Page 14 of On Merit Alone

Why did that bother me a little?

“Yeah, me and some buddies snagged some tickets.” He shrugged and finally stopped his pacing right in front of me .

I crossed my arms over my chest, chin inclining as I challenged him, but I’m not sure why. “And your thoughts?”

Another shrug. “Helga wasn’t that great. But you…”

Suddenly, my face was burning. I ignored it and cleared my throat, adjusting my stance straighter. “Me?”

Slowly, he began to lean forward. I instantly felt a sense of panic at his approach.

What was he doing? Why was he getting closer?

I didn’t move away, just watched him as he continued to lean in, and then muscle memory saved me from something potentially embarrassing as I grabbed the ball he suddenly flicked my way.

The smirk he gave me was all teasing. “Stop fishing for compliments, Six.”

I sputtered. What ? But before I could say anything in defense, he was crouching down in front of my body. I mean, could I burn any more at this point? Blocking my face with the ball, I was unsure of my expression, but I peeked over the round of it slightly as I looked down at him.

Ira didn’t seem to think anything of it as he leveled his face with my lower half. He also thought nothing of giving my left knee a pat.

My bare knee . His bare hand was on my bare knee. His soft warm skin touching my not-shaved-in-two-weeks legs! I could die. I was dying. Mercifully, he started talking about basketball again and it revived me.

“How comfortable are you with this thing?” he asked, tipping his head back and squinting up at me.

I didn’t remove the basketball from in front of my face. This position was just too weird, and now he was randomly touching me? Nope.

“Fine,” I answered from my hiding spot. “Pretty normal, I’m fully recovered.”

“Really?” he asked, looking down on it again. Inspecting it like it was some sort of gadget.

“Yeah,” I clipped. “Movement, strength, agility—all good. ”

“ Seriously ?” He sounded doubtful.

“ Yes, Ira .” The way I said his name was strange. Like I knew him more than just from these few instances we’d spent on court.

“Hmm,” he said. Then he shot up to his full height, grabbing hold of the ball and snatching it from me. “Then why are you half-assing on it so much?”

He dribbled backward a few times, completely ignoring the entire half a second his large hands covered mine.

I ignored it too—or tried to.

Lunging for him I tried to steal the ball. He turned out of my grasp, dribbling it away.

I huffed. Oh look, there went his annoying side. I’d forgotten about it for a minute .

“What do you mean I’m half-assing it? I rehab this thing every day. I’m doing everything I’m supposed to,” I said. Did I sound bitchy? No, just defensive. But shouldn’t I be? He was coming at me again.

“I mean ,” he started, dribbling close to me only to evade me once again. I barely suppressed a growl. He just raised taunting eyebrows as his lips curled up in amusement. “You bail out on your left side all the time. You’re hesitating.”

“No, I’m not!" I immediately argued because I wasn’t… right?

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“So you trust it?”

“ Yes .”

“Come at me then,” he taunted.

I scowled but took the challenge. Coming right at him, I went on the offensive, guarding him and trying to get the ball. My ball that he was now monopolizing and teasing me with.

Irritation brought me closer in my attempts this time than last, but Ira still kept the ball out of my reach.

Over and over again, I came this close to a good swipe, and boom, he’d slide out of my grasp.

It was annoying. And as he executed a final fake left before duping me with a break in the other direction, he moved away with it again.

I was so irritated I wanted to chase him down, snatch the ball, and simply beat him over the head with it. Losing my footing, I nearly stumbled over him as I pulled up on the left side… hesitating.

Shit.

Ira lifted a hand to catch my weight before I toppled over his big feet with my own big feet. We were already so close, and instead of falling to my shoulder or elbow as before, his hand slipped onto my waist. The other held the basketball against his hip.

We were both breathing heavily, chests moving up and down from our efforts. We were too close but too stunned, tired, or paralyzed to move away from each other just yet.

Ira was taller than I was, but not so much taller that I didn’t feel the proximity of his face near mine as he stood over me like this.

I both saw and felt the way his eyes traveled the details of my face before he speared them back up to meet mine.

When our gazes collided, I recognized knowing in his.

And I didn’t even need to hear him speak to know what he’d say.

He did anyway. Leaning in to make his point, even though that brought us almost flush as we stood chest to chest.

“You hesitated,” he murmured. “See?”

My lip curled and I shook him off, reestablishing the correct amount of distance between us.

He was annoying, sure, but was he wrong? Wasn’t I just thinking that something felt off? Could that something be what he was suggesting?

“So what? It’s a little weaker, then,” I said, playing it off. “I’ll train more.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not weak. It’s in your head, Six. ”

I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those mentality nuts.”

He gaped. “Don’t tell me you’re not .”

Crossing my arms, I locked a hip. “I’m not.”

His jaw literally dropped. “How can you be as good as you are and denounce the credibility of mentality?”

As good as you are.

“I—”

“You’re crazy,” he said, looking at me like I was actually crazy.

“No, Ira, listen.” He was turning and walking away, and I didn’t know why, but it got to me.

I wasn’t crazy. He had to know that. So I went after him and latched onto his elbow to keep him from walking away.

I released him as soon as he turned a look over his shoulder at me.

“I obviously believe in mentality. I just also believe in hard work. Input equals output and all that.”

“True, but you’ve been competing long enough to know it’s never a one-for-one deal,” he said. “You can be the hardest worker on the court and still lose because your attitude is shit. You can be the weaker of a pair and still come out on top. Input doesn’t always equal results. You know that.”

“Nor does a good attitude always equal sunshine and butterflies,” I countered.

“You’re not seriously arguing with me about your right to have a shitty attitude, are you?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine, I agree. It makes sense when it comes to games. But what does that matter when it comes to an injury?” I asked. “I can’t just believe my knee is one hundred percent and make my ACL magically as strong as it was before I tore it. I have to work for that.”

He paused, looking at me. Then he looked down at his own knee, bracketed in a black brace that outlined the limb in what looked like a constricting way. He’d played with it from the very first game of his comeback. Never playing a game without it .

It must help.

“You know this thing doesn’t do shit, right?” he asked, conflicting directly with my thoughts.

“Your brace?”

“No, I’m talking about my bionic knee—of course the brace, Merit, C’mon.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, holding my hands up like he usually did. “Why do you wear it then?”

Instead of answering, he unfolded his big body to the ground, patting the space beside him in invitation. “Come here.”

For some reason my belly flipped at his command, but I did.

Sitting a bit further away than the spot he designated.

My muscles ached a little on the way down, thanking me greatly as they settled into relaxation.

It felt so good to sit, I had to stop myself from moaning just from the sensation.

When I looked over at him, I was surprised to find he was already watching me.

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt to take it a little easier if you’re tired,” he said.

I leveled him with an annoyed look. “You know it wouldn’t hurt you to share your opinion a little less. You pass it out like candy.”

“Everyone likes candy.”

“Not when it comes unsolicited from the stranger in the creepy white van,” I corrected.

He laughed. “Thank you, Merit, for comparing me to a child snatcher. I must say, I haven’t heard that one yet.”

I quirked a smile that I hid with my shoulder. “Yeah well, if the shoe fits.”

“You know, you must have forgotten this in the wake of me kicking your ass just now, but you are the one who wanted this advice, remember?” he said. I blinked at him with innocent eyes that made him tilt his head in that laugh again. “Alright, smartass, look.”

And then he was pointing down at his brace again. Slipping two fingers underneath the side of it he lifted up. A lot easier than I would have suspected, it popped off, now dangling from his fingers as he held it between us like a prize.

Surprised, I leaned toward him. “Was it loose?”

“This is as tight as I ever keep it.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t really need it,” he said, and when I gave him a look, he chuckled.

“Because that’s where I feel comfortable with it.

When I was coming back during my first practice after the injury, I didn't wear anything. And I felt so unstable and unsure of every movement I made. I felt like I was going to tear my ACL all over again even though every trainer, doctor, and coach told me I was ready.”

“So what happened?”

“I sucked,” he said. “I sucked all the way up until about the last practice before my first official game back. All my fundamentals were there, I just couldn’t help the feeling that something was off, and it was toying with my game.”

My ears perked as I realized how similar that was to my own situation. Maybe a little too excited, I pressed, “Then what?”

Slipping me a sideways glance, he said, “Then I ran into an old man at a restaurant with my family. He noticed us eating and had his grandson walk him over. He was a fan. He told me about his recent knee replacement. He said the two of us were alike and that even though I was young, I probably had old knees just like him from ‘all that bending and jumping’ .”

“That’s offensive,” I said. He laughed.

“It was funny.” He smiled, his eyes distant as if remembering. “You know what else he did?”

“What?”

Leaning his shoulder down to mine, he lowered his voice conspiratorially. “He gave me a knee brace recommendation. ”

I gasped. I hated that I was playing into his dramatics, but I couldn't help it. “You do not wear?—”

“I do,” he said. “Randall, the old man, swore by them. And I thought, well, if it’s good enough for a whole new knee, it should be good enough for a whack ACL injury that’s supposedly healed.”

“And that worked ?” I wasn’t even hiding my disbelief at this point.

He nodded. “During the first shootaround I had to play around with it, but by game time warm-up, I was in a groove. As I laced it up one last time before tipoff, I told myself this would either work and I would feel great out there, or everyone was wrong, and I would tear my ACL again because I wasn’t ready.

But what I wasn’t going to do was let something that already happened affect what I wanted most in that moment.

Which was playing basketball like I used to. ”

I hummed. I saw what he was getting at. But I still didn’t see how I could get there. “So you think I should get a brace?”

“I think you should do whatever makes you comfortable enough to really go for it,” he said.

I hummed again, and we both stayed quiet for a moment.

A nudge on my shoulder brought me out of my daze.

I held my breath as I looked over at him, and there he was again, looking right at me. “Wanna give it another shot?”

Did I? Wasn’t that sort of scary, the extreme of it all? This would either work or I would injure myself again. Wasn’t there another level I could explore before the worst-case scenario?

But I guess when I thought about it, there never had been. When I’d injured myself, one moment I was in my element, playing like normal; and the next, I was on the ground and I wasn’t getting up.

There was no warning. No easing into the fact of my injury. So, in a cruel way, it made sense that there would be no signals if it were to happen again. And if I had to go out anyway, wouldn’t I rather go out playing my best rather than half-assing it to the inevitable end ?

“Merit?” Ira asked from beside me, shoulder still leaning into mine. “What do you think?”

I didn’t mind his touch. I didn’t know when that had happened, but suddenly I didn’t mind if Ira King touched me or teased me or gave me advice on my game, unsolicited or otherwise.

Hanging my head, I answered with a shake. “I think I’m starting to hate when you’re right.”

I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “There we go. Let’s give it a try.”

On his feet before me, he reached a big hand down to help me to mine.

Easy, Six. He’d said that very first day as he caught my hand and my fall in the lobby. Season’s just starting.

He’d known. Back then, before we even talked for the first time, he’d known our schedule. Known my number. It got me thinking.

“Hey,” I said as I grabbed onto his hand. “Four years ago against Miami, what did you think when you saw me play?”

“I thought I said?—”

“I’m not fishing for compliments,” I added quickly. Looking him straight in the eye I couldn’t keep the sincerity out of my voice as I admitted, “I just want to know.”

Curling his lips into his mouth, he gave me a once-over. “Do me a favor, and I’ll tell you.”

“Okay,” I agreed instantly. I had a feeling Ira wouldn’t ask me to do anything insane.

“Alright,” he said, motioning me closer as if he had a secret. Instead of asking me the favor, he bent his head close to my ear and said, “Four years ago, you against Miami is when I became a Merit Jones fan.”

My breath caught as I jerked away from him, his eyes snapping up to mine. Yes, he was smiling, but I realized that was just Ira. And past all the jokes, smiles, and teasing in his eyes, I saw that he wasn’t kidding.

And holy shit…

What the hell just happened to my heart?