“You are down catastrophically.”
I didn’t bother denying it.
Because denial stops being useful when your whole body reacts before your brain can invent an excuse.
Stella rotated back to serve.
Spun the ball once in her hand.
Twice.
Even through a screen, I could see it—the edge in her. The charged stillness. The way her body looked like it had found some extra voltage and didn’t know what to do with it except win.
I remembered her in that half-lit gym with my hand on the wall beside her head.
Remembered her saying she wasn’t a coward.
Remembered the tremor that went through me when she whispered she was all in.
Then she jumped and ripped an ace down the seam so clean I actually sat up straighter.
Kane barked out a laugh.
“Oh, she is terrifying.”
That pulled something dark and satisfied through me.
“Good.”
He gave me a look.
And maybe I should’ve been embarrassed by how obvious I was. By the way the whole room probably could’ve lit itself off the tension in my face alone.
Because for the first time in longer than I wanted to think about, wanting someone didn’t feel like weakness.
It felt like ignition.
On the screen, Stella rotated front row again and stuffed a hitter so hard the ball dropped straight down.
Jalen looked up from where he was massacring fries at the desk.
“That volleyball?”
I didn’t answer fast enough, so Kane did it for me.
“His girl.”
Jalen’s eyebrows went up.
I turned slowly.
“She is not?—”
Then I stopped.
Because what exactly was I about to say?
Not my girl?
