Page 48 of Play For Me

She blinks at me caught off guard. “Just…okay?” I nod and she scowls. I shouldn’t find that expression as sexy as I do. “I spew all that bullshit, pour my damn heart out, and all you can say is okay?”

I shrug. “I think it covers things. You’re scared. You want to be the best. You’re willing to work hard.”

She still looks skeptical as hell. “So, what, I just say all that and now I’m fixed?”

That makes me smile. “You don’t need to be fixed.” I meet her eyes—which feels surprisingly easy for once—and smile. “You’re not broken, Cecelia. Just a little shaken.”

Her eyes meet mine and my heart twists. There’s so much vulnerability there, almost a desperation, like she’s begging for my words to be true, begging to be able to believe that she isn’t broken.

“It’s all about finding that one thing that you can trust,” I tell her. “Maybe that’s a person—your cousins or your parents.”Me, I think, but press my lips together before I can say it, because it’s objectively ridiculous to think I could ever have that much of an impact on her.

“Or maybe it’s a place, like the Tennessee farm. For me, it was this ranch, these horses. I knew that I was safe here, with them, and that made it so I could finally accept what I was feeling. Then it got a whole lot easier to face.”

She’s quiet for a long moment. “So you think that now I’ve told you how scared I am, I’ll start to feel better?”

“I think that once you can admit to something, it doesn’t carry as much weight.”

She sighs and tilts her head back, looking up at the wide blue sky. “I just want to play soccer. I don’t want to think about being afraid. I don’t want to admit that fear has been affecting my game. So I just buried it as deep as I could and hoped it would go away.”

“I get that.” It’s a huge understatement, but I don’t want to tell her that I’m an old pro at burying the things I don’t want to face.

We’re both quiet for a minute before she sighs again. “I guess it hasn’t been working out too great for me, huh?”

I snort a little at that. “I mean, you’re still the best player on that team even when you’re playing scared.” She looks pleased by my words, and that sends fresh warmth to my chest. “But justthink about how much better you could be if you’re honest with yourself—and with your trainer,” I add pointedly.

She gives me a sheepish smile. “I was kind of an asshole at that first session, huh?”

“Maybe a little,” I say drily. “But seriously, Ransome, I can help you more if I know what’s going on. So I need you to be honest with me about how your knee feels. Okay?”

She nods, biting her lip, and I know she still doesn’t like the idea of sharing her injury with someone. Hopefully the more she practices telling me what’s going on with her body, the easier it will get.

“And I think you should spend some time figuring out what centers you,” I tell her. “Riding horses is what centered me—what centers you?”

“Playing soccer,” she says immediately.

I grin. “Something besides soccer.”

She makes a face at me, but grunts in agreement. “I’ll work on it,” she finally says.

“I can’t ask for more than that.”

We sit in silence for a little, the only sound the breeze rusting through dry grass and the gentle noises of our horses. “It really is beautiful here,” she says. “I can’t get over this sky. It looks so much bigger than the sky in LA. And it feels closer, somehow.”

“You should see it at night,” I say, looking over at her. Our eyes lock and something passes between us, something that makes my belly tighten and my chest feel light.

“Maybe I can come back sometime,” she says softly.

I should probably brush it off. It’s not just the fact that she’s a client, and there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed. I also need to protect myself, to keep this crush from getting any bigger.

But as I look at her sitting on a horse here at my favorite place on earth, I can’t bring myself to care about any of that.

“You can come back anytime you want.”

FOURTEEN

CECELIA

“God, I’m glad it’s Friday,” Helen says as we drag ourselves off the field.