Right as Raine (Aster Valley 1)

“He’s in a mood, hon,” she warned as I sailed past.

And he was.

“Goddammit, where is the injury reserve update I asked for?” he shouted through the open door. Noreen continued typing calmly on her computer as if she couldn’t hear him. She’d been working for him long enough to have learned how to set boundaries by now, and one of them was not responding when he bellowed from the other room.

“You busy?” I asked, poking my head in.

“Mikey? What are you doing here? Is everything okay?”

To his credit, he stopped blustering and immediately stood with a look of concern on his face. I waved him back down. “Everything is fine. I just came from the house. Mom and Mrs. Nibert were comparing gourds, and I heard way more than I wanted to about Mr. Nibert’s sciatica.”

He nodded absently and sat back down. “What’s on your mind?”

After a moment in which I tried to gather my thoughts, he seemed to catch on to the upcoming topic of conversation. The crease of concern on his forehead turned to a slash of annoyance.

“Close the door.”

I did as he said and moved to take a seat in front of his desk. It reminded me of the time I’d come here to ask if I could take a part-time job in high school at a local bakery. It would have meant waking up at four in the morning and getting most of my schoolwork done in the afternoons so I could get to bed at a decent hour.

He’d said no with the excuse that I didn’t need a part-time job as long as he made ten million dollars a year. I’d sat here and argued that all four of my brothers had been allowed to have jobs in high school, but none of my arguments had worked.

“I’m in love with Tiller Raine,” I said, clasping my hands together in my lap so I didn’t use them to throw myself out the window in an effort to escape my big scary confession.

He barked out a laugh. “No you’re not. Don’t be so dramatic.”

I swallowed the sting. “I am. And I’m here to ask you, man to man, to respect that this has nothing to do with his professional life.”

My father leaned forward on his elbows and steepled his hands together. “It has everything to do with his professional life, and for you to imply otherwise only goes to show how naive you are. This cannot happen. It will not happen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I felt my intestines wobble. My dad had always had the ability to intimidate the shit out of me. “Why not? Explain it to me. What does it matter to you who he dates outside of work?”

Because I sure as hell knew my dad didn’t care about me nearly as much as he cared about Tiller Raine and his effect on the team.

“You may think I’m some controlling asshole, Mikey, but this is me looking out for you and him. Tiller is on target to be one of the greats. Do you get that? He has already had a once-in-a-lifetime career, and if it continues, he’ll be a Hall of Famer the likes of which the league hasn’t seen before. Do you have any idea how little time he has to concern himself with a relationship and all the media bullshit it would bring? How can you be so fucking naive?”

“Coach, you can’t expect him to spend the next several years without a love life. You’d never ask that of any of your other players!”

“Can’t you find anyone else to date besides people you work for? Christ, Mikey.” He ran a hand down his face.

“I don’t work for him anymore, so there’s no issue there either.”

“Find someone else. Someone who has the time and energy to give to you. Not someone who lives, eats, and breathes football.”

“I don’t want someone else. I want him.”

I started to feel the familiar helpless feeling I used to get when trying to reason with my father when he’d already made up his mind. It brought panicky feelings that usually made me more emotional which was the last thing that I needed when dealing with him.

“Too fucking bad. I told you when I sent you over there that there was to be no inappropriate conduct. Why do you see the need to sleep with every goddamned player on my roster? Can you tell me that, huh?”

His voice was rising, and I felt myself shrink back into my seat. “Please keep your voice down so we can talk about this reasonably,” I said as calmly as I could. “I have not slept with every player on your roster.”

He gave me a look that called bullshit. It made me wonder how much he knew because if he was aware of the Colin hookup somehow, then I could understand him thinking three players was an unusually high number, especially for someone like me who purported not to give a shit about football players.