At the Buzzer: A High School Bully Romance (The Ballers of Rockport High Book 3)

by E. M. Moore

  My mom actually loves the idea of four guys helping to take care of me, especially when we all go off to college. Dad thinks I’m crazy, and Leslie just kind of shrugs whenever it’s brought up. Whatever Ryan said to her when they had their talk must’ve worked. She would do anything for Ryan, including letting him share his girlfriend with three of his best friends.

  Dazed, practically stumbling, I’m shoved toward the locker room door.

  I see red.

  The stands are filled with a myriad of maroon Warriors tops and bottoms. The whole crowd is rocking our school colors in some form or another, and they are hyped. The tension in the room makes my steps falter. Throughout our winning year, it hasn’t been like this yet. This is the electricity I remembered from last year’s Championships when I had to ride the bench. This was what I wanted for myself. That’s it. A chance. A way to show everyone what I was made of on a stage like this.

  I run forward, red blurring my peripheral vision. My teammates meet my hands with slaps and claps. When I finish with Alec, he taps my ass, and I end up shaking my head until I’m in front of Lake. “You ready for this, Dale?” he asks.

  Maybe another time I would’ve been offended, assuming he meant I wasn’t ready for this, but I’m not. Not this time because I know he’s actually just asking because he wants to make sure I’m ready for the big game ahead of us.

  “More ready than I’ve ever been.”

  “That’s right,” he says, nodding.

  We actually give each other a high five. We had to work up to it. It isn’t as if the day he got out of rehab we started hanging out and talking basketball. No, it’s been a long road that still has miles left to travel, which I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time to traverse since we’re all going to State. That’s right. They wanted all of us. Alec’s playing baseball, but the rest of us, we’re in it to win it for the basketball team.

  Hayes is called next. His face stone cold like the Ice Man he is.

  When Sloan jogs out, he’s ever the showman. He’s bent over, our teammates bending with him to slap hands until he gets to us. He jumps up to Hayes, chest bumping him. There’s seriously never going to be a time that I don’t think that’s sexy as fuck.

  Ryan’s the last to come out. I know his nerves must be on fire, but you wouldn’t know it from the outside. From the outside, he looks like the cool guy everyone thinks he is. They don’t know the real him though. They don’t know how worried he was for his friend. How I saw him cry when he found out what Lake had tried to do to himself. They don’t know the sweet things he whispers to me that makes my heart try to jump right out of my chest.

  The people in this room don’t know any of that about the Ballers, and that’s okay. I want those moments to myself. To them, they—we—can just be the best team RHS has ever seen. To me, though, they’re everything.

  From minute one to the last, we’re all business. I swear I don’t even notice myself breathe as we go through play after play. We make some baskets, we miss some baskets. But we make more than we miss. We come through in the clutch. The other team is good, don’t get me wrong. They wouldn’t be playing us right now if they weren’t, but they’re not as good as us. Nothing could’ve beaten us this year unless it was ourselves, but we took care of that on our own. We mended our bonds, we strengthened our minds. We’re playing as one.

  The emotion starts in my chest as soon as the clock starts counting down from one minute. Fifty-nine seconds. Fifty-eight.

  We’re going to do it.

  The other team knows it too. We let them move the ball around on their end of the court. When they try for the jumper, we jump with them, but we don’t try to block. It’s enough. They know they’ve lost. And we know we’ve won.

  Hayes comes down with the ball. He takes it in his hand, a real smile showing on his face. He holds it for a second, taking a deep breath in his chest before passing it to Sloan. Sloan grabs the ball, fucking kisses it right then and there in front of everyone. The crowd goes absolutely bananas. Then, he takes two steps, dribbling, before he passes it to Lake. Lake catches it, staring at the ball in his hands. He shakes it once, his eyes closing until they snap back open, and he throws it to Ryan next, who’s standing just beyond the half court line.

  Ryan’s smiling in a way I will never forget. He looks completely happy. He’s loving this moment. He dribbles the ball down to the three-point line. We’re all following him. The other team has backed off, giving us our moment. Then, Ryan stops. He looks for me, smiling, his eyes glassy. Then, he throws me the ball.

  I’m so surprised I almost lose it. My hands shake. “Take it,” he says, gesturing toward the basket. “This is all you, Tessa.”

  I stare up at the rim. The people in the stands rise to their feet as the clock hits ten seconds. In ten seconds, I’ll have won a championship. I dribble twice. I take two steps, then I jump. With the ball outstretched in my hands, I roll it off my fingers. It goes up and up before bouncing off the backboard and into the net.

  I land on my feet. My knees are wobbly. I almost crumple to the ground, but hands move around me. Strong and powerful. Hands I know that will hold me up through anything. “You did it.”

  Hayes’s sweet breath on my neck feels almost as good as winning this game.

  Lie. Winning the game feels like a fucking dream. It is a fucking dream. It’s my fucking dream.

  I throw my hands in the air, tilt my head to the ceiling, and let it out. The whole team rushes us. Like a movie, I’m picked up on someone’s shoulder. My dad’s running toward me now. Mom, too. And Ron and Leslie. Coach is sitting back, his hands crossed over his chest, but I know he feels this moment too. I know it when he wipes his eyes.

  That moment is captured in the papers the next day. I’m on Hayes’s shoulders. My hands are outstretched, and my mouth is open in a scream of triumph. I feel like a broken record, but I’ll be saying this until the day I die: This is what fucking happens when you put your mind to something. It may not happen the way you think it will. I couldn’t have predicted the twists and turns in my story, but I’d take it again and again just to reach this moment.

  “Just a sec,” Sloan says. He whips his shirt off by the side of Dad’s pool. “Got a little something on our baby.” He wipes his t-shirt over our trophy that’s standing proudly on the patio table.

  I throw my head back and laugh. I bounce it off the rubber floaty I’m in, my hands and feet dangling lazily in the water.

  “We can’t have that,” Hayes says.

  Lake snickers. “You act like we haven’t won that shit before.”

  Alec turns toward me. “We hadn’t. Not really.”

  The gleam in his eye says everything.

  Lake pretends to throw up in the pool, but I don’t care. I’m buzzing with emotion.

  Ryan comes out of the house and hurls himself toward the water, doing a cannonball straight into the pool. Water goes everywhere.

  “See,” Sloan says, gesturing toward Ryan. “Now I know why this keeps happening.”

  Sloan tries to wipe our trophy down again, but Alec says, “Shut up and get your ass in the pool, Ivy.”

  He shrugs eventually and then dives in. I look around, solidifying this memory into my brain until the day I die.

  Today’s the day after…and the day before. It’s the day after accomplishing one dream. And it’s the day before I start on the next.

  Today, though…today is the day I sit around in the pool and enjoy this moment of now. It’s the day I bask in the knowledge that I have four guys who love me, and that they’ll be with me through one dream after another.

  The End

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  About the Author

  USA Today Bestselling Author E. M. Moore loves everything paranormal--especially witches. She's visited Salem more than a few times and can't get enough of their ghost tours and witch museums. She's written in every major genre, but fantasy is her
first love. She currently has books out in Paranormal Romance, Urban Fantasy, Witch Cozy Mysteries and Contemporary Romance.

  Pre-order Rock On, E. M.’s next bully romance!

  A Sky So Dark: Safe Haven Academy Series, Book 1

  Safe Haven Academy Series Blurb

  Macie Davenport’s life is over.

  The girl who has everything is reduced to an empty black hole of nothing they call Safe Haven Academy. It’s where bad souls go for reform, but end up getting worse until they’re shipped out to another “sheltered place” with an equally uninspired name. It doesn’t matter what they dress it up as, Macie knows places like this are for people like her—people everyone wants to forget.

  The screwed up part? Macie’s not bad. Torn with grief and living in a fantasy world? Yes. A psychopath? Not likely.

  Worse yet, she can’t forget. Not even a little. Not even trying with all her might, she’ll never forget the consequences of the night the sky turned dark.

  Then, they force themselves into her life. A shining light in the bleakness around her, three boys irrevocably change her fate. Can she allow the sun to shine through? Or will Macie give up before giving them a chance?