Page 2 of Stalked By the Assistant Coach

“And?”

“She seemed a little…”

“A little what, Brewer? Spit it out!” I clipped impatiently.

“Down. Kind of but not. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Oh?” My heart stilled. Something was up. Kait was always a bouncing ball of sunshine. Especially at work. She loved what she did.

“Like she was deep in thought.” I rolled my eyes. That was just my girl. She could get in her head, and it would take a moment for her to find her way back to the surface. “Anyhow, heard from Roxy”—his mistress— “she has a date of some sort. She was talking about needing to go shopping.”

“A date.” This wasn’t something new either.

It wasn’t like my girl lived like a nun.

She dated here and there, and when I lived back home, it had all but killed me watching her go on them. Wasting her time. No one would ever love her like I did. But I couldn’t blame her; she had no idea how I felt. Kait was clueless as to how much I loved her.

How obsessed I was when it came to her.

An obsession that had become worse the last year since I took this new job at the university. I wanted to be the man she could depend on, the one to cherish and protect her. The one who would work tooth and nail to make her smile.

“You still there?”

“Yeah,” I scratched out. “Anything else?”

“No, not much. She’s been working later and later.”

“You still have Doug guarding the place?”

“Always.” I could hear Principal Brewer roll his eyes. “He’s a good man,” he pointed out, as if I needed a reminder.

“Hmm.” Doug Halsy was a good guy, but it didn’t mean I wanted him to be the one watching over her.

I wanted to be that man.

But I was stuck working my way up the coaching ladder. Ryan Goodwin was a good guy, and he was doing incredible work. This season proved it. But getting mixed up with a student cheerleader meant he needed to come up with another plan, and soon. We’d talked about it, and he wanted me to take over. The offer was tempting as hell, but the only way it would make sense would be if my woman was with me.

But talking Kaitlyn into moving out of Beech Grove would take a lot of work.

Work I hadn’t started on because I didn’t want to count my chickens before they hatched. Not again. Life had taught me that lesson more than once. Especially when it came to my sweet girl. But we were both thirty-eight, and I was worried I’d wasted way too much precious time waiting for that perfect moment.

"The tickets will be at will call," I muttered before ending the call. I could have sent him all the tickets at once, but that might stop him from feeding me information on Kaitlyn.

I opened the Find my Phone app on my cell and frowned. Kait’s location was no longer being shared with me.

“What the hell?” I growled as I opened another app, one she didn’t know I’d installed on her phone in case she did something like this.

She’s home. Relief washed over me, and I shut my eyes for a moment. That heat inside of me had run white hot and needed to simmer down to a boil. I wanted nothing more than to rush and get into my car and drive to her. I didn’t care that I had an early practice the next day. Hell, I didn’t care about anything but needing to hear her voice. Hold her in my arms.

I picked up the beer, walked into my fixer-upper house, and ignored every new thing I had hired someone or other to fix. I didn’t soak it in, how far the house had come. I didn’t see the gleaming white walls or the dark wooden beams overhead that matched the open cabinets in the kitchen I knew Kaitlyn would love. Nothing mattered until I stepped foot into the small guest room off to the far end of the house. A room I kept locked at all times. It might as well be my bedroom with how much goddamn time I spent in there.

I chugged what was left of the beer and set the empty bottle down before reaching for a frame. A picture of the two of us.

My bug and me. My sweet little ladybug.

“Kait,” I groaned her name out loud. I felt myself thicken inside of my pants. But again, that was nothing new whenever I laid eyes on my girl.

My thumb stroked the side of her face in the picture. Her dark eyes framed by her dark thick-rimmed glasses stared right into the center of me. We had taken that picture the Halloween before I left to coach college football. She’d dressed up like a ladybug, and I had been a football player. Original, I know.