“I still know every word of ‘Into the Thick of It.’”
“As you should.” Georgie’s smile turned mischievous as he threw his arm around me, ushering me closer. “Pretty crazy, the two of you back in the same place after all this time.”
Shane’s eyes finally slid back to mine, and the air hummed between us. “That’s one word for it.”
Again, I couldn’t stop my smile, especially not when Shane held out his hand for mine and then pressed a slow, tender kiss to my skin.
“Happy birthday,” he said. “You look stunning.”
“For a forty-year-old,” I supplied.
“For any age,” he corrected, and I could see it, how he wanted to say more, how he longed to pull me into him as much as I wished to be held.
Georgie was too smart not to see it, too. He smirked at the two of us like a little devil as Shane and I finally broke apart.
And that was it.
That was the last little moment of serenity before my whole night imploded.
Georgie began chatting with Shane, a few of the other coaches joining in on our conversation and introducingthemselves. When I felt the moment was right, I snuck in the question I couldn’t hold in any longer.
“So… did the league ever confirm who’s handling officiating for the next road stretch?” I asked Shane.
It was our code question, a way for me to ask him if things were on track, if the league rep who’d promised he’d be here tonight was coming through.
Shane didn’t look at me right away.
It was the briefest hesitation, barely a beat, but I felt it like a shift in the air.
“Not yet,” he said evenly. “Still waiting on confirmation.”
My insides went cold.
He was supposed to be here by now.
Michael Reeves wasn’t just some faceless league bureaucrat. He was senior counsel in the league’s integrity office — the guy who handled betting irregularities, coercion, anything that threatened the credibility of the game itself. Shane had gone to him quietly, off the books at first, armed with screenshots of line shifts that made no statistical sense, the emails I’d pulled, practice anomalies documented over weeks, the whole Ben and Will timeline, and his full theory on the betting lines not adding up.
Then I’d slid in with even more — financial records from Sweet Dreams, audio from the overheard phone calls I’d recorded from the next room over, documentation of all his trips to Vegas that didn’t line up with any manager meetings. It was all proof that Nathan wasn’t just unethical — he was dangerous.
And he wasn’t planning on stopping his schemes any time soon.
Reeves hadn’t promised outcomes. He’d been very clear about that. But he had promised to show if the evidence held. He said he’d be here tonight to observe — and to intervene ifnecessary. He assured us he could make sure nothing could be buried once it came into the light.
If what you’re telling me is true, he’d said, voice calm and clinical over the phone,this won’t be handled quietly.
Tonight mattered because Nathan always overplayed his hand in public. Pressure to perform and not watching his alcohol intake made him sloppy. And we had witnesses, a whole ballroom full of them, for when we pulled our Ace.
Reeves was supposed to be here to see it.
I nodded like Shane’s answer meant nothing, like my chest hadn’t just gone tight enough to steal my breath. But my attention fractured instantly, scanning the room with new urgency.
When I spotted our Ace in the hole, my nerves frayed further.
Ben stood at a cocktail table near the edge of the terrace, sweat darkening the collar of his shirt despite the cool night air. A glass of brown liquor sat nearly empty in front of him, his hands flexing and curling at his sides like he didn’t know what to do with them.
Shane had gotten him alone yesterday. He’d told him our whole plan, risking our necks because he trusted that Ben would help us take Nathan down. He hadn’t come at him with accusations or threats, but with the kind of calm that made it hard to keep lying. He showed Ben the betting line shifts, the practice notes, the patterns that couldn’t be explained away, and then he told him the truth — that this wasn’t about punishing him, that it was about stopping the man who had put him in an impossible position.
Ben had tried to deny it at first, insisting he’d never thrown a game, that he’d never crossed that line. Shane hadn’t argued. He’d let the silence do the work, letting the weight of the evidence settle until Ben finally cracked. When he did, it all came out at once.
