* * *

I got three voicemails that evening while I snuck in a run before meeting up with my parents.

The first was from Jenny, who said, “Sal, I can’t believe you said that to him, but I think it was the nicest things I’ve ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth. I’m proud of you, and I love you.”

The second was from one of the defenders on the team that I wasn’t particularly close to, who laughed so hard she sounded like she was dying. “German Chocolate Cake! Oh my god, I thought I pissed my pants.”

The third was from Harlow. “Sal, I always knew you had balls of steel in that puny little body, but goddamn, I almost cried. You let me know when you wanna go out to celebrate you giving Kulti the reaming of a lifetime.”

Overall, I was pretty pleased with myself.

I didn’t say anything to my dad that night when we all went out to eat, but I gave him a hug twice as hard as usual that left him gasping for breath.

* * *

If I was worried that the staff would be pissed about what I’d said the day before, it had been a waste of mental and emotional effort. A couple of the newer girls gave me discreet low-fives when I showed up, but it was the hard pat on my back that Gardner gave me that finally relaxed me. Nothing would come of it.

I held my head up high and didn’t put in any extra effort to pretend not to look at Kulti. If I glanced in his direction, I kept on looking. The one time our gazes met, I let my eyes linger for a second before looking elsewhere. They say not to make eye contact with dangerous animals so that they don’t perceive you as a threat, but I said screw it; I was no one’s bitch, especially not Kulti’s.

I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand by and let this German tank make the best dad in the world feel dejected. He’d been acting normal when we had dinner at the restaurant by their hotel but… still. My gut knew that his feelings had been hurt and that was not going to fly on my radar, ever.

When I happened to get knocked to the ground during a particularly competitive game of three-on-three, right at Kulti’s feet, I hopped back up, brushed my thighs off as I looked him right in the eye, and then went right back to what I was doing.

Was it the smartest thing to do?

Maybe not, but all I had to do was think of my dad and I knew I’d done the right thing, the only thing, really. Though Grace and I never talked about what had gone down between her and Kulti, the look she gave me after that fateful day had me convinced she’d said something about how he’d talked to the other Pipers. While I hadn’t found the balls to say anything to defend the girls he’d chastised, I’d stood up for my dad and also, maybe in a way, for every person he brushed off.

Which was all of us—sort of. Only it’d taken me a lot longer than it had Grace. Maybe if it had been Jenny or Harlow, I would have handled it differently. The point was no one deserved that treatment.

Nothing in his actions had changed at all. We were all tiptoeing, watching our backs and our words. Did it suck? Absolutely. There was only so much you could think about it, though.

With our first preseason game coming up—and five others following within a two-week span—I had to settle for keeping my thoughts on the game and not on the dumb man people had called ‘The King’. Sure. He was ‘The King’ of every full-of-shit bastard on the planet.

Chapter Eight

“….Does anyone have any other questions?”

You could take a bite out of the tension in the room. No one except Grace had said a word over the last two hours. We all just sat there, listening to the coaching staff go over last-minute details regarding the upcoming season. Awkward and uncertain, every player sitting around the conference room simply watched and nodded. Spending so much time listening to others talk instead of actually playing was painful enough.