But his question nagged at me, right alongside the incident at the bar. Marc had given me the impression he hadn’t carried around any car keys with him, and I’d just never gotten around to investigating or finding out if Kulti had left a car at the bar or not. It wasn’t like I’d really cared anyway.
“I can’t confirm anything; I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I really do need to meet up with the team, I’m running late.” I was. I’d overslept big time.
“Have you seen him drive?” The man was relentless.
I hadn’t but I still wasn’t a dick enough to admit it. He might have been an asshole, but obviously he liked his privacy, and I wasn’t about throw him under the bus. Then there was the whole issue with Pipers’ management being really uptight about all things Reiner Kulti-related, so I sure as hell wasn’t about to dig myself into that hole. What did that mean? I needed to abort this mission, pronto. That’s exactly what I did.
“I haven’t paid attention. I’m sorry, but I really do need to get going. Sorry!” I hated being rude but in the long run, I’d rather come off as a jerk than turn out to be an unemployed person with a big mouth.
His license was being suspended? Wow. Really. Wow.
Whether it was true or not, and regardless of how much it wasn’t my business, I couldn’t help but think about it and how something like that could backfire on the team if the rumor got loose. Shouldn’t his agent or publicist or someone deal with it?
The longer I thought about it during practice, the more convinced I became that maybe I shouldn’t keep quiet about it. Most of the other questions I’d been asked had been harmless, but this wasn’t.
Damn it.
Finally about an hour into practice, I caught Kulti off to the side, going over our playbook. As casually as possible, I made my way over and in a voice just loud enough for only him to hear, I said, “Someone from the Houston Times this morning asked me if I knew about you having your license suspended. I don’t know anything, and that’s what I said, but I thought you should know so you can tell your PR person to take care of it, or whatever it is they do.”
It didn’t escape me that the moment the nine-letter word made its way out of my mouth, he stopped. His entire body strung itself into a tight immovable bow.
His body language wasn’t mine to analyze, I reminded myself, as I walked away to let him absorb what he’d learned.
But seriously, wouldn’t he have needed to get a DUI or a DWI to have a suspended license?
I wasn’t disappointed by the possibility that there was a chance he had one, I’d learned from a friend when I was younger that things like that were more luck-based than anything. How many people didn’t drive home after having a few drinks? Sometimes you got caught and most times you didn’t. Whatever.
Then again I’d grown up reading about Reiner Kulti’s strict regimen. How anal he was about his food and his workouts and his life in general. So…
It’s not your business. It really wasn’t, my business was on the field. I had to remind myself of that.
Chapter Twelve
I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the German waiting on the curb. Mostly, I wasn’t. Mostly.
“Need another ride?” I asked, stopping right next to him so that we were side by side.
He cut straight to it. “Please.”
Please. Well, how about that. I was almost tempted to look around and make sure pigs hadn’t started flying. “Come on, then.”
Kulti threw his bag into the trunk alongside mine. Neither one of us said anything as we got inside, and I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward that I’d said something to him about the license rumor. About halfway to his maybe-house, I finally broke the silence. The radio wasn’t on, and the quiet was stifling.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked, slowly.
“Yes.” There was a pause. “I might not answer.”
I hated it when people said that. “All right.” I psyched myself up to ask the question I couldn’t stop thinking about. The possibility of getting reamed was very real, but screw it, you only live once. “Why are your PKs sucking so much?” I went for it. I just blurted it out. Good God, I should have been proud of myself. “I don’t get it.”
In an ideal world, he would have yelled at me and said that I was a lowly peasant in his universe who had no right to speak to him, much less ask questions like that.
In the real world, he made a choking sound.
I gave him a side look to make sure he was still alive. He was.
Was his face red?
“No one can say you aren’t honest, can they?” he asked. Another choking sound—or maybe it was a snicker?—came out of him before he continued. “You can say I’m out of practice.”
All right, that was something. Not enough, obviously. “How long out of practice?” I was hesitant asking. I felt like I was trying to pet the mean dog on the other side of the fence.
He raised a hand and ran it over the short hair on his head. That hard jaw might have jutted out to the side, but I couldn’t be sure. The one thing I was sure of: he did glance over in my direction like he couldn’t believe I had the nerve to ask.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe I actually gone through with it. What I really couldn’t believe was that he replied.
“Do you know when I retired?” he asked in that strict voice with only the slightest hint of an accent. I remember hearing somewhere that he spoke four different languages fluently, or was it three?
Poop. Who cared how many languages he spoke?
Of course I knew when he retired, but I didn’t say it like that. I could be cool about it. “Yes.”
“That’s your answer.”
Wait.
Wait.
“You haven’t done what since you retired?” The question was careful.
It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t.
Kulti’s mouth twisted to the side at the same time his nostrils flared. “I haven’t played since I retired. If you tell anyone—”
I almost slammed on my brakes.
Okay, I didn’t, but I wanted to. I couldn’t believe him. I eased the car to a stop at a red light as he finished his stupid threat that I chose to ignore. Slowly, incredulously I said, “You’re joking.” Who was I kidding? He didn’t have humor in his DNA.
Sure enough, he confirmed it. “I am not.”
“No.”
He arched a dark eyebrow. “I don’t lie.”
I let my head fall back against the headrest as I took in what he’d admitted. Two years. Two years! He hadn’t played in two years! “At all?” My voice was all low and whisper-like.
“Correct.”
Holy fuck. It felt like the world had been ripped out from under my feet. Two freaking years for a player like him? What in the hell was that?
I wanted to tell him something, to apologize or something, but I could only open my mouth and close it, good intentions present.
But I knew that my pity wasn’t what he’d want. If I had to bet money, I would have said that the longest length of time he’d ever taken off from playing was when he tore some ligaments in his foot but, I wasn’t about to bust out my Kulti-psycho-stalker-knowledge.
Keeping my eyes forward, I cleared my throat and then followed up by doing it again.
Because—two years! Two years!
Holy shit. How was that even possible?
I dwelled on the number one more time, and then locked it away to process it later in the privacy of my own home. Two years was a lifetime and yet it was more than long enough to explain why he had such a huge stick up his ass. The poor guy was like a eunuch. No soccer was pretty much the equivalent of losing your balls, at least that’s what I figured.
Compassion and understanding rolled through me.
Easing off the brake, I told him my own story. Although later on I’d wonder why I bothered. It wasn’t like he’d care. “When I was seventeen, I tore my ACL during a game, and I was out for almost six months. My parents and c
oaches wouldn’t even let me look at a soccer ball or watch a game because it drove me nuts to know there was nothing I could really do to speed up the healing process.”
Those were some of the worst months of my life. I’d never been really bitchy but toward the end of my recovery, I’d gotten so short-tempered I wasn’t sure how my parents didn’t slap me for being such a pain in the ass. “It was the longest six months of my life and probably the most miserable,” I added, shooting him a sidelong glance.
His attention was focused forward, but I did see him nod. “I’ve been there.”
I knew he had, but once again, it was Kulti-psycho-stalker-knowledge that I’d take to the grave with me.
We stayed quiet the rest of the way to the house, his house, whatever. Only this time as soon as he opened the door, I told him, “I won’t say anything about your dry spell.”
Kulti nodded, and I could have sworn he had something that could have been considered the smallest smile in the history of smiles pull at the corners of his mouth. Then he was at my trunk getting his bag and actually raising a hand in a half-assed goodbye as he walked up the stone path to the front door of the big house.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about Kulti, and how he hadn’t played in two years, the rest of the day.
* * *
The next day, during practice, I couldn’t help but keep staring at Kulti and wondering how the hell he hadn’t murdered anyone since he’d quit playing.
I mean… he hadn’t played at all? Or just… I don’t know, hadn’t played a regulation game? By the look of his movements and his body language, it didn’t seem like he’d completely stopped playing, but what did I know? Two years couldn’t completely erase a lifetime spent with a white and black ball.
Harlow elbowed me in the ribs as she stopped right by me.
“Did he just call you a slow-ass?”
The team was running drills, and I’d been in the first group of players.
I hunched my shoulders up, saying nothing. What was there to say? Kulti had called me slow during a drill, and then asked another player if she had two left feet. She was the same girl I’d run with in the morning a few times by then, the one that always wanted to beat me at sprints.
Was she slow? No. Hell no. Sandy was really good.
“I would like to finish drills in this lifetime, can we move on?” a voice bellowed from the other side of the field.
Absently, I reached over to the shoulder that had been punched. At that moment, Kulti glanced over. The space between his eyebrows crinkled, and for a split second, I debated hunching over and pretending I had a shooting pain going through my shoulder so I could mess with him. He hadn’t brought it up the day before and neither had I.
I didn’t do it though. Harlow was a little too attentive. She’d notice. Plus, I had no idea how he’d handle it.
Really I had no idea how to handle any of this. Was I supposed to not be saying anything about giving Kulti rides home? Because I hadn’t. Not even my dad knew, and I usually told him everything. He wasn’t treating me any differently than he had before I gave him rides, so it didn’t mean anything.
There wasn’t anything to tell. Was there?
“Is your shoulder bothering you?” Harlow’s voice tore me away from looking at the German.
“No.” My face flushed as I turned back to her. “Ready?”
She shoved me to the side and took off. “Catch up, slow-poke.”
Little did I know that the ‘slow-ass’ and ‘slow-poke’ nicknames were only the beginning. Before practice was over Kulti had called my passes sloppy, and then followed up by saying I needed to learn how to play with both legs.
This was coming from the man who played with his right foot ninety percent of the time? Ha.
I didn’t let his comments get me down or bother me. I also didn’t worry too much about whether he was being overbearing because I’d recently learned his secret, or if it was because I just took his shit. Regardless, I listened to what he said and took it all in stride. I wasn’t going to let myself take it too personally.
When the end of practice rolled around an hour later, I was already expecting him in our usual spot, and he didn’t disappoint.
Skipping the obvious, I asked as I approached, “Ready?”
“Yes,” he answered.
That familiar silence followed us as we got inside and continued as I drove for a little bit.
Two minutes was as long as I could contain my curiosity before I broke down. “Do you miss it?”
Not a total idiot, he asked, “Playing?”
“Yeah.” As much as I tried to reason how he’d made it so long, I still couldn’t really comprehend the idea of not playing. I couldn’t.
He slid his gaze over to me as he nodded, so honest and straightforward it caught me off-guard. “I miss football every day.” Just as quickly as his gaze had moved to mine, it moved back as he swallowed.
So… “Why haven’t you, then?” I asked before I could talk myself out of it. What was the worst he would do? Not answer? Tell me to mind my own business?
Curiosity killed the Sal. Let it be said I went down in a blaze of glory asking Reiner Kulti about a secret I wasn’t sure he would share willingly.
Why he’d decided to share it with me, I still wasn’t positive, but I’d take what I could get.
A slow steady exhale made its way out of him. “Do you know why I retired?”
He’d torn his ACL for the third time. There’d been rumors from the prior tear that he wouldn’t come back one hundred percent, or even ninety or eighty or seventy percent. He was too old, people had said. When it finally happened, stacked on top of arthritis in his toe, and other small injuries that managed to add up over the years, everyone thought it was inevitable.
Reiner ‘The King’ Kulti had announced his retirement shortly afterward, ending his legacy.
Was I going to say that? Definitely not.
I settled for a nod and a “yeah.”
“It took a long time for me to heal,” he said. Then he didn’t say anything afterward.
I found myself slowly turning my head to give him an incredulous look I realized I had no right to give him. “Okay. Then what?”
He shrugged.
Reiner Kulti shrugged like ‘oh, my ACL took a long time to heal’ was reason enough to explain why he hadn’t played his beloved sport in two years. He wasn’t fooling me. He still loved it. You didn’t give up a great love so easily. I could tell by the look in his arrogant eyes when he watched the team. He looked at some players like they were complete pieces of crap he wished he could shake until they got things right. You didn’t look like that unless you still cared.
He wasn’t fooling me.
“That took what? Six months? Eight months?” I asked, blinking at him slowly.
When he said, “It hasn’t completely healed,” it was proof enough for me he was full of shit. He didn’t strike me as the type to want to make a big deal about his injuries.
So I said something I would have said to any other player I had a decent relationship with—he didn’t exactly count—“Bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
I laughed. “That’s bullshit. Your knee still hurts? Come on. Do I look like I was born yesterday? I’ve been in some sort of pain since I was sixteen, and I’m sure you have been too.” I shook my head and laughed again before focusing back on the road. “Jeez. Next time tell me to mind my own business instead of telling me something so ridiculous.”
What the hell else had I been expecting? He’d said more than I would have bet my life on to begin with.
“You don’t know anything,” he snapped back.
Once again, another thing I shouldn’t have been surprised at. “I know enough.” Because I did, his bullshit was evident from a mile away.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Kulti’s voice was laced with just a bit of anger.
He’d finally dropped a ‘fuck.’ How about that.
I was almost in awe—almost, and I definitely couldn’t find it in me to get all bent out of shape at his ugly tone and words. “You know what I mean. Look, you don’t need to get an attitude. All I was asking was why you haven’t played in so long. It’s none of my business, fine. Sorry I asked.”
There was a pause. “Explain what you meant.”
He wanted to understand, but I knew in my heart he didn’t really want me to tell him. I kept my attention forward and shook my head, the laughter and amusement dying off my face. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters,” he insisted.
I kept my mouth shut.
“Say it.”
Yeah, I wasn’t saying anything. Nobody was handing me the shovel to dig my own grave.
“You think I’m lying?” Kulti asked in a cold voice.
I swallowed. Well he asked, right? I picked my words carefully and answered. “I’m not saying you’re lying. I’m sure your knee hurts, but there is no way that’s why you haven’t played. Even if you’re only back at sixty percent, fifty percent, it doesn’t matter; you still would have played with friends at least, or something. Kicked the ball on your own. You have the money to build your own field, I’m sure, if you don’t want everyone in your business. It seems like you’re selling yourself out. You already told me you miss playing. I just don’t believe something like a little pain would stop you from at least… you know what? It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you finally started kicking some balls around. Good for you.”
Hours later, I’d realize how differently I could have handled the situation. How horribly I’d actually gone about it. I knew better. I knew better. I understood people who held their pride and arrogance like a shield and how they handled someone attacking them. Or worse, someone feeling sorry for them.
I knew because I was well aware how much I hated anyone feeling sorry for me.
Pitying a man with the ability to make my life a living hell on the field, a man who had once upon a time held a passion for soccer that seemed to light him up from the inside out, it was like I turned a force of nature against me.
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