Block Shot: A HOOPS Novel

by Kennedy Ryan

  It’s Jared.

  His eyes are glacial blue, iced with an answering look so loaded with malevolence I instinctively want to shield Zo from it. But I don’t know who to protect, him or Zo. They stare at one another like this is a contest of war instead of an awards ceremony. And then in sync, they both turn their eyes to me like I’m the prize.

  Confusion, anger, hurt war under my serene expression. In a daze, I incline my head and smile appropriately through yet another standing ovation. Finally, Zo leads me backstage, still clutching both of his prizes, the award and me. As soon as we leave the glare of the stage and the scrutiny of thousands of people, I jerk away.

  “¿Qué fue eso?” I ask in a voice low enough that the nearby stagehands won’t hear.

  “What was what?” he replies in kind, but I know him so well. He knows exactly what I’m asking.

  “How long have you known?” I ask, tears burning my throat. Shame choking me. Anger forcing me to speak.

  “That it was Jared?” he asks softly.

  Hearing him confirm frees a sob from the cage of my throat. I cover my mouth to catch it, but it’s loud in the close quarters backstage. Several people turn to look at me, to look at us. Zo guides us into a shadowy corner.

  “I’ve always known it was him,” Zo says in a voice of steel. “I knew it was him before it happened.”

  “Before it happened? What does that mean? What are you saying? Did you say something to him?”

  “Does it matter?” Zo snaps. “If you have not noticed, he is not alone here tonight. I knew the wait would kill his so-called feelings. He won’t be faithful to you, Bannini. You must see that he is not for you. You and I, we make sense. You, him . . . it’s not right. It never was.”

  His words only reinforce what the small, knowing voice has told me ever since freshman orientation when I offered Jared a pencil, and he turned away without a second look. I blink up at him stupidly for a few seconds, processing too many things at once. What he did onstage. Him knowing about Jared. Jared showing up with my polar opposite. It’s all too much. I grab the hem of my floor-sweeping dress and walk briskly away from him.

  “Banner!” he calls after me.

  “Don’t.” I put up a hand to ward him off without looking back. “Just give me a minute.”

  But I don’t get a minute, no reprieve. As soon as I round the corner, Jared stands there waiting in his fits-like-a-glove tuxedo, hair brushed down and tamed to dull gold.

  “Ban, we need to talk.”

  His voice, the very sight of him, fans hope in my chest for an instant—until I remember the Cindy he brought tonight and hear Zo’s words again, yet another reminder that we don’t belong together. Yet another time I’m not sure what to trust. Conscious of all the people around us, I press my lips tight to hold back the emotion threatening to spill over, and march past him without saying a word.

  The sign for restrooms hangs overhead, glowing like the North Star, and I follow the light toward the ladies’ room. It’s empty, but I don’t stop until I’m in the last handicapped stall. I lean against the wall and surrender to my tears. I can’t even track their source. Is it the stunt Zo pulled, the public declaration of love from a saint, which will only make it harder for me to leave him, will only invite public scorn? Is it the Cindy on Jared’s arm tonight, looking like his perfect match? Is it the shame of Zo knowing I fucked Jared? Of him having a face, a name, a person to pair with my betrayal? Is it fear that, despite his strong showing tonight, I could still lose my best friend to an incurable death? It’s all those things, and under the crushing weight, I sink to the bathroom floor and weep. Silent, hot tears springing from every problem, every hurt, every close call, every stolen kiss, every single thing in my life that has gone wrong—all at once. The cork pops, and as I knew they would, the tears overflow and won’t stop.

  “Banner.”

  Oh, God. Please not now.

  “Ban, I know you’re in here.” Jared’s voice is getting closer. I hear him opening stalls, searching for me. It’s only a matter of time. Soon I’ll see his feet in the space under the door. As best I can, I stuff the tears back into that black hole bottle and pull myself up, braced for the battle I never seem to stop fighting. The battle to resist Jared Foster. When he flings the door open, I’m ready.

  “This is the ladies’ room,” I say, glaring at him, clinging to the image of Cindy 2.0 on his arm. “I can’t believe you followed me in here.”

  “I can’t believe you thought I wouldn’t.” He locks the stall door, stalking toward me in the space shrinking with every inch he closes between us.

  “You can’t be here.” I fold my arms under my breasts, conscious of how my cleavage is on display. His eyes drop to my chest, the glacial blue heating, wanting.

  Hell no.

  “I am here,” he replies with a calm I know to be false. A muscle ticks in his jaw. His hands are knotted into fists in his well-tailored pants. “And you will talk to me.”

  “Go talk to your date,” I snap, turning away from him, facing the diaper changing station.

  He grabs my arm and wrenches me around.

  “No, you don’t get to do that,” he says, rage burning like a gas light in his eyes. “Not when I just had to sit through the league’s patron saint telling the whole world he loves you. Had to watch him claim you in front of everyone and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

  “Jared—”

  “Haven’t been able to do anything about it for months.”

  “Haven’t fucked for months, don’t you mean?” I fire back, jerking my arm from his grasp. “Isn’t that what she’s about? Your new Cindy? I said I didn’t expect you to wait, but you could have at least told me so I didn’t have to find out this way.”

  “Find out what exactly?” His voice drops to subzero and his expression is the face of a cliff. “That I’m signing a Swedish soccer player who wanted to attend the awards tonight? Is that what I was supposed to tell you?”

  My righteous indignation sputters, shrivels.

  “What?” I ask dazedly, wondering if I’ve gotten it all wrong or if he’s just that convincing.

  “As for fucking,” he grits out. “I haven’t slept with another woman. Haven’t wanted anyone else since you came back into my life. I haven’t kissed anyone else. Can you say the same? ’Cause you tasted like him last time I saw you.”

  “I told you—”

  “You haven’t told me shit, Banner.” With one impatient hand, he disrupts the neatness of his hair and paces in the small stall. “Except that you had to do this, and I couldn’t see you, and he was more important.”

  “He was fighting for his life, Jared.”

  “I get that, but he used it to keep you close, to keep you away from me, and I resent him for it. He was playing his own game. He knew it was me all along. He told me so when I was there.”

  “I realized that tonight. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugs, discomfort twisting his expression.

  “He said it would distress you, only make it harder, and I believed him. I knew you wouldn’t leave him while he still needed you, and I agreed that it would only create more tension.”

  He cups my face between his hands, his eyes losing some of the ice, warming with affection, with passion.

  “I should have told you,” he says softly. “I wanted him to know from the beginning anyway.”

  I nod, leaning into the warm strength of his hands.

  “I’ve always known how to play the game, Ban. Always calculated what every move would yield and how I would come out the winner.” He shakes his head, helplessness foreign on his face. “But I didn’t know how to do this, how to handle wanting you for so long and then losing you again to someone we both know deserves you more than I do.”

  And his words, so untrue, crystallize the truth for me.

  We are a match, an unlikely perfect pair.

  Neither of us fully seeing our worth. Not fully comprehending that our hearts were
stitched together from the beginning with threads invisible to everyone else. With bonds that didn’t make sense to anyone but us—and sometimes not even to ourselves. Me thinking he deserved someone with a better outside, and him thinking I deserved someone with a better inside. When all along we deserved each other. And in that instant my heart puts words to this feeling that’s been growing and evolving and persisting ever since I saw the most beautiful boy on campus at freshman orientation. My heart articulates something I’ve been afraid of because I thought he couldn’t ever possibly fully reciprocate.

  I love him.

  Not in spite of his flaws. Not because he’s handsome. Not even though he is a ruthless bastard. I just love him, exactly as he is. If he never changes. If he never sees things my way. If he never gets better. He is exactly what I want and how I want him right now. And the liberty of that, of not needing the one you love to be something else, and finally believing that he wants you just as you are . . . that the constancy of his desire through years, fluctuating dress sizes, and barrier after barrier he keeps knocking down to get to you, is real. That you can trust his passion. That his desire is authentic, and even though he’s sometimes a black-hearted man, what he feels for you is pure. Who would chase something as hard as Jared has chased me if you didn’t want it badly?

  “Kiss me,” I whisper, training my eyes on him. “I want to taste like you.”

  A warning flare fires in his eyes.

  “Banner, you can’t say things like that to me wearing this dress and looking the way you do tonight.”

  God, and here I was fretting over my wide, square ass. Concerned about my Spanx-less jiggles, and he is looking at me like I’m his last supper. I turn my head to kiss one palm, framing my face and then to kiss the other. I suck at the warm skin of his wrist, pulling the pounding pulse between my teeth, feeling his life blood throb against my tongue.

  “Jesus, Ban,” he rasps, sliding his other hand down to my waist, skimming over my well-rounded curves, cupping my ass. “I’m horny as hell right now. We probably shouldn’t. I won’t be able to stop.”

  I reach down to grip the rigid line of cock in his pants.

  “Who said you’d have to stop?”

  “But Zo—”

  “Knows it was you,” I say, tipping up to kiss his neck. “He finished his chemo last week and will not stop me from helping him if I need to no matter what comes next.”

  He swallows convulsively, shuts his eyes tightly.

  “I don’t want your reputation ruined,” he says, concern sketched between his dark blond brows. “I know I said I didn’t care if you cheated, but I don’t want people thinking you’re anything other than the incredible woman you are. What you’ve done for Zo . . . I don’t deserve you.”

  “But you’ll have me anyway, right?” I remind him of his own words

  “I have no choice,” he says hoarsely. “I love you.”

  That word. The one I just assigned to the desperate, persistent, stubborn passion lodged in my heart for him. Hearing it on his lips steals any resolve I have.

  “And I love you, Jared Foster.” I speak the words against his mouth, breathe them into him so he’ll believe me. “Exactly as you are.”

  Hearing the same acceptance from me that I see in him, hear from him, opens the cage door on the passion he’s checked, at my request, for the last three months.

  “Exactly as I am, huh?” He dips to grab the hem of my dress and drags it up over my legs, the cool air electrically charged with every new inch of me he reveals. He thrusts sure fingers inside my thong. There’s no fumbling or searching. Jared could find my clit in a cave. I’m already wet and swollen. He drops his forehead to mine, his breath heavy and hot over my lips.

  “Hallelujah,” he whispers. “This pussy has made a believer out of me.”

  My quick laugh bounces off the bathroom walls.

  “You can’t say that. It’s borderline blasphemous.”

  “As long as we don’t cross the line, and I think I’ve had about enough of you telling me what I can and cannot say about a pussy that is mine.” He smiles down at me, the same wicked man he’s been since our days at Kerrington, but there’s a new contentment in his eyes.

  “It is yours,” I agree, my smile fading. “I am, too.”

  “Dammit,” he mutters into my hair, slides his mouth over my jaw, down my neck. “I don’t want anyone to catch us, for them to talk badly about you.”

  “You let me worry about my reputation.” I chase his mouth until I catch it, kiss it. Own it the way he owns mine. We moan and growl into the kiss, with my hands tugging his shirt from the waistband of his pants. He digs his fingers into my upswept hair, and cool strands brush my bare skin as they fall. He hoists my skirt higher, and I hear a seam tear.

  “Face the wall.” His voice is harsh. Insistent.

  “Oh, God, hurry,” I turn, panting against the wall. I’m wet between my legs and my nipples are like quarters, hard and round under the tight dress.

  The sound of his zipper is Pavlovian, and my pussy drips like he pulled a lever, a conditioned response to the sensual prompt. My hands flatten on the wall, ass angled for him, so ready for him, when my fantasy morphs into my worst nightmare, frame by frame.

  “Banner!” The voice comes stridently. “¿Dónde estás?”

  This cannot be happening.

  “Mama?” I bang my head on the bathroom wall.

  “Your mom?” Jared hisses. He drops my dress and hastily zips his pants.

  “Sí, Madre.” I’m blinking furiously, frantically righting my dress and running fingers through my half-up, half-down ’do.

  “How do I look?” I whisper.

  He grimaces, rubs a thumb over my cheek like he’s trying to remove a smear. “Like I already fucked you.”

  “Banner!” Mama says. “I know you are in here. I can hear you!”

  Dios.

  “I’m coming, Mama.”

  “So I heard,” she says, accusation lacing the words.

  I open the door to face my mirror image, thirty years older, several inches shorter, and forty pounds plumper. Fire and condemnation blaze in the dark eyes that flick from me to Jared.

  “Who are you?” she demands.

  Jared shoots me a quick glance. “I’m—”

  “Not Alonzo,” she snaps. “That’s who you are. Banner, your fiancé needs you.”

  “Mama, you know we are not engaged,” I say wearily. “Is he okay?”

  “Oh, now you are concerned?” Her voice is a whip biting into my flesh. “Dios mío! What have I done? Where did I go wrong to raise a puta, when Alonzo deserves a queen?”

  The insult stings, but I don’t let it sink all the way to my heart. I know she will regret it later. I inherited my temper from her. I’m intimately acquainted with the remorse that comes with cooler blood.

  “What did she call you?” Jared asks, anger pulling his features tight. “What did you call her?”

  “She is my daughter. I call her what I like.”

  “Not when I’m standing right here you won’t,” Jared fires back, undeterred and unaware that my mother is a brush fire in a fight and will burn you to the ground.

  “Stop it, both of you.” I press a hand to my forehead. “Zo, Mama. Is he okay?”

  “He was feeling lightheaded and tired.”

  Lightheaded. The memory of him unresponsive on the bedroom floor splatters across my mind, and all my fears, all the what ifs I hoped were behind us, at least for now, with the last chemo treatment, come rushing back.

  “Oh, God.” I take off, jerking the hem of my dress up enough to shuffle-run from the bathroom.

  I spot Zo standing a few feet away, surrounded by people who have no idea what is happening, but I know right away. The pallor of his skin. The sweat beading his brow.

  “Bannini,” he mutters, eyes rolling to the back of his head. He sways like a giant redwood tree, reaching for me blindly before he falls and hits the ground.

  “No!�
�� It bellows from somewhere outside me. I can’t even place where that scream originated, even though my throat aches from the force of it. “Call 911! Now!”

  I go down with him, cradling his head in my lap and counting each shallow breath. There’s usually medical emergency staff onsite at events like this. I pray I’m right.

  “Zo, wake up.” I tap his cheek. “Come on. Please wake up.”

  “Ma’am, we’ve got him.” A paramedic presses his way through the crowd. “What can you tell us?”

  “It’s his blood pressure,” I say quickly, swiping the tears from my cheeks. “It’s dangerously low. He just finished a round of chemo. He has amyloidosis and he’s dehydrated. He needs to be flushed with fluids immediately or his organs will start shutting down. He follows a very specific protocol at Stanford’s Amyloid Center. Call ahead for his records.”

  I give him the name of Zo’s hematologist, the lead doctor, and he nods as they heft Zo onto the stretcher.

  “You’re his wife?”

  I look up and catch Jared standing in the circle, watching with undisguised concern.

  “No, his best friend.” I stand with them. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Okay,” he says, the set of his mouth grim as he checks Zo’s vitals.

  “I’m coming, too,” Mama says tearfully.

  “Only room for one,” he tells her briskly. “We’re headed to Cedars-Sinai. You can meet us there.”

  I look over my shoulder one last time at Jared. He grips the back of his neck, nodding that he understands.

  “Go,” he mouths. “I love you.”

  I let that sink in, soothe the ache in my heart as I prepare myself for the next few hours. But can you ever really prepare to walk through Hell?

  38

  Banner

  The siren screams, clearing our way through LA traffic, but it still feels like we’re riding at a snail’s pace to the hospital. Anxiety wraps its fingers tightly around my throat. My breathing is as shallow as Zo’s. The words, spoken urgently between the EMS techs, garble around me.