Page 28 of Half-Court Heat (Hoops & Heartstrings #2)

Chapter

Nineteen

T he first lie was that our meeting had run long.

Hey, Coach. Our meeting went longer than expected so we’re going to rest up before tomorrow’s game. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Eva typed out the text message in the back of our rideshare. After our downtown meeting, we’d returned briefly to our apartment, just long enough to change clothes.

She hit send and slipped her phone into her bag.

“That’s it?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yep,” she clipped. “We’re officially AWOL.”

My stomach fluttered. I didn’t normally skip out on obligations. But after that disaster of a pitch meeting, it felt like a rebellion we both deserved.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

We were headed nowhere in particular with the windows rolled down to let in the sticky Miami air. Between air conditioned gyms and meeting rooms, I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be touched by the real world—sunlight warming my arms, wind threading through my hair.

“I don’t know yet,” she said. “But wherever we go, there’d better be alcohol and something that makes noise when I win.”

That’s how we ended up at a dive bar tucked between a tattoo parlor and a tourist T-shirt shop. It was the kind of place with neon signs, cheap well drinks, and music that oscillated between classic rock and country. It felt like something I’d find close to campus in Madison. Home turf.

“Pop-a-shot?” I proposed, eyes lighting up as we walked in.

“Hell, no.”

“Why not?” I nearly whined.

“Because I actually want to have fun with you,” she reasoned, “not have you pouting all night because I beat you at a silly basketball game.”

I puffed my chest, ready for the challenge and mildly offended that she thought it was a foregone conclusion that she’d win.

“Pool,” she decided for us. “We’re going to play pool.”

Eva racked the pool balls with precision. She set up to break like we were in some underground billiards championship rather than a dive bar in South Beach. I leaned against the edge of the table and watched her move—deliberate, focused, effortlessly confident.

When she broke, the sound echoed like a starter pistol, and I knew I was in trouble.

I raised an eyebrow, instantly suspicious. “Did you have a pool table at home?”

Eva smirked. “You really think Virginia Montgomery would allow something so lowbrow in her home?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “They have fancy pool tables for rich people, don’t they? There’s a Billiard Room in Clue .”

“Ah, yes. The based-on-real-life board game,” she teased.

She chalked her cue and leaned over the pool table to reach her desired shot.

She carefully lined up behind the cue ball and aimed for one of the solid-colored balls on the other side of the table.

She was taking the game very seriously, like I knew she would.

Eva Montgomery didn’t do anything half-assed.

But at that particular moment, when I should have been mentally preparing for my own first shot, I couldn’t help but be distracted by Eva’s … assets.

The professional clothes from earlier had been exchanged for a tank top and a pair of sinfully short jean shorts that hugged all the right angles and curves. Pool was a game of geometry, after all.

Each time she bent over the table, my eyes were drawn to the way the denim material seemed to disappear. More of her smooth, brown thighs came into view. The jean shorts accentuated her cinched waist and the generous curves of her lower body.

I didn’t even pretend not to look.

And she knew it.

“Eyes on the prize,” she said without turning her head.

“Oh, I am ,” I replied, completely unrepentant.

She sunk the two-ball with ease and moved to the other side of the table. “You’re stripes. I’m solids.”

“Pretty sure you’re solid as hell,” I muttered.

Eva grinned and circled the table again, cue held lightly in her hand like it was an extension of her arm. She lined up her next shot with the same laser focus as before, but this time, the ball rattled against the corner of the pocket and rolled harmlessly away.

She clicked her tongue in mild annoyance. “Ugh. Tragic.”

I stepped forward to take my turn. “Finally. I was worried you were going to run the table before I ever got a shot.”

I bent over the table with a little more flair than necessary.

Her whistle was low and appreciative. “You gonna make that shot, or just pose for me?”

I hit it. Banked it, actually. I pretended I’d meant to do exactly that.

“Here comes the comeback,” I grinned.

“Don’t get cocky,” she warned. “One lucky bank shot does not make you a pool shark.”

“Let me have this,” I said, chalking my cue like I knew what I was doing. “I need to impress my hot date.”

“You already did,” she said, low and offhand, like it wasn’t the kind of thing that should make my heart skip.

I cleared my throat, trying not to let the smile spread too wide. I lined up the next shot, and promptly overcut it. The ball kissed the edge of the pocket and spun away.

“And there goes the comeback,” Eva said lightly.

She was already moving around the table for her turn, but I caught the shift in her expression—still playful, but dialed down a notch.

I watched her line up the shot, how easily she slipped into focus, how natural it seemed for her to take up space—even in a dive bar with warped cues and scratched-up felt.

On the court, at a photoshoot, at a charity gala—Eva always looked so comfortable in her skin. My mind wandered back to our disastrous pitch meeting just hours earlier and how easily she’d sat at the formidable conference table.

“Do you really like going to all those business meetings?” I asked.

She made a small, thoughtful noise. “Most of my experience has been collaborative versus a marketing team telling me what to do or how to think,” she said as she took aim. “Today’s meeting was a very different experience.”

Her cue connected solidly with the white ball. Her target ball banked neatly into the side pocket. “I can play the branding game,” she said, straightening after the shot. “I just don’t want to be a caricature.”

“There’s no chance of that happening,” I denied. “You’re too smart and too good for anyone to box you in. You’ve got your own career and a platform you control.”

“And a girlfriend who keeps undressing me with her eyes during this very serious match,” she quipped, glancing up at me.

“Not gonna apologize,” I said, straight-faced. “You wore those shorts on purpose.”

She smiled. “I did.”

When we’d run out of quarters, we sat on the same side of a cracked booth with two beers and a shared plate of French fries between us. Eva leaned her head against my shoulder, her hand curled around my thigh.

“You know,” she said, glancing up at me from beneath her lashes, “for how terribly today started, it turned out to be a pretty good day.”

I chewed on my lower lip. “Think Coach D is going to be mad we skipped?”

Eva shrugged. “It’s not like we’re going to get benched or fined.”

“Getting cavalier in your old age?” I teased.

“This is the first time I’ve picked me in a long ass time,” she brushed off. “I don’t think I ever skipped practice or missed a class in high school or college. I was playing scared—like if I messed up, they’d take basketball away from me.”

Every time we opened up to each other about our pasts, I marveled at the similarities. We’d grown up in very different households in very different neighborhoods, and yet we were still very much the same.

We’d both been the responsible ones, the steady ones, the ones who never gave anyone a reason to doubt us.

We chased approval like it was oxygen. Coaches, professors, parents, the media—we did what we were supposed to do because we were afraid of what might happen if we didn’t.

We’d trained ourselves to make the right choices, say the right things, be dependable, be unshakeable.

And now here we were, curled into each other in a cracked booth in a South Beach dive bar, skipping practice and splitting soggy fries.

But I didn’t feel reckless. I felt good.

Her next words were thoughtful: “Everything feels different this time.”

“Different how?” I asked.

“Like … fun. Like, it’s not the grind,” she said. “We’re still playing at the highest level, still competing our asses off—but it’s Miami. And we’re together . Not on opposite coasts, not texting between obligations. We’re both here.”

I nodded slowly. “Feels like summer camp.”

“Exactly,” Eva agreed. “It’s like, I get to play ball with my girl, stay in one city, and not have to do airport security every other day.”

She reached for a fry with her other hand, dipped it in ketchup, and popped it into her mouth. I smiled, watching her features light up with joy.

“I think this is the happiest I’ve been all week,” she observed.

I leaned into her, close enough for my nose to nuzzle her temple. “You’re easy to impress.”

She hummed, her hand slipping just a little higher on my thigh. “That’s funny. Most people think I’m impossible to impress.”

“Most people aren’t me.”

That earned me a slow smile—soft, like my words had caught her off guard.

Her eyes flicked to the back of the bar. “C’mon,” she said suddenly, nudging me with her shoulder and rising from the booth. “Before we leave.”

I followed her without asking about the destination. She laced her fingers with mine, tugging me past the pinball machines, the grimy restrooms, and finally toward something in a corner I hadn’t noticed before.

A photo booth.

Eva pulled the heavy curtain to the side. “Get in.”

The curtain was faded red, fraying at the edges. The seat inside looked barely big enough for one person. The curtain fell back into place. The cramped little space was dim and warm, the buzz of the overhead light barely audible above the music outside.

I smirked. “Don’t have enough pictures of yourself, cover girl?”

She shook her head. “No. I want to make out with my girlfriend.”

Her hands found my jaw, and she kissed me without ceremony—no preamble, no lead-in, just mouth to mouth, like she’d been waiting all day.

Her lips moved against mine slowly enough to make me ache. Every little shift of her weight sent a jolt down my spine. Her thumb traced the edge of my cheek, then the corner of my mouth, and she kissed me again, deeper this time. Hungrier.

I let my hands roam—over her waist, up her ribs, under the edge of her tank top. She breathed in sharply when my fingers grazed her sides, and I felt her smile against my mouth.

The privacy inside the booth gave her boldness.

Her tongue swept into my mouth as her other hand slid under the hem of my tank top, fingertips skimming the barest line of my stomach.

My breath hitched—sharp and immediate—and I moved closer until our legs tangled and I could feel the line of her thigh press firmly between mine.

We were a mess of mouths and breathing and low moans. Every time she shifted, her thigh pressed between mine a little harder. And every time I gasped into her mouth, she smiled like she’d won something bigger than pool or pinball.

“Best hooky day ever?” she posed.

I couldn’t argue with that.