was angrier than it needed to be.

“Sal,” he said my name in that smooth tone that hinted at a trace of an accent.

Keeping my eyes on the pot as I opened the lid to let the steam out, I asked, “Did you want some after all?”

The touch on my bare shoulder was all fingertips.

But I still didn’t turn around. I gave the pot another forceful shake but his fingers didn’t fall off, they just moved further up my shoulder until he was closer to my neck. “You can take the first batch if you want.”

“Turn around,” he requested.

I tried to shrug off his fingers. “I need to keep an eye on this so it doesn’t burn, Kulti.”

He dropped his hand immediately.

“Turn around, Sal,” he said forcefully.

“Wait a minute, would you?” One more hard shake to the pot and I opened the lid.

The German reached around me and turned off the knob on the stove. “No. Talk to me.”

Carefully, I wrapped my fingers around the long oven handle and took a breath to bottle my frustration up.

“You said a few minutes ago you didn’t have a temper,” he reminded me which only made the moment that much more aggravating.

“I’m not mad,” I snapped back a little too quickly.

“No?”

“No.”

He let out a sound that could have been a scoff if I thought German people were capable of making noises like that. “You called me Kulti.”

My fingers flexed around the oven handle. “That’s your name.”

“Turn around,” he ordered.

I tipped my chin up to face the ceiling and asked for patience. A lot of it. Hell, all of it. Unfortunately, no one seemed to answer my prayer. “I’m not mad at you, all right? I just thought…” I sighed. “Look it doesn’t matter. I swear I’m not mad. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I’m sorry I asked.”

No response.

Of-freaking-course not.

Right. Right.

Patience. Patience.

“I took the position because I had to,” that deep voice I’d heard a hundred times on television said. “I didn’t do anything for almost a year except almost ruin my life, and my manager said I needed to come out of retirement. I had to do something, especially something positive after my DUI.” Two warm hands that could only have belonged to him covered my shoulders. “There weren’t many things to choose from—“

“Is that because you didn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore?” I asked, remembering an earlier conversation we’d had.

He made a positive grunt. “Coaching was the only thing we could agree on. Short and temporary, it seemed the best fit.” Kulti paused as the pads of his thumbs brushed over my trapezius muscles. That made me snicker, and it made the German dig his thumbs into my muscles. “A friend of mine suggested women’s soccer. I did some research—“

I had to save that for later. I wasn’t surprised he admitted he had to do research on women’s soccer. Of course he wasn’t familiar with it.

“—and the U.S. women kept coming up as consistently the best,” he finished, but something nagged at me.

Something didn’t add up.

“Why didn’t you just join the national team staff?” I asked even as his thumbs really dug deep into my shoulders and holyfreakingcrap, it felt great. It’d been months since the last time I’d gotten a massage.

The German let out a sigh that reached all the way to my toes. “Is anything ever enough for you?” His voice was resigned.

He knew the answer. “No.” Then I thought about it and his reluctance and I gasped. “They didn’t want you?”

“No, you little idiot.” He called me an idiot even as he gave me a massage that made my knees go weak, so I couldn’t take it to heart. Actually, it was sort of his own affectionate way of talking to me. “Of course they would have wanted me if I had asked.”

How the hell I fit in the same room as his ego, I had no idea.

“I won’t involve myself in anything if I believe I won’t win,” he stated.

I rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see me. “Who likes to lose? I get it.”

Those magical thumbs slid deep around my shoulder blade. “I know you do.”

“Right… so….”

He stopped all movements with his long fingers; the heat from his rough palms radiated through my skin and somehow into my bones. “You’re the best striker in America, schnecke. Look up ‘best goals in women’s soccer’ and four of the top ten are yours. I wasn’t going to waste my time on anything or anyone but the best. With more training, better coaching, you could be the top striker in the world.”

He wasn’t going to…

It’s like my brain stopped working.

I opened my mouth and closed it, at a complete loss for words.

“I came to the Pipers for you.”

What the fuck do you even say to that?

Is there anything to say?

It seemed like the world came out from under my feet. My lungs felt punctured and bereft. Shaken up didn’t even begin to explain how I felt.

Get it together, Sal.

Breathless and unsteady, I released the oven handle and turned around slowly to face Kulti. Focus. Don’t make a big deal out of this. Damn it, it was so much easier said than done. This had been my lifelong dream when I was a kid. To be singled out by The King… remnants of a younger Sal were still in me, rejoicing and throwing Mardi Gras beads in the air at what he said. I couldn’t think about it, not then and possibly not ever.

I came to the Pipers for you.

Jesus Christ. I needed to keep it together. Focus. “I’m not the best but that’s beside the point. You didn’t recognize my last name when you saw the video?”

He gave a smile that could have been sheepish if he was capable of being sheepish. He wasn’t. It was more of a smirk. “I can’t remember every player I’ve ever injured, Sal, and I wouldn’t care to.”

Not surprising at all, but it still made me shake my head. “You’re something else, pumpernickel.” My shoulders relaxed as I took in the very serious face several inches above mine. “So, you came to the Pipers even though you knew you didn’t like coaching.” I purposely skipped the part about how he’d chosen our team.

“Ja.”

“And you still hate us.”

The German lifted a shoulder in the least apologetic shrug ever. “There’s a few of you who should have stopped playing soccer a long time ago.” He blinked. “And one of you I would love to shake on a regular basis.”

I grinned at him before reaching forward to thump him on the shoulder. “Trust me; I’ve had the urge to punch you in the face a time or five.”

“There’s that temper again. A nice girl would never think about punching someone,” he said with that stupid smirk. “How many people have you punched before?”

“No one,” Jeez Louise, “in at least ten years. I’ve thought about it a hundred times but I haven’t actually gone through with it. Come on.”

He gave me a look that easily replaced a raised eyebrow, making a point about me thinking about doing things again.

Asshole. “It’s too obvious and you know it. There’s no way to get away with it.”

The German nodded in agreement. “True. How many players have you elbowed before?”

“Enough,” I answered truthfully, knowing that my number would still and forever be a fraction of his.

“You have the most fouls on the team,” Kulti noted, which surprised the shit out of me. “More than Harlow.”

It was my turn to shrug. “Yeah, but it’s not because I elbow people left and right. I haven’t done that since I was a kid and got kicked off a league for it,” I explained to him with a grin.

“Such a great deal of anger for such a small body.” A small smile cracked his lips. “Your parents? What did they think?”

“My mom chewed me out about it. My dad did too, but only when she was around. When she wasn’t, he’d high-five me and tell me the other girl had it coming.” We both laughed. “I love that man.”

Kulti smiled gently, taking a step back only to grab two bowls out of the cabinet. I shot him a look as I poured half of the popcorn into each one and followed him around to the couch, where we took the same seats we’d left. Knowing that I was pushing my luck, I went for it anyway. “What about your parents? Did they go to your games?” I remembered when I was younger at the height of his career, cameras would zoom in on an older couple in the stands, pointing out that they were Reiner Kulti’s parents.

“My father worked quite a bit, and once I went away to the academy, it was too far from home. They went to as many games as they could, watched more on television,” he said around a mouthful of popcorn.

Well that was more than enough information to press for the day. What he didn’t say was that his parents didn’t go to a lot of his games when he was younger, but once he was older, they went whenever he paid. At least that’s what I assumed from the way he worded it. “It worked for all of us.”

I’m positive I didn’t imagine the bite in his words. Obviously, I needed to steer the topic into safer territory.

“One more question and I’ll quit being nosey.” He might have nodded, but I was too busy eating popcorn to be sure. There was no way I could ask him with a straight face. “Did you blow that game against Portugal before you retired or were you really sick?”

His response was exactly what I expected: he threw a pillow at my face.