I backed up on defense with my chest already buzzing.
Not nerves.
Charge.
The next few minutes blurred into one clean instinct after another.
A steal on the wing.
A kick-out three.
A chasedown block that sent our bench halfway onto the court.
A transition finish where I hung in the air just long enough to hear the defender cuss before the ball dropped through.
By the second media timeout, Kane slapped the back of my head on the way to the bench.
“Emotionally moisturized!” he yelled over the noise.
I almost laughed in Coach’s face.
Coach, to his credit, didn’t ask.
He just looked at the stat sheet, looked at me, and said, “Keep your foot on their throat.”
I grabbed my water bottle.
“Happy to.”
But even in the middle of all that noise, all that adrenaline, some part of me stayed aware of the quieter truth underneath it:
Stella would’ve loved this.
Not the spotlight.
Not the attention.
The violence of the focus.
The way I was playing like I’d finally stopped apologizing for being good at something that mattered.
Maybe that was part of it too.
Loving her didn’t make me softer.
It made me stop lying.
At halftime I had eighteen.
By the time the second half tipped, I felt even better.
The game slowed.
Then obeyed.
I hit a pull-up from the elbow so clean it barely touched net.
Buried a corner three with a hand in my face.
