Page 117 of Half-Court Heat

“Nice shot,” I managed, my throat tight.

Our hands clasped for a moment too long. Her thumb brushed the inside of my wrist before she let go. Then she was swept away again, back into the tide of her team and her city.

I drifted toward mine. Mathilde slung a sweaty arm over my shoulders. “We’ll get them next time.”

I hungout courtside to sign programs and sneakers and T-shirts for kids pressed against the railings. Tiny arms reached out with sharpies and posters. I signed what I could, smiling through the sting of defeat. A little girl handed me a basketball, and I scribbled my name across it.

I hazarded a glance sideways. I’d attracted a modest crowd post-game, but Eva was absolutely mobbed, surrounded by fans, cameras, and microphones. She smiled graciously, signing autographs, hugging kids, and positively glowing under the lights.

For a moment, I felt that old tug—the worry that her star would blaze too bright and I’d fade into the background.I’d wrestled with it for months—through magazine covers and commercials and her voice everywhere I turned.

But then she looked up, over the crowd, and straight at me.

It was only a second—her sharpie still moving, the flashbulbs still firing—but her gaze found me like it always did, as if the noise and chaos all blurred until there was just me.

When the crowds had dispersed and the media obligations had been met, we finally found each other in the players’ tunnel. It was quieter there, cooler, with soft shadows nothing like the harsh spotlights of the arena.

Eva reached for my hand without hesitation, our fingers lacing together naturally, like muscle memory. She tugged me into her body for a sweaty embrace. “Hey, baby.”

Her hands traced my back with a kind of ease that made everything else fade. We stood there, quiet, letting the noise of the world slip away.

We stayed like that a little longer, holding each other in the half-light, letting our hearts catch up with everything our minds couldn’t quite process. The sounds of the arena—empty seats, distant footsteps, the faint scrape of a janitor’s cart—felt far away, almost unreal. In that moment, there was only her, onlyus,and the quiet hum of love that had always been beneath it all.

“We did it,” she murmured, her voice low.

I smiled against her shoulder. “Youdid it.”

She pulled back just enough to reward me with that warm, brilliant smile that always made me feel like the luckiest person alive. “We did it together.”

I wanted to say it out loud; I wanted to tell her how deeply I was rooted to her, how sure I was that this was forever. But I kept it in my chest, a quiet certainty blooming inside me.

I wanted to marry this woman.

I squeezed her hand back and let my smile say everything I couldn’t. Yet.

She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek, a silent promise of everything still to come.

Hand in hand, we walked out of the tunnel together—wearing different jerseys, but with a love bigger than any rivalry.