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Raven was going to the Super Bowl, it was a game night for us, and my shoulder wasn’t bothering me tonight. All in all, I should be in great spirits. I should be pumped up, ready to follow our own chase for back-to-back championships.
Though I had my earbuds in my ear, I could still feel the locker room energy around me. Everyone had their own pre-game rituals, and the team knew that I liked to tune everything out before a game. Unlike Sebastian, who really only needed to be in sync with the pitcher, I had to be in sync with everyone on the court; the same was said for Raven, Atlas, and Titan. Though baseball was also a team sport, the players were still able to adopt a certain level of individuality. Even Raven could count as an individual player. All he had to do was catch the ball, then kickstart his wheels into the endzone. He didn’t need to know what the offensive line was doing once he made his way to a touchdown. Raven and Seb were part of a team, but they were able to depend only on themselves at times, unlike the rest of us.
When I stepped onto that court, four other players stepped onto with me: the center, shoot guard, power forward, small forward, and me, the point guard. To be successful, we all had to move fluidly together like a well-choregraphed ballet. I had to be fast and good at ball passing and handling, which I was, but that wasn’t all. As a team leader, offensively and defensively, I had to be able to control the pace of the game, call plays, bring up the ball, shoot from the outside, pass successfully, drive the basket, play zone defense, and play man-to-man coverage. In short, I had to be able to do it all, and I had to be able to do it all with a team of guys that had their own talent and responsibilities on the court.
So, each night, before a game, I stuck my earbuds in, then drowned out everything but the challenge waiting for me on the court, and I was lucky enough that no one took it personally. Besides, we always had plenty of time to talk, bitch, celebrate, or moan after the game. I was also lucky as fuck that the coach never held me over whenever we were playing in Colorado. He knew that I’d pick my sister over my career in a heartbeat.
At any rate, peace wasn’t coming to me as easily today as it’d had all the hundreds of games that I’d already played.
Nope.
Tonight, when I was supposed to be in my zone, my mind was filled with nothing but a ballsy brunette that I was still dazed over. The woman had told us that we weren’t good enough to play with the legends, called out management for catering to us, then had still tipped the waitress in her blaze of fury because it’d been the right thing to do.
AfterSinclairand her boyfriend had left Your Choice, Max had apologized, offered to put all of our drinks on the house, and it had just made me feel worse. Yeah, she’d been acting like a jerk, but I could have kept my mouth shut by not taking it personally. Yeah, I’d always defend my friends, but I still could have left and watched the game somewhere else, leaving her to it.
I could have done a lot of things differently.
I was also still sour about her having a boyfriend. It’d be just my luck that the first woman to make me feel anything above the waistline would be taken. It was also clear that their relationship was a solid one, and probably years in the making. Their familiarity was too automatic, too casual. I mean, the guy had thrown her over his shoulder, and she hadn’t even balked at the manhandling. She’d been resigned, though still pissed at us, but she’d gone willingly with him.
I had also done the internet-stalking thing, and I wasn’t proud of it. If her boyfriend hadn’t said her name, then I never would have been given the clue to lead me into temptation. It had taken me a while since there were quite a few Sinclairs on social media, but there’d been no mistaking that face once I’d found her. However, her accounts had been set to private, so I’d gotten nowhere with that. Hours later, I had contacted Max, asked if he knew who they were, and though he only knew them as regular patrons of Your Choice, he’d given me her boyfriend’s first name, and his accounts hadn’t been private.
Pictures of them together had been plastered all over his timeline, but there’d been nothing in print to confirm their relationship statuses. If her accounts were private, then it stood to reason that she probably didn’t like all of her personal business out there, something that I could appreciate. However, the pictures that I had come across had all been of a happy couple, Sinclair all smiles whenever he snapped a picture of them together.
I shook my head.
I wasn’t a poacher.
I didn’t lust after other men’s women. There was nothing attractive about a cheater, no matter if you were the single one in the equation. The last thing that I wanted was a woman that could leave her man that easily for a smooth-talking stranger. Loyalty was a big deal for me, and I wasn’t looking to invest in a woman that didn’t feel the same way.
Still, I couldn’t get that fucking woman out of my mind.
Hours later, I was gritting my teeth, pissed and ready to murder anyone in my path. We were losing by six points, and that asshole, Russ Hillary, had fouled me earlier, knocking me onto the court, my shoulder taking the brunt of the impact. Now it was burning like a motherfucker, and we still had ten more minutes to play in the final quarter. There was no way that I was going to be able to ignore this anymore. I was going to have to talk to Coach and the physical therapy team tomorrow morning.
It was hard not to look at the clock when you were losing. The minutes ticked by faster when you were behind, and when you caught up or were winning, the minutes dragged like years. We needed to up our defense and do something on fucking offense if we were going to win this game. Ideally, the three-pointers would get us there, but I couldn’t guarantee my shots with my shoulder aching the way that it was.
Passing the ball to Hickey, I played my man-to-man as Hickey fired a shot, the ball swimming around the rim, finally falling in, making us all breathe a bit easier. Russ elbowed me as we scrambled across the court, but I let him. Sinclair’s words had done their damage, and the last thing that I was going to do on national television was complain like a little bitch, not that I’d ever done it before. However, I was more aware of my masculinity on the court now, and I had Sinclair’s razor-sharp tongue to thank for it.
Back on offense, and taking the ball in my hands, I danced around Russ, passing the ball to Claude before he passed it back, and I did the unthinkable. With my shoulder feeling like it was on fire, I should have passed it to Tartan Gossamer, but I aimed for a three-pointer instead. By the grace of God, the ball went in. Down by one point only, things were getting desperate, and everyone in the arena could feel it. We were playing at home, so that helped, but barely. Home losses were the worst, and the fans weren’t shy about letting you know it.
An eternity later, the game was over, and we’d given the fans a reason to let us live another day. We’d won by two points, and that was better than we probably deserved. While Tartan and Claude had played like the defending champs that they were, there rest of us had weighed them down.
Leaving the celebration in the locker room, I made my way to Coach’s office, then knocked on the door, waiting for permission to enter.
“Come in,” he called out from the other side of the door.
Turning the knob, I opened the door to see Coach Justin Quincy having himself a drink. I grinned because we all knew that he did it, he just liked to pretend that we didn’t know. He preached a lot about clean living and hated looking like a hypocrite.
“What can I do you for, Knight?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
“I need to see the physical therapy team tomorrow,” I answered, ripping off the bandage. “My shoulder’s been bothering me.”
“I know,” he announced, surprising me. “I was waiting for when you’d finally say something.”
I eyed him as I took a seat across from his desk. “That’s not like you.”
“I’m turning over a new leaf,” he replied, a smirk on his face. “I’m trying to treat you boys like men that know their own minds.”
I grabbed the hem of my number fifteen jersey, then wiped my face with it. I hadn’t hit the showers yet, and I really needed to. “Thanks, I think.”
