Adam turned around, pulling his gaze away from the now empty hall and placing it back on his mother.
“Yeah, Ma,” Adam agreed. “I think she still is.”
Janae was still trying to figure out what happened, and why she was at this godforsaken Starbucks when she hated the place. Sure,it was right inside of the hospital, which made it a perfect place to grab a quick cup of coffee if you were on duty. Convenient or not, she loathed it. It was always crowded and the coffee always smelled burned to her. If her memory served, it didn’t taste much better.
She was hard-pressed to understand the world’s fixation with the chain. Other than its pastries, she couldn’t tell why folks like Ian, the radiology tech, were so obsessed with the place.
But she was here for one reason only. Because she couldn’t seem to mind her business and stay away from Adam.
She’d spotted him before he’d seen her. She could’ve quietly turned down the corridor, and he would’ve been none the wiser. Yet when she noticed there was some difficulty happening with his father, she couldn’t help but go over and make sure everything was okay.
Damn her inner caretaker that always wanted to make sure everyone around her was good. Damn her inner child who’d always wanted someone to protect her from her mother’s harsh words. Something about seeing Mr. Henderson sitting there with his face pinched in anger, and all of that heated emotion directed at Adam, it just didn’t sit well with her, and she couldn’t walk away.
Yeah, the patient should’ve been her first thought, but he wasn’t. The weary look on Adam’s face as he and his father squared up against each other drew her to them. She used her helpful bedside manner to de-escalate the situation and take some of Adam’s frustration away.
Of course, she didn’t dare admit that to herself while it was happening. She told herself she was doing what she was trained to do, prioritizing the patient’s needs. That was the only acceptable reason for her sticking her nose in a situation where it didn’t belong.
Not that it was much of an imposition. Getting Ian his favorite coffee drink wasn’t that big of a sacrifice. The relief she saw on Adam’s face made buying Ian’s expensive cup of burnt coffee bearable.
She was a nurse at her core, and she would always be inclinedto help a patient if she could. That much was true. Deep down in her bones, however, she knew that helping Adam was what drove her to intervene.
If that patient happened to be the father of one tall man with tempting hazel eyes that she could stare into all day, well, that was just a plus, right?
That’s all it could be. That’s all she could allow it to be.
It shouldn’t be because the knot that sat in her chest when she first saw the worry on his face loosened a bit when she realized she could help. It certainly shouldn’t have been because of the electricity that jolted through her when Adam’s skin touched hers.
No, it shouldn’t have been any of those reasons.
Adam stood at the free throw line, dribbling the ball in place and lining up his shot. He was king of the free throws when he was in the NBA, a record he was still proud of. He stood at the three-point line with his knees slightly bent. He took one last look at the hoop and let the ball glide off his fingers, through the air, and directly into the basket, making a crisp swooshing sound.
Adam smiled with a triumphant gleam in his eye as he turned to the three men he and his boys had been playing against.
“And that, my friends,” Adam boasted proudly, “is what you call game.”
The familiar joy of winning at the game he loved blossomed through his chest. Sure, he hadn’t played professionally in twenty years. That didn’t mean he still didn’t love hooping whenever he could. He might not be able to run up and down on an arena-sized court for two or more hours, but he’d pit his game against any of his peers any day of the week. Friendly pickup games with his boys ensured he would never completely lose his swag. A fact Adam was pleasantly tickled by.
Their opponents groaned before lining up to shake Michael’s,Derrick’s, and then Adam’s hand. While his friends stayed and talked with the other players, Adam went to his bag on the side of the court, checking his phone for a call, text, even a messenger pigeon would do to settle this anxiety he had where Janae was concerned.
Adam had never had to chase women, so this was a new experience of waiting and hoping a woman would check for him.
“Come on, Janae. Why you doing a brotha like this?”
“Air ball!”
Adam didn’t react quick enough to the warning before the basketball binged him on the side of the head.
Fortunate for him, the culprit throwing the ball didn’t put too much force on it, so only Adam’s ego was bruised.
Michael and Derrick walked over to where he was on the court. “Man,” Michael said. “Where was your head? We were yelling for you to move for a minute.”
“Uh, I was just thinking about work.”
Lies, all lies. He wasn’t thinking about work. He was thinking about Janae.
She’d been front and center on his mind all week, ever since he’d run into her at the hospital. She’d done his pops a real kindness. As far as he knew, she wasn’t particularly close with his mother and father. But the fact that she would use her connections to get his father’s grumpy ass out of that waiting room touched him.
“What’s happening at work?”
