“There’s always a next time, dude.” Tanner was grinning, and despite the grievance, it was real. He reached over and gripped Chase’s shoulder, in that masculine way. “For what it’s worth, you did the right thing.”
“Derek’s having a stroke in the hospitality tent,” Diego offered mildly.
“So we’re probably unsponsored,” Tanner said cheerfully. “Homeless. Disgraced.”
“Weren’t you already technically homeless?” Diego asked.
“Which means”—Tanner spread his arms at the chaos of the beach—“our calendar is wide open. Well, except for a volleyball tournament this afternoon.” His gaze slid to me. “I have a personal score to settle with a woman with a shotgun for an arm who almost took my face off.”
“But I didn’t.” I grinned from ear to ear.
“Might have been an improvement.” Diego clapped him on the back, causing Tanner to pout and try to get the other man in a headlock.
Diego outmaneuvered him, and Tanner turned his attention to Chase, who had made himself a target by setting me down.
As Chase and Tanner did something that resembled two toddlers wrestling, Diego settled next to me.
“Play your best today.” He nodded toward the bleachers, which were slowly filling with everyone who had been on the boardwalk for the surf competition. “There’s a woman in the back. You see her with the blue polo? Pods talk. She saw my video and was asking about you. I told her where you would be, and now she’s here.”
“And who exactly is she?”
“She just might be in charge of registering teams for the AVP America tournament.”
The beach tilted beneath mybare feet.
“Diego,” I started, and my voice did something embarrassing.
“Don’t.” He held up a hand. “Pods take care of their own. And Chase has always been part of it, even if he fights it, so now you are too. So go show them what you’re made of, Selena.”
I turned to Chase, who’d finally released Tanner and was looking at me like he’d watched the exact thing he’d hoped for land on me, like it was the best part of his whole disastrous, career-ending, perfect morning.
“Go,” he said with a grin. “Show them all your real magic, Torres. I’ll see you in the final.” He winked.
So I did. The game was already mine before it had even started. And this time, I didn’t look up into the stands for approval.
Instead, my gaze found a man who had never once looked away and had never once tried to diminish my glow.
And no matter what the future held, I knew that we would conquer it together.
* This is a reference to a famous TV interview.
Epilogue
SELENA
As I scrunched the soft,warm Southern California sand between my toes, I had only one thought.
This was a fucking amazing idea.
Up in the stands was a face I loved more than any other: Chase Perez. With his bleached-blonde hair, his very sexy neck and arm tattoos, and the ludicrousSelena Torres for Team USAshirt he was wearing, as his fist pumped in the air.
“Focus, Torres!” he yelled down from the stands.
Right, focus. This was the final match of the qualifying tournament, and if Samantha and I won this, we were a shoo-in for the Olympic team. And we weren’t about to lose.
We’d spent the last year becoming the team to watch. She was from Florida, a dolphin shifter who had lost her partner to an injury right before qualifying the year before. A brief introduction from Tanner, and we had been unstoppable ever since.
Samantha played with an intensity that leveled up my own, and we had become the perfect team, reading every set before it left our opponents’ fingers, putting the ball exactly where their bodies weren’t.
