At least thirty people were clustered in the rooms that spanned the back of the house, kitchen, eating area, a wet bar, a sunken living room. She’d played in front of tens of thousands, but walking in on all the people still dressed in their banquet attire, glittering and pretty and polished, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden, was the most frightening crowd she’d ever played in front of. And she was playing a game that would break her heart if she lost.
Jamie, his mother, and several people she didn’t recognize were standing in a cluster by the big granite-topped island. Her heart stopped. He was still in uniform, the jacket buttoned all the way to his neck, and he looked like he’d walked out of her dreams. But his gaze was wary, guarded, and in that moment all the fight drained right out of her. She’d been fighting the wrong thing. It was time to end this, to let him in, to love him with all her heart.
“Charlie,” he said, sizing her up—her bare feet, her dress, the ball under her arm—and not coming up with anything that made sense. “What can I do for you?”
“I owe you a game,” she said.
His expression didn’t change. “And you want to play that game now.”
She nodded, distantly aware of people watching them, then discreetly moving away, picking up loose threads of conversations.
“You either bring the best game you’ve got, or we don’t play.”
“From here on out,” she said, intensely, because this was the moment when she won Jamie’s heart or lost everything. Anything that happened on the court was icing. “My best game. Always.”
Jamie stared at her, eyes narrowed, jaw set, then put his beer on the island and followed her back down the hall to the front door.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked as they walked into the spring night. Crickets, a hint of chill to the air, stars soaring overhead.
“In my car. By the court.”
They walked through the night to the path leading to the stairs, Charlie padding briskly down them, Jamie hard on her heels. The wanting was still there, sharpened to a keen edge by fear and hope. Jamie stopped across from her, the basket at his back, and put his hands on his hips.
“You’re going to play me barefoot,” he said, but he wasn’t asking.
She dribbled the ball from her right hand to her left, a loose, easy crossover, back in her element, confident. “It won’t matter,” she said. “You’re going down. Hard.”
He snorted, then looked at her, still wary. “What are we playing for?”
She took a deep breath. The air was cooler down by the river, sharp and sweet in her lungs, raising goose bumps on her upper arms, or maybe that was Jamie, handsome and strong and true in his dress uniform. “One on one. If you win, we give it a shot. A relationship. Long distance.”
“And if you win?”
Her heart was pounding high in her throat, scarily out of place. Nerves like she hadn’t felt other than in championship games. Real ones. To cover the nerves, she shot the ball at him with a hard chest pass. “We give it a shot.”
Hope flickered in his eyes as he caught it automatically, not even flinching. “So we’re competing for the same thing.”
“Exactly,” she said, then swallowed hard. “We’re competing for us. Fighting for us. That’s what I want. Do you still want it?”
He shot the ball back to her, just as hard. “When will you get it through your thick head that I’ll never stop wanting you?”
Her hands stung from the impact of the ball. Her eyes stung from the impact of his words. “Jamie. I’m not—”
“Worth fighting for? The fuck you aren’t. The fuck you aren’t. I love you driven, angry, intense. I love that you fouled out of more games than anyone else on any team you’ve ever played on. I love that you don’t play safe, that you leave it all on the court, take the elbows and shoulders and give them right back. I love that you fight for your students as fiercely as you fought for yourself. All I want is to fight at your side.”
The ball dropped to the cement as she covered her face with her hands, emotion tightening her throat, tears welling in her eyes. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, then wrapped the other around her waist for good measure. “Shh,” he said as she tipped her face into his shoulder. “I’ve got you.”
“No” she said, wriggling her shoulders until he let her go. “We play for it,” she said, swiping at her eyes, then looked around the court, cocooned in the deep spring twilight, and knew he understood exactly what she meant.
“Bring it, Stannard,” he said.