Page 44 of Half-Court Heat

My instinct was to pull away and guard myself, but her fingers had gently curled around my wrist.

“I’m really not thinking about all of this either,” she told me. “Normally, I’m a day-by-day girl. I have long-term goals, but a partner has never figured into those. I want to win my first championship by twenty-five, but I don’t have an age that I want to be married by or when I have my first kid.”

“But youdowant to get married?” I anticipated. “You’re not, like—I don’t know—anti-institutions or something?”

“I may be queer, but I’m probably a little traditional when it comes to all of that,” she admitted. “I want to get married. I want a big ceremony where I’m the center of attention,” she revealed. “I want kids, although I don’t know how many. And I want to raise them in a home that I own.”

I let her admission sit with me for a moment. I’d played with Legos, not dolls, as a child. I hadn’t played house or thought about a wedding growing up.

“I think … I think all of that sounds really nice,” I eventually said. “I hate being the center of attention though, so I’d let my wife have the spotlight on our wedding day.”

Eva chewed on her lower lip, looking pensive. “It’s fast though, right? Normal twenty-two year olds aren’t thinking about all of this stuff.”

“I don’t think we’re normal twenty-somethings, though,” I countered. “We had to grow up fast. You’re a multimillion-dollar empire, not some kid fresh out of college. And before that, we were the face of multimillion-dollar—maybe evenbillion-dollar—college sports programs. We weren’t allowed to be reckless and dumb.”

Her eyes softened. “I guess we still aren’t, huh?”

Eva studied me for a moment, her expression unreadable. She leaned forward until our foreheads touched. “I don’t mind skipping the dumb parts,” she murmured. “As long as I don’t have to skip this.”

Her thumb brushed my jaw again, a mirror of the way she’d touched me in the bathroom earlier. I let my eyes fall shut, letting the smell of lavender and the quiet weight of her presence settle me.

For the first time all day, the noise in my head went still.

Chapter

Thirteen

The practice court was quiet, washed in the faint orange of exit signs and the dim glow of moonlight filtering through the windows high above the bleachers. Our bags were tossed in a heap near the wall, long forgotten, and the only sound left was the occasional creak of the building settling and the rhythmic bounce of the basketball in Eva’s hands.

It had been a long day of practice and building chemistry with our new teammates before the first game of the new league. But when Coach Demarios had dismissed us for the evening, Eva and I had lingered.

We’d playedHorseagainst each other at least a dozen times, sometimes on a proper court, sometimes with nothing but a crumpled napkin and a trash can. But never like this.

“Strip horse?” I repeated, raising my eyebrows.

Eva revealed new parts of herself to me all the time—vulnerable, soft places that felt like a gift—but I hadn’t expected this. She was always so careful, always aware of who might be watching, of what a single misstep could cost her.

She grinned and spun the ball on her fingertip. “What, are you scared?”

I snorted. “Of losing to you? Not a chance.”

She shot from the top of the key, the ball arcing through the air and swishing clean through the net.

“Sure about that?” she asked sweetly, already walking back with a bounce in her step.

I retrieved the ball, grinning despite myself. “You know this is wildly unfair, right? You’ve got the better three-point percentage.”

Eva shrugged, unbothered. “All the more reason to up the stakes.”

I squared up, matched her spot, and took my shot. It clanged off the front of the rim with a sound that echoed too loudly in the quiet gym.

Eva didn’t try to hide her grin. “Shirt.”

“Seriously?”

“That’s the game.”

I peeled off my tank top and tossed it at her face. She caught it one-handed, laughing, and draped it over her shoulder like it was a professional wrestling belt.