I brush my thumb over her knuckles.
“I promise you—if you hate it, we stop. We will never do this again. I won’t ask, and this will be a one-time thing. But please…” My voice dips, earnest and soft. “For me. Will you just try?”
She blinks rapidly, fighting the sting of emotion. Her voice is thick when she finally speaks.
“Okay,” she whispers. She nods, breath trembling. “Okay. I’ll play.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
MIRANDA
Ilook around the gym, taking in the sea of Crane hockey players scattered across the floor. Not a single stranger.
I turn back to Miles, narrowing my eyes. “How is this a charity event exactly?”
“Well,” he says, rocking back on his heels, “we needed one this quarter anyway, so all the guys pitched in a thousand bucks. The winners of the game get to choose which organization the money goes to.”
I blink. “So basically… you created this entire event so I would play basketball.”
Miles shrugs, wearing an adorable, unabashedly guilty grin. “Maybe something like that. But hey—Penny’s going to take videos and pictures, make some posts. It’ll get traction and make the team look good. We’ll donate some money, and everyone has fun. It’s a win-win.”
I laugh under my breath. “I’m either going to love you more or hate you after this.”
“Yeah,” he admits, “that’s what I figured.” He gives me a soft smile. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He grabs my hand, and we walk toward the center of the court where the team—and most of the spouses and girlfriends—have congregated in a loose circle.
“Yo,” Beckett calls out. “How’s this gonna go? Backyard-style picks? Numbers in a hat? Intermixed? Guys versus girls? We need to decide.”
“Well, clearly we’re not doing guys versus girls,” Logan says. “That puts the girls at a major disadvantage.”
“Excuse me?” Iris snaps, arms crossing. “Girls are just as good as guys.”
Beckett scrunches his nose. “I don’t know about that, sis.”
I step forward. “Actually, I think we should do guys versus girls.”
Every head swivels toward me.
“You really think that’ll be fair?” Bash asks carefully. “I’m not trying to be negative—just thinking we might want to co-mingle a bit.”
Anna gives me a knowing look, her smile stretching wide. “Nope. I agree with Miranda. We don’t need any guys on our team holding us down.”
“In all fairness…” Ari raises her hand like we’re back in school. “I haven’t played basketball since middle school gym class.”
“It’s okay,” I assure her, heat rising in my chest. “It’ll come back to you.”
The group grumbles, debates, and negotiates—but eventually, to my enormous amusement, we settle on it.
Elena volunteers to take pictures, keep score, handle the video camera, and keep an eye on the two almost toddlers, her son Chase and Max’s daughter Caroline, as they crawl around the bleachers.
My team consists of me, Anna, Ari, Iris, Delaney, and Penny. An unlikely dream team.
Both teams head to opposite sides of the court to warm up with shooting drills. I gather the girls into a little huddle and, somehow, without even thinking about it, I fall right back into my old captain role. It slips on like a second skin. And admittedly… just the couple of layups and jump shots I take during warm-up have a smile tugging at my mouth.
Maybe this won’t be too bad.
