Quentin tipped his glass at Leon, then at me. “We’ll talk patterns later.”
I met his eyes and felt the world tilt toward our angle. “Tonight,” I said. “After I take your money for practice.”
He grinned like he was already paying and glad to do it. “Deal.”
I chalked up, feeling ten things at once—overwhelmed and in it, terrified and thrilled. Love was a word I wasn’t ready to pick up yet, but it was already circling the table, cue in hand, waiting for me to admit I saw it.
I rolled my shoulders, bent over the break, and let the cue kiss leather. Balls exploded and scattered. The nine tracked a lazy path toward the corner like fate showing off.
Quentin’s hand slid to the small of my back—light, claiming, right there.
“Let’s run it,” he murmured.
I smiled at the felt. “Try to keep up.”
Chapter 17
Double or Nothing
By Friday night, my nerves felt like stripped copper—exposed, hot, sparking under my skin.
It wasn’t just the tournament. It was Quentin. The way he’d folded me into his world so fast—even his bed like it already knew my shape. I liked him. More than liked him. And that scared the hell out of me.
Love had never been safe growing up in myhouse. Daddy was the anchor, the one who taught me to strip wire and hold a cue, to aim clean and check twice before I cut once. Mama was the soft one, the dreamer, but she’d stopped dreaming when the marriage cracked. I never forgave her for letting it break and somewhere inside me, I chose Daddy’s side—his trade, his game, his way of building something you could measure. Electricity and pool made sense. People didn’t.
But then Quentin had to go and make sense too.
Every evening with him felt like a new blueprint—his voice teaching me physics like it was foreplay. Just last night, he’d leaned close, glasses sliding down his nose, explaining momentum again. “Mass and velocity,” he said, brushing my hip. “Like a break shot—if you hit the cue ball with the right speed and angle, everything changes.” He’d kissed me after that, mouth slow, like I was the only equation worth solving.
And I liked it. God help me, I liked it enough to want more.
That’s where Mama’s call caught me—just as I was pacing my bathroom, cue case leaning against the wall like a dare.
“I’m proud of you, baby,” she said, her voice soft but sure. Daddy, by way of blabbermouth Uncle Leon, told her about the tournament. “I know the divorce… it changed you. Made you hold back. Made you think love can’t be trusted.”
I pressed my lips together. She wasn’t wrong. Pool had been my sanctuary, the one space no one else could mess with. No partners. No risks. Just me and the table.
“But maybe,” Mama went on, “maybe you’re lettingthat go. Maybe you’re ready for more than the walls you built.”
I looked at myself in the mirror—hair loose and waved from the braid I wore all week, gloss on my lips, a flicker in my eyes that was both fear and thrill. My chest ached with something I didn’t have words for.
“I don’t know, Ma.”
“Yes, you do,” she said gently. “And I’m proud of you, either way.”
Her words followed me all the way to The Green Room.
The place was packed—heatrising off bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, smoke curling under lights, whiskey and chalk dust thick in the air. Tino’s voice boomed over the low bass, calling names, lining up brackets.
Quentin’s palm grazed my lower back as we walked in. A touch nobody else noticed, but I felt it everywhere. He looked like trouble—button-down stretched across his chest, glasses framing those deep eyes, silver chain catching the glow. Trouble I wanted on repeat.
We signed in as a pair, and the whispers started. Doubles meant trust. If you missed, your partner carried you. If they folded, you carried them both. Doubles exposed you. It was intimacy disguised as a game.
I’d always said no. Tonight I said yes.
“Ready?” Quentin asked, voice low.
I arched a brow. “You planning to babysit me, Hale?”
