Page 41 of Dirty Hit
“I hate it,” I say immediately.
That gets an actual laugh out of him. He leans down a little, bringing us closer to eye level. “Why do you hate it?”
“Because,” I say, gesturing vaguely at the field, where one of the boys is trying to carry three cones at once and failing spectacularly. “That. This. People seeing this and thinking you’re a good person.”
Some of the humor slips off his face, replaced by something more careful.
“And what do you think?” he asks quietly.
I should lie; it’d be easy. I should say I think it’s a performance, or a weird personality fracture, or some kind of narcissistic side quest. Instead, because it’s him, because he keeps pulling honesty out of me like it belongs to him, I say the worst possible thing:
“I think you are a good person in ways that make no sense with the rest of you.”
Dominic just looks at me, and there’s no joke in his face now; no easy comeback. He huffs a breath and glances away toward the field. “Kids don’t make demands I can’t meet. They want attention, patience, someone to throw the ball back and tell them they’re not useless. That I can do.”
The honesty in that catches me off guard. “Why this place?”
His eyes flick back to mine. “You asking as my TA, or as the guy hiding behind the bleachers to watch me work?”
I roll my eyes. “Shut up.”
His smile turns softer. “My dad used to bring me around places like this. Said if I was going to be good at something, I had a responsibility not to keep it to myself.” His mouth twists. “He always said kids know when you’re bullshitting them. They keep you honest.”
“So this is you being honest?” I ask.
He leans in a fraction. “Sometimes.”
My pulse jumps when a shrill little voice from the field interrupts us. “Coach Dom!”
We both look. Mateo is waving wildly with both arms like he’s trying to direct air traffic.
“You coming or what?” the kid yells. “Jenna says I cheated, but I didn’t!”
Dominic sighs, all put-upon drama. “See what I mean?” he says. “Demanding.”
I snort before I can stop myself.
He straightens and points the football at me. “You stay.”
“I’m not a dog.”
“No,” he says. “You’re nosy. Stay anyway.”
I glare up at him. “Go coach your tiny demons, Volkov.”
He laughs, then turns and jogs back toward the field. I watch him go before I can stop myself.
The next hour is worse, because now he knows I’m here and still somehow manages not to perform for me. He doesn’t glance over constantly or showboat. Doesn’t suddenly act sweeter or harder because I’m watching. He just… goes back to what he was doing.
At one point, one of the little girls trips during a drill and bursts into tears, not from pain but from frustration. Dominic goes straight to her, takes a knee on the grass, and says something I can’t hear.
Whatever it is makes her scrub her face angrily and stand back up. He hands her the ball again and waits. She throws badly, but he catches it anyway and cheers like she just won a championship. The smile that breaks across her face is so quick and bright it hurts.
I have to look down at my own hands, because if I keep watching his face, I’m going to have a problem bigger than the one I already have.
Practice wraps up with a chaos drill that looks suspiciously designed to tire them all out before they’re handed back to the staff, and it works. By the end, the kids are all sweaty and loud, collapsing on the grass in heaps.
Dominic passes out popsicles from a cooler and gets mobbed so completely I lose sight of him behind tiny bodies and waving hands.
