Block Shot: A HOOPS Novel

by Kennedy Ryan

  “Yes, but both predictive of human behavior.” She leans toward me, warming to the subject. “Darwin used evolution, our most base biology, and Maslow used psychology, but both sought to understand why humans do what they do and how we end up with the best of the best.”

  “And you think Maslow has it right?” I ask skeptically. “Convince me.”

  She quirks her lips at my continued nod to Professor Albright.

  “I think Maslow is at least another way to approach it. Darwin’s approach considers us no better than animals.”

  “We are animals.”

  “We are human,” she asserts pointedly. “We’re higher functioning, not only intellectually, but emotionally. Darwin assumes evolutionary competition leads to survival. Maslow believes that survival is a need, and if that need is met, we have the emotional margin for compassion and cooperation to meet the needs of others too. With Darwin, there is a last man standing. With Maslow, we could all be left standing.”

  She tucks her hair behind an ear again, sliding her eyes away. “Guess this is why my advisor thinks I don’t have that killer instinct.”

  “Maybe you’re the killer with a heart.” I lift her chin with one finger. “Maybe you’ll take all that caring shit and use it to win clients over. Leave the heartless, ruthless stuff to people like me.”

  When she glances up, her dark eyes, fringed by thick lashes, snare me with the sincerity, the earnestness there. Still holding her chin, I stroke the powder-fine texture of her jaw. Confusion wrinkles her expression for a second before she pulls away from my touch.

  “Um . . . maybe.” She runs her hands over her face and slumps her shoulders. Tugging out the pencils anchoring her hair, she tosses them on the table. Sable waves fall over her shoulders and across her chest. I can’t look away. Don’t want to. She’s usually so pulled together. Seeing her literally let her hair down is a privilege I’ve only had a few times this semester.

  “Well, at least today showed him I can do something right,” she says sardonically, laughing without much humor. “In spite of my ovaries.”

  “What happened today?”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you.” A smile lights her face. “I got the Bagley internship.”

  “No way.” I shake my head, genuinely impressed. “I didn’t know you were still in the running. I got knocked out in round two.”

  “It’s not a big deal.” That faint flush rises over her cheeks, and she waves her hand. “I just didn’t want to jinx it. I honestly thought I had no chance. I figured Prescott had it on lock.”

  Hearing Banner say that asshole’s name, I go still. Has he ever approached her with the kind of crazy shit he proposed to me tonight? I’d break him in half.

  “Prescott?” I reach for a water from the neat rows of bottles she always keeps at hand when we study. “I didn’t think you even knew him.”

  “I don’t.” She shrugs. “But I found out his dad is like best friends or fraternity brothers or something with Cal Bagley. I assumed it was Prescott’s to lose. I know he did, too.”

  Damn. All the pieces fall into place, and I understand why he wanted to humiliate her. Payback is a whiny, entitled, selfish bitch named William Prescott.

  “Wow,” I say even while the wheels keep turning in my head. “Congratulations. That’s amazing.”

  “It is,” she says, her grin wide and proud. “They decided late, though, so now I’m scrambling to find a place in New York and to get my schedule adjusted for next semester.”

  She stands and heads out to the main room where a load just finished drying.

  New York.

  I clench my fists on my knees, absorbing the information. She’s transferring a load from the dryer to a plastic basket when I venture back out there.

  “So, New York, huh?” I ask, digging into the stack of white T-shirts and starting to fold.

  “You don’t have to do that.” She aims a frown at the diminishing pile of laundry we’re plowing our way through. I quirk a challenging brow, and she rolls her eyes.

  “Thanks.” She resumes folding. “Yeah, remember it’s a practicum, so my advisor wanted to talk through adjustments for my last semester and me working in New York.”

  Dammit.

  I’m happy for her. It’s the most prestigious internship in our department. Bagley & Associates is a powerhouse sports agency, and landing a job with them post-graduation would catapult anyone’s career. But New York? We take our exams in just a few days and then go home for holiday break. I thought I’d have all of next semester to win Banner over.

  I may only have tonight.

  And right then I come to a decision. Darwin. Maslow. Tomato. Tomah-toe. I’ve been taking the scenic route instead of the shortest path from me to what I want. That shit’s about to end.

  “Congrats again,” I say, placing the last of the T-shirts into the basket. “Like I said, you’re good at everything.”

  “Thank you, but I think we already established I don’t do everything well.”

  “Yeah, so you tell bad jokes. Big deal.” I pause, taking the reins of this conversation carefully in hand. “What about kissing? Are you a good kisser?”

  Her hands are suspended, frozen midair over the warm laundry. Wide eyes collide with mine, and her mouth drops open.

  Oh, yeah. Keep your mouth open like that, Banner. I have just the thing to put between those lips.

  “What did you say?” she asks on a startled breath.

  “I said are you a good kisser?” I cross my arms over my chest and wait for her to breathe deeply enough to answer me.

  “Um, I guess.” She bends her head and reaches to scoop up all that glorious hair back into whatever knot she had it imprisoned in before. I stop her, taking her wrist in my hand. I wait for her to look at me, to really, maybe for the first time all semester, see me.

  “If you’re a good kisser,” I say softly, not releasing her eyes and leaning one last time on our professor, “convince me.”

  3

  Banner

  “Convince me.”

  The challenge lands at my feet like a gauntlet. Jared and I consider each other, unblinking. Confidence and questions darken his eyes to blackest-blue. What is even happening right now? Did he . . . is he asking me to . . . does he want . . .

  Nooooooo.

  Guys like Jared Foster don’t proposition girls like me in laundromats. Don’t get me wrong, I think he likes me. A lot. We laugh every time we’re together. Our conversations are stimulating. No one challenges me more in a debate. He’s the smartest guy I know, but he also looks like a handsome ski instructor who traded in the slopes for an Ivy League campus.

  As for how I feel . . . it’s more how I’ve been feeling for the last three years, ever since freshman orientation when Jared asked to borrow a pencil. That day his hair, now a sun-colored buzz, hung to the angled line of his jaw, the darker and brighter blond strands twisting into shampoo-commercial perfection. He was beautiful then, but he was barely out of high school. He’s filled out the last four years. His features have hardened, the sharp incline of bone at his cheeks rising under taut, tanned skin. I could barely concentrate during orientation because he was so close, and many a night here in the laundromat I’ve read the same page five times trying not to stare.

  It was an added bonus when his brain proved to be as alluring as his face. And I’ve never laughed as much as I have studying with him this semester. Knowing he was out of my league, I’ve been forcibly content as just friends, and the possibility that he wants more, leaves me thoroughly thrilled and confused.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally say, barely hearing my voice over the heartbeat pounding in my ears. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He tilts his head, the tuft of blond hair capturing the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. He quirks that wide mouth. Jared can say more with the corner of his mouth than most people do with a hundred words. Turned down, canted up, twisted. Humor, disdain, skepticism. Those lips say it all without utter
ing a sound, but I have no idea what they are saying now.

  “I said convince me you’re a good kisser,” he speaks slowly, like I might have a processing disorder, which could be the case because . . . huh?

  Dark blond brows elevate over a simmering stare while he waits.

  “And how would I convince you?” I ask, my words coming out on thin air. The longer he looks at me like this, like I’m a meal and he hasn’t eaten, the breathier I sound.

  He steps forward, eliminating the sanity-giving space between us. He’s so close I have to tip my head back to keep our eyes connected.

  “You could kiss me,” he offers, so close now his breath feathers over my skin. Steamy, yet minty. So close the rumble of his deep voice reverberates in my own chest.

  “You mean kiss you?” I ask. “Or like kiss you kiss you?”

  He chuckles and lifts the hair off my shoulder, tucking a chunk of it behind my ear.

  “I’m pretty sure the second one,” he says, piercing me with another heated glance. “Is that the one with tongue?”

  My brain, temporarily atrophied though usually agile, reaches for the nearest excuse.

  “I-I don’t kiss guys who have girlfriends.” I arrange my face into polite apology and hope to end this perplexing conversation.

  “Ahhh.” He nods, his expression reflective. “I figured you’d say that.”

  “Yeah, so, we should probably—”

  “That’s why I don’t have a girlfriend anymore.”

  The breath stalls in my throat. My heart pummels me from the inside out, rattling against the cage of my ribs.

  “You mean Cindy?” I ask.

  “Yeah, no more Cindy.”

  “You wha-wha . . . huh?”

  “You wha-wha . . .” he mocks me, his full lips spreading into a blinding grin. “You heard me. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore. Cindy and I broke up.”

  “But I’m not your type,” I blurt.

  “And yet I broke up with her so you,” he says, laying the tip of one long finger on my breastbone, “would kiss me.”

  I glance from the finger resting between my breasts to the sculpted lines of Jared’s face. Does he feel my heartbeat tom tom-ing through my sweatshirt, hope and doubt trading thumps in my chest? I’ve imagined kissing him, not just how he would taste or how his lips would feel, but imagined him wanting it as much as I did. Imagined how it would feel to be wanted back. Now that he says he does, it seems too good to be true.

  “I think I’m getting, um,” I say, licking my lips, “mixed signals.”

  His eyes trace the slide of my tongue, making me self-conscious. I tuck my lips in, hiding them from the singeing heat of his glance.

  “Really?” he asks with a husky chuckle. “You’re too smart to be confused by something so simple.”

  His other hand cups the nape of my neck, subtly pulling me closer.

  “No mixed signals, Banner.” He lowers his head to breathe the next words over my lips. “Just this one.”

  Doing laundry the last few years, I understand static electricity—the charge produced when things rub against each other. I didn’t even realize we’d been rubbing against each other all semester in some form or fashion; the clash of our wills, the meeting of our minds, and now our lips rub together. Our tongues move in tandem. We cling.

  He possesses my mouth. There’s no other way to say it. As much a command as it is a kiss. I’ve never been kissed this way. His thumb presses my chin so my lips open wider, and he storms in. It doesn’t feel like a first kiss. There’s nothing uncertain or tentative about the way he fits his lips over mine. He kisses me like he’s rehearsed it a thousand times.

  And God help me, after a startled gasp, I kiss him back. The heat between our mouths burns through my shock like a flame eating through wax, and he quickly reaches the wick—the very end of my hesitation. He flattens his hand between my breasts while we kiss, and though he’s nowhere near my nipples, they peak. Tight and hard and sensitive, anticipating the possibility of his touch. His other hand angles my head back, and he plumbs the depths of my mouth, licking inside, stroking my tongue with his. He traps my hair in his fist and pulls, growling into the kiss.

  What the actual fuck?

  It’s so intense. It’s deeper and hotter and on the edge of what I can handle. His hunger grabs me, holds me so tight for a moment I can’t breathe.

  “Jared,” I mumble against his mouth, pull back and touch my throbbing lips. “Slow down. I . . . it’s a lot.”

  His forehead crashes against mine, his hand still at my neck and his fingers wedged into my hair.

  “Shit,” he breathes. “Sorry. I’ve just been thinking about this for a long time. It’s hard to go slow.”

  I’m struggling to keep up. This golden boy from the upper reaches of Kerrington’s social stratosphere, whom I’ve been secretly crushing on—for not one year, not two years, but three, even while I was dating the last jerk—has been thinking about kissing me for a long time? For so long that it’s hard to go slow?

  “Sorry,” I say dazedly. “This feels like The Twilight Zone.”

  “The Twilight Zone?”

  “Yeah, it was this show that—”

  “Banner, I know what The Twilight Zone is, but why does it feel that way to you? Is it because we’ve known each other all semester and I’m just now making a move? The first day we met in Albright’s class—”

  “We didn’t first meet in Albright’s class,” I cut in. “We met four years ago.”

  “What?” He frowns. “No, I would have remembered.”

  No, he wouldn’t.

  “Obviously, you don’t.” My laugh is soft, self-conscious. “We met at freshman orientation. All the girls were squealing about you and Benton Carter. I want the blond one. I’ll take the one with dark hair.”

  I drop my eyes to the floor.

  “I sat right beside you,” I tell him. “And you asked to borrow a pencil.”

  “I don’t remember any of this, but I do remember the first day I noticed you in Albright’s class.”

  He looks at me, a dark blue direct assault.

  “And I’ve been noticing you ever since,” he adds. “I thought we’d have more time, but when you said you’d be in New York next semester, I realized this might be our last night here together, and I couldn’t wait any more.”

  “For me? You couldn’t wait for me?” Despite the wondrous words coming out of his mouth, I still have to ask. To be sure. “I’m sorry, but I’m so confused.”

  “Still?” Something close to irritation mixes with the humor in his eyes.

  He slides wide palms down my arms, gently squeezing the muscles through the heavy cotton of my sweatshirt.

  “Then let me make it abundantly clear,” he says, his voice husky and sure. “I like you, Banner.”

  Guys like him, not only this good-looking but also brilliant, have that one girl in college they date for the sake of their brain. It assures them they aren’t entirely superficial. When that girl is a CEO, cures cancer, or is the first woman on Mars, they can say I knew her when. I dated her . . . nay, I fucked her . . . when.

  I was that girl to my last boyfriend, Byron. He dated me while he needed help getting through his Econ class, but that wore off. He cheated on me before the ink was dry on his final exam. I grew up with a father who never looked at another woman besides my mother and made faithfulness look good. Look possible, normal. So I have a zero tolerance cheat policy. When I discovered Byron’s infidelity and dumped him, he felt insulted that I, who should have been grateful he’d deigned to date me, ended it.

  I could barely breathe when she was on top.

  Everything jiggled when I fucked her.

  Those are his cruel words I overheard. He said worse things that I didn’t hear for myself but got back to me and still haunt my thoughts. Still nick my confidence.

  “You like me, huh?” I finally ask, training my glance on his chin, avoiding his eyes. “You mean in an ‘I think you�
��re smart and have a great personality’ way?”

  A muscle along his jawline flexes and his lips tighten. He pulls me into him, and he’s big and hard through his jeans.

  “No, I mean in an ‘I want to fuck you’ kind of way,” he says sharply. “Any other questions?”

  My heart stops beating for a microsecond and then rushes out of the blocks, sprinting so far ahead my brain can’t catch up.

  “Tonight?” I press my hand to my chest, hoping to soothe the rapid rate.

  “Yeah, tonight, if you want.” He links his fingers with mine and presses his hand to my chest. “Your heart is racing.”

  Embarrassment burns under my skin and spreads over my cheeks in a flush, confessing my self-consciousness. Another way this body has betrayed me. The freshman fifteen. Sophomore seven. Junior jelly belly. Senior cellulite. With each year at Kerrington, I accomplished my goals and my confidence grew, but so did my waistline. My confidence has never been dictated by the number on the tag in my jeans. I know what I am and I know what I’m not, and I’ve made my peace with that. But these things Jared’s saying . . . they confuse me. They mix things up again and reignite the futile hopes of that chubby girl sitting beside the most beautiful guy at freshman orientation. The guy who probably remembered the pencil I gave him more than he remembered me.

  So, yeah. This is strange, and I don’t trust it. When Jared and I started studying together this semester, I put my crush in time out. I disciplined it. I locked it in its room with no dinner.

  I starved it.

  Now he’s feeding it with impossible words and heated looks and urgent touches. He brings my hand to his chest. His heart beneath my palm thuds fast and heavy.

  “Feel,” he says, twisting our fingers together over the tight muscles and ungiving bone. “My heart’s racing, too.”

  His heart is racing.

  And his breath is short, panting.

  His eyelids half-mast over the desire smoking his eyes.

  His body is giving me clues, but I’m still having trouble putting it all together.

  “This could be our last night together, Banner,” he says softly.