Page 48 of The Pucking Date
He’s the risk. I’m the glam. And Rothschild wants it done yesterday.
“I’ve got my work cut out for me,” I add, swirling myspoon through the yogurt. “Finn needs polish. Restraint. Sponsor-safe smiles. And Wesley, he’s media gold, but he’s still green. I’ve got to keep them both on message, and off the kind of TikTok that gets pulled into PR meetings.”
Sophie smirks. “That’s a lot of alpha to wrangle.”
“Tell me about it.”
“And your dad’s not coming?” Erin asks, grinning over her spoon.
“Nope,” I say, definitely too fast. “Dad is staying put.”
Erin raises a brow. “So it’s anunsupervisedtrip this time. You looking forward to that?”
“Oh, absolutely.” I sigh, half laughing. “You have no idea.”
Mark Novak might be a legendary coach, but when it comes to me, he’s less mentor and more helicopter pilot. He hovers, but not about my job, not really. I handle crises like a pro and land sponsorships better than half the league’s agents. No, he hovers about one thing: men.
Players, specifically.
He’s been policing glances since I joined the Defenders a year ago, shutting down casual conversations like I’m some naive intern who needs shielding. On every trip, he either plants himself in the seat next to mine or sends Adam to do the surveillance. Adam, at least, I can manage. Dad? Impossible. Being chaperoned by a whistle-wielding ghost of my teenage years is not fun, let me tell you.
And yeah, I love him. He’s a great coach. A decent man. And terrible at respecting boundaries.
I mean, come on. I’m almost thirty.
How am I supposed to meet anyone—ever—when he’s shadowing my every move?
Which, ironically, is kind of what happened with Chad. The minute I was in a committed, respectable relationship,Dad finally backed off. And of course, Chad turned out to be a manipulative disaster with great suits and no soul.
So yeah. A week without Novak surveillance?
I’m all in.
But I catch myself wondering again if maybe there’s more to this.
Because as much as I love this team…the idea of my father always being in the next room, in every meeting, breathing down every decision, it’s suffocating. I’m tired of feeling like the naive girl everyone’s humoring.
Screw this noise.
Maybe it’s time I stopped trying to prove myself worthy of a seat at their table and started building my own damn restaurant instead.
We dig back into the yogurt, each of us quietly savoring the last slow, sweet minutes before life starts moving again.
Twenty minutes later,I’m saying my goodbyes in front of the Bloomingdale’s escalators, claiming a meeting I definitely don’t have and flashing a fake smile while hugging my girls, seconds from unraveling.
Sophie gives me that look, the one that says she can read me like a book I never meant to open. That subtle, sister-coded raise of the eyebrows that cuts through every wall I’ve built. The look that says I see you pretending, and I’m not buying it.
“Fine,” I say. “Tired.”
She watches me a beat too long. I wave her off. Smile again. Then head for the parking garage.
But I’m not fine.
The moment the server set down the hot fudge, I knew.One whiff of that rich, sweet scent and my stomach revolted so violently I had to grip the edge of the table. I tried to blame it on the AC, the stress, the fluorescent lighting, but none of it holds.
The queasy twist hasn’t left since.
By the time I’m in the car, I know.
