The arena explodes. The sound isn’t noise anymore. It’s a physical thing, a shove in the chest. People grab each other. A stranger slaps the back of my head. Drew howls directly into my ear. I laugh a helpless, shocked bark of a sound because there’s nothing else to do.
The other team calls a time-out. The players jog to the bench with murderous faces. Ollie doesn’t smile. He doesn’t chest thump. He touches hands once, quietly, looks at the coach, nods. Every atom in the air is singing.
They answer with a quick two. We cough up a turnover. Thirty-two seconds. Up one. I can’t take this. I want to run laps around the concourse and then punch a priest.
We inbound. They trap. Panic starts to creep in at the edges of the crowd noise. The ball hits hands it shouldn’t hit. Then it hits his and the panic fades, like someone turned a dial.
He dribbles once, twice, slides away from a double like he’s learned the trick to gravity. The clock bleeds. He waits until the defense commits and then sticks a knife into the exact seam itopens. Our forward gets a layup so open my mother could’ve made it. Up three. Eighteen seconds.
They sprint. Their star launches a prayer. Brick. Our big man vacuums the rebound. Foul. The place goes nuclear. People are on their feet, and we’re all standing on the edge of something dumb and glorious. Our guy hits the free throws. Up five. Eight seconds. The rest is a formality.
When the horn detonates for real, blue and gold spills down the aisles like a flood. The student section roars into the first bars of the fight song. I’m lightheaded and weirdly emotional and grinning so hard my face hurts. Drew grabs my shoulders and shakes me like I just got into Juilliard.
“You’re a fan,” he yells over the chaos. “You’re a fan!”
“Absolutely not,” I yell back, white-knuckled on a rail because the world is tilting. “This was a one-time science experiment.”
“Uh-huh. You’re cooked.”
I want to argue. I can’t. My eyes are already hunting for him, scanning the swarm of bodies and school colors for 12. There—near midcourt, shaking hands, talking to some guy in a suit whose nameplate might as well read SCOUT. People shove phones toward him. He smiles, the good version, and then it’s gone and it’s him again. He hugs a teammate, hard and quick, and then his gaze lifts like it’s on a string.
He finds me.
It’s ridiculous—there are two thousand people between us—but the line snaps taut again. Surprise first, like halftime, then something heavier that makes my throat go dry. He says something to the suit, quick, then another thing to a teammate, and then he’s moving toward the tunnel.
I don’t think. I grab Drew’s sleeve. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Hallway. Players’ exit.”
He doesn’t argue; he wants the trailer to this movie as much as I do. We push through bodies, duck around a cluster of freshmen taking selfies, get stuck behind a slow-moving group from the pep band, and then break free. At ground level, the arena is concrete and echo and damp air. Security yawns by a rope drop. I flash the wrist stamp from my student section ticket like it’s a passport. He barely glances at it.
Down here the sound is weird—muffled, huge. Staff roll carts of towels and water and bags that might as well be gold bricks for how important they look. A radio crackles something about a press conference. I plant us just past the tunnel mouth; anything closer and we’re getting tossed, and I do not have the energy to charm a rent-a-cop tonight.
Players start to trickle through. They’re bigger up close, louder, the postgame edge still buzzing off them. A couple of them recognize Drew from campus, and daps are exchanged. I keep my face neutral. Inside, I’m a lightning rod.
Then 12.
He’s clean now—towel around his neck, hair damp, expression smoothed, which somehow makes him more dangerous. He’s mid-conversation with a teammate, head tilted to listen even as his feet carry him forward. Then his eyes flick sideways, and I know the exact moment he sees me because his stride hitches one beat.
He says something I can’t hear—an excuse, a promise, agive me a second—and peels off. He’s walking straight toward us, and suddenly I’m aware that I’m in a leather jacket that smells like smoke, my tattoos peeking at my wrists, and sweat slicking my lower back. I didn’t plan this part. Planning implies control, and I’m way past that.
“Hi,” he says, which is hilariously insufficient for the amount of electricity in the air.
“Hey,” I say, which is worse.
Up close, his eyes are darker than the lights would suggest, steady even though his shoulders are set like he’s bracing. He glances at Drew and then back to me, a quick measure. He doesn’t waste time. “You came.”
“Yeah.” I let the grin show, slow. “Had to see if all the hype was real.”
A small breath that might be a laugh punches out of him. The blush creeps up before he can stop it, which I feel in my hips for absolutely no good reason. “And?”
“And you’re ridiculous,” I say. “In a good way.”
He shifts, towel twisting just once in his hand before he stops it like he caught himself. “You don’t even like basketball,” he says, but it’s not a challenge. It’s a curiosity.
“I like shows,” I say. “You put one on.”
