Point Rafe.
I call out the score and return back to the baseline. Damn it. I can’t let him win. He saw me break apart on that dock and held me when I cried, and I need to establish some leverage.
A win,something, to put distance between us and my vulnerability. It’s still my serve, and I go for power over precision with this one. He returns it, and I immediately switch to a cross-court shot. He returns that, too, and a grin spreads over his face.
I hate that most of all. How at ease he looks in his whiteshorts and t-shirt, with his mussed dark hair and secrets I haven’t been able to parse.
Why does he fight at night?
We lob quick balls back and forth. My arm protests against the strength of my forehands. It’s been too long since I did this regularly.
Why did he hold me when I cried?
Why did I not hate it?
He strikes out, and I can’t help the smile that spreads over my face. “Thirty-thirty!” I call.
Rafe runs a hand over his hair. The deep-green cypresses behind him bend gently in the wind. It’s hot today. “You’re angry.”
“I’m not!”
“Could have fooled me,” he says, and pockets a ball. “And I let you win that point.”
I grit my teeth. “You did not. You misjudged the distance and hit it too far.”
“Sure,” he says with such infuriating calm that Iknowhe’s taunting me and that this is a trap. And yet it still riles me up.
He bounces the ball a few times at the baseline. I watch the movement of his arm, the flex of his muscles. His arms flexed that way when he stroked himself. Watching me in the shower, every line of his body tense with need.
The serve swooshes past me.
He holds up his hands. “Wilde, are you there?”
I shake my head. “Yes! Don’t be a sore winner!”
“I’m not sore,” he calls back. “I win so much, it would be impossible.”
I roll my eyes and drop my knees. “Come on!”
He serves, and this time I’m dialed in. We play for a few more points until I narrowly win the set. My legs ache, my lungs hurt. It’s the best kind of exercise. The kind that forces you to be present and leave it all out on the court.
I used to love this game.
I used to play with my parents as a child. As a teenager. When I got better than them, my mother would sometimes enlist me to help her with her serves. It was our family’s game.
After I win the set, we stop to grab our water bottles. There’s a smile on my lips that won’t quite go away.
“I’ve figured out your one redeeming quality,” I tell him.
He leans against the lone stone hedge that runs alongside the tennis court. Past him, the lake glitters through the trees. “Enlighten me.”
“Your friends.” It’s not a lie either. Nora and Amber added me to a group chat this morning.
He lifts an eyebrow. “They’re terrible.”
“Yes,” I say with a laugh. “That’s what’s so good about them. I think Monaco was the strangest honeymoon anyone has ever had.”
“I don’t know. Poker isn’t that strange.” There’s a laziness to him that feels dangerous. Hooded eyes and sweat-glistening skin.
