Page 12 of On Merit Alone

“Shouldn’t you know? You know, since you—” A ball came whizzing by my face, and I burst out laughing. Still a bit touchy, I see. I decided against teasing her more since I was already too tired to defend myself after trying to keep up with her. “Thirty-four.”

She hummed noncommittally as she moved, set, and went up for another shot.

She’d already run through all the drills I was doing without so much as a break.

Everything I threw at her, she took in stride.

And of all the times I’d run into her lately, right here on the court was the most comfortable I’d seen her in her own skin.

Not that she was meek or even shy. Not small either.

She just seemed to expand when she had a basketball in her hands. It was a strange thing to witness.

Especially as I watched it work in reverse before my eyes.

“Woo!” The loud slap of hands clapping yanked my attention away from the shooting woman and down the court toward the tunnel. Stephens and McKivvey, from the looks of it, were making their way onto the court, hyped as usual. “Championships, baby! Let’s go!”

I chuckled at my teammates' giddy behavior. We could be going to the Easter Bunny Bowl for toddlers, and these guys could find a way to get hype. So I knew for a fact they couldn’t contain themselves as we prepped for the National Championships.

Behind me, balls stopped dribbling, and there was no more swish of the net.

Throughout the last half hour, I’d watched as Merit’s face got progressively more relaxed.

I still hadn’t seen her smile yet, but she’d definitely gotten comfortable, finally losing that granite set to her expression.

Peeking over my shoulder now, I noticed that it was back and possibly harder than before as she moved swiftly to retrieve our scattered balls.

I was going to speak. Maybe say something about our guest to my teammates, but they beat me to it. “Out here early again, King. Nothing ever—Woah.”

Stephens stopped mid-sentence, no, mid-walk as Merit set the last ball on the rack and came up behind me.

Her distance was painfully apparent from where she stood, yet my teammates still rocketed their eyes between the two of us and the balls.

I could just tell as excitement and curiosity beamed through their expressions, the need to be smartasses was coursing through their bodies.

I implored the only rank I had over these idiots, Captain, and gave them what I hoped was the nonverbal command to ‘be cool.’

“You’re Merit Jones,” Stephens decided to say. So much for being cool .

“That’s me,” Merit said lamely, immediately wincing at her own response. I wanted to tell her that it wasn’t a bad response, but I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t help trying to catch her eyes, though, all the while she slid them right past me and toward the exit.

I knew that look. She was bolting.

“I didn’t know you—” Stephens started but was promptly cut off.

“Good luck in Texas, guys,” Merit said. She was clearly speaking to them but mostly directed her words between the two large bodies, focusing on no one in particular.

Dumb and dumber just sort of gaped, and she began moving before I got the chance to thank her in their stead. She was leaving, just like that. And why did that feel incomplete somehow? Like we’d been working toward something that got cut short by this interruption.

It was in my right mind to follow her and at least get some type of conclusion to our interaction, but as she passed by me, I felt a soft tug on the back of my shirt.

Tipping my attention over my shoulder, I caught a whiff of sage and something else warm and inviting.

Her next murmured words were even warmer.

“Good luck, Ira,” she added softly, so the others couldn’t hear. “I’ll be rooting for you.”

And then she was gone. Making off into the tunnel and away from sight.

I think I could have watched her for days as she walked away, contemplating the thousands of little strange things about her.

Like how she could be both so direct yet so not.

So determined about some things yet so detached about others.

How everything about her reminded me of something hard, yet I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she was cut with a soft edge.

I could have contemplated Merit Jones forever if left to my own devices. But the grunt of male voices took me out of my own musings.

“Could you have blushed any harder, Stephens?” Troy McKivvey teased, slapping a hand across my other teammate Mike Stephens's shoulder.

“Yeah, what was that?” I asked, right behind him.

“What?” Stephens whined.

“ ‘Woah, you’re Merit Jones!’ ” I mocked. “You sounded like an idiot.”

“What? I got nieces and shit that look up to her!” he protested.

“ You should look up to her. Did you see the way she posted King like he was nothing?” Troy gawked.

“Alright,” I said, brushing him off. “Enough of that.”

But he was right. I didn’t know they were watching when we did that drill, but she did make light work of my tired ass in the paint.

Like I said, a machine.

“ And she never talks to anyone,” Stephens went on. “I didn’t know you were on that, King.”

“Nah, it’s not like that,” I said, immediately dismissing the inclination that just because she was a girl and I was a guy, and we were together one time , we were immediately a thing.

Nope. She, unlike the countless jersey chasers, was not into me like that.

She was all about basketball. I could tell.

“No?” he asked, and behind them, the rest of the team slowly but surely were starting to file in. He lowered his voice like this was some kind of secret. “You gotta introduce us then, man! ‘Cause I would be all over that!”

Wrinkling my nose, I looked at him. Tall, dark, and handsome.

And so outgoing he’d trample all over Merit’s quiet with the need to hear himself breathe.

That wouldn’t work… but who was I to judge, right?

“Sounds like you’re the one who looks up to her, dipshit,” I teased again.

I didn’t commit to introducing them. I didn’t deny it either. It wasn’t my place.

Yet, somehow, I knew I wouldn’t be doing that.