Page 90 of On Merit Alone

Four years later

Confetti fell from the rafters of the Mountaineer stadium. It reminded me of snow—slow and peaceful as it trickled down in a world of chaos.

All around me, bodies moved. Jumping, throwing their hands in the air, and rejoicing in happiness. On the display screens, a message I’d been waiting to see my entire career played over and over.

Mites Win!

The big one. We’d done it. We won a championship. It had simultaneously taken one night and an entire lifetime to accomplish, but I’d done it. I’d realized my dream, and yet…

I turned away from my team. My feet began to carry me on their own accord. They knew where to go. Where he’d be.

I jogged. Wanting, no, needing to get to him. And when I saw him, sitting in his usual seat with number six plastered across his chest, my knees failed me.

I crumbled down to a crouch, my hands holding onto his knees to keep me from toppling over. My head pressed to the back of them to hide my emotion.

I began to sob anyway. Tears of joy and release. Tears of pure happiness.

Large hands, hands that I knew and loved, came down over my shoulders. They ran up the span of my neck and underneath my cheeks so that he could lift my head. Leaning down, he met me, coming close enough so I could hear him over all the commotion.

He spoke in a soft whisper. Easing himself into my stunned state. “Stand up, baby. This is your moment.”

My shoulders shook and I reached forward to wrap my palms in his shirt. Yes, this was my moment, but he was just as much a part of it as I was. Without him, I’m sure that this would have felt empty. Without him, my world would be so narrow.

But with him, when the confetti stopped and the cheers quieted, I wasn’t alone.

I wasn’t lost anymore. When the ball stopped this time, and every time since Ira King had come into my life—Since he’d first called me Six and told me he loved me and hugged me and kissed me and soon after married me.

Since then, since him , I’d already become a winner.

Everything else was just icing on the cake.

My shiver spread throughout my whole body as I closed my eyes and leaned into his touch. Hoarse and low, I whispered, “Thank you.”

And what did he do? My husband, a two-time champion himself before his recent retirement and the opening of his basketball academy in the inner city, smiled before using his strong hands to lift me to my feet. He was good at that, lifting me up when I felt unsteady. Right now was nothing new.

On our feet, he used his fingers to wipe under my eyes as he shook his head. “No need to thank me. This is all you.”

I looked up at him, and even now, I saw the calm and steady man who’d walked right up to me that day and asked me what he wanted to know.

The guy who kept showing up when I asked him to and even when I didn’t.

The one who had taken my broken heart and hadn’t tried to glue the pieces back together, but had accepted every broken piece into his own.

Learning them so that when he gave them back to me, I might see that although changed, they still worked.

I saw the man who had given me parts of myself that I had lost a long time ago, and I recognized that I could have done this without him, but without him, this would mean a hell of a lot less.

“Nope.” I smiled, a laugh full of irony slipping from my lips as I shook my head. “It’s all us .”

And it would be us. Until our very last days.