Reaction (13 page)

I hugged her back and walked away, thinking that my head wouldn’t fit inside the approaching door if I believed every compliment that came from her. But I supposed that was what good friends were for. I finished my grin just before entering the building.

As I walked past the basketball courts I quickened my strides, telling myself that if I didn’t look straight ahead, I would be punished with sprints later that night.

To my grief and elation, I heard a conversation in the court I was passing. “I got to split, man,” some fellow said. “See ya, Richards.”

“Yup,” Nick replied. My face turned automatically and watched him pull up with a languid fade-away shot that most likely drained right through the basket; but I couldn’t be sure since my eyes chose him instead of the ball.

I wondered why in the unfair world he had to be so darn tall and broad shouldered. Really, was there a physique any more textbook? And his movements were smooth and relaxed, with a confidence behind them that would intimidate the best of opponents; or, at the very least, make them envious.

Without deciding to, I leaned against a bleacher seat, keeping distant enough to go unseen but near enough to see. To stand in silence and watch him shoot three pointers for hours would have been enough. But something about the purpose behind his movements enticed me to draw closer.

As I quietly moved through the narrow line of seats—absently counting his shots in my head—I thought about how once upon a time, a few years ago, I was able to get under his skin just enough to make him lose that stellar focus of his.
Nine
, I continued counting, absently moving closer. He was definitely on a roll. Privately, I wondered if he’d continue his streak if he was aware of his audience.

SWOOSH.

“Ten for ten,” the words dumped out of my mouth in a quick plop of surprise. Just as I was about to dive under the bleacher seats, I caught the slightest pause in his step and froze.

But rather than turn to face me, he reset and pulled up to shoot.

SWOOSH.

I remained still as I watched him rebound his shot. Louder this time, and with an air of challenge in my voice, I hollered, “Eleven for eleven.”

He finally acknowledged my presence before letting shot number twelve ride. “You doing that on purpose?” he said toward the rim.

SWOOSH.

My nerves were gone, lost in the fact that my pride was done with his shooting streak. I made my way to the court and, while walking toward him, suggested, “How about getting beat in a friendly game of Pig.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Because you don’t want to get worked?”

As easy as he glanced my way and gave me a once over, he turned back to the rim. “That cute little smile of yours might work on others guys—”

A reference to the scene in my apartment?

But when he finished with, “Save it for someone else,” the personal scratch stung a little.

Pasting the same ‘cute little smile’ on my face and determined to keep it there just to annoy him, I countered with four words that sounded even sillier going out of my mouth than they did coming in my head. “I don’t like you.”

How his simple chuckle could put me right in my place….

To top it off, he had the gall to say, “I feel exactly the same about you.”

“Oh really,” I pressed back, keeping it light. “And what have I done to you?”

With that perpetual, careless grin he answered, “For starters, you’re a distraction.”

“Come on, Richards, you of all people can handle a little distraction.”

He looked directly at me for the first time. “You’re not a little one,
Robbins
.”

In the expanse of an unknowing pause, he dangerously added another string to the flaxen chord that bound us. It was subtle; just a look. But I knew the look immediately: a feisty, primal look, the same one he used to give way back when, just before his mouth captured mine. The little glance, with that dark and delicious craving in his eyes, was a call to action; a direct, naked taunt.
Stay,
he dared
, and suffer the consequences
. Interesting, for such a closed person, how easily I read his thoughts. I felt a surge of pleasure spread through me, so full it was almost indecent.

“And besides,” he left the moment with a turn toward the basket and another shot attempt, “you can’t shoot from the left if your life depended on it.”

As I struggled to regain composure, out came the counter, “I think you’re scared.”

He dribbled, taking my words and working them around a bit as he did the basketball. Then he pulled up for a shot, and missed. The ball was rebounded and rolled my way, bouncing low toward my knees. “I’m more afraid of plucking corn.”

Both of us were grinning now, not the happy-go-lucky kind of grin but the “You think you can handle me?” kind. I was glad to know the three-year separation had not affected our being so in sync with each other.

With lingering anxious energy, I picked up the ball and rolled it around my hands a few times. Then I dribbled a little, my lips automatically curving to mirror his. “So, I guess we’re enemies now?” I asked casually, warming up with a few determined shots, from the right side.

He rebounded the ball and passed it back to me. “I’m pretty sure we’ll never be friends.”

A reactive little notch line appeared between my eyebrows.

It wasn’t so much what he said, because frankly he was right. There were only two options for us: together or apart. It’s how he said it that bothered me. Blunt and unemotional, as if he were talking to a stranger at the grocery store. Didn’t he realize it was well and fine for me to act that way, but not the reverse?

He would need to be beaten in this friendly game of Pig, and beaten badly.

“Should we see how you do from the left?” he asked after five minutes and a “P” and “I” already earned by me.

“Why not?” I answered, still working his concentration and doing whatever I could to get under his skin. “Because I thoroughly enjoy watching your tongue hang out like a panting dog every time you shoot. Now I have a better angle.”

Maintaining the barrier of his smile, he went on, “Are you flirting with me?” He pulled up, his lips open and his tongue out a bit further than normal, and nailed the shot from the left. “You’re a dirty little player, aren’t you?”

I wondered if anybody had ever swooned solely from a stupid, absurdly sexy tongue wag.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I barked back, running down his rebound, wanting instead to hightail it out of there, or play dead, or somehow remove myself from the heated effect he was having on me. I knew this was a bad idea.

To dribble the ball to his chosen distance and then line up left of the key, I had to call up all my athletic skills. And still, I was off balance. Unsurprisingly, when I went to shoot, my arch wasn’t high enough and instead of the shot going in like his did, it bounced off the front of the rim.

G.

“Was that three already?” he asked innocently. “I believe that’s ballgame. Or is it Pig-
let
now?”

“It’s always Piglet, you know that.” I didn’t move from the shot spot. “Let me see the ball.” He tossed it to me, amused. It wasn’t good on my temper for my second shot from the exact same spot to miss in a similar fashion, bouncing off the front of the rim.

“You need to use your legs,” he said. Wrong time for a shooting lesson.

“And what kind of wimp goes for a girl’s weak spot to win a game of PIG?” I snapped back.

With my arms outstretched and my hands beckoning, I called for the ball a third time. And then a fourth. Because I
would
make this shot!

He grinned, bounce-passing the ball to me once again. By the time my fifth shot hit the backboard, missing the rim entirely and then rolling back toward me, I was livid.

I could see it in his eyes, the satisfaction he got from riling me. And he wasn’t finished. “For a girls who’s athletic, you sure—”

The ball went flying toward him. He was close enough to catch it and my hand simultaneously as he let out a small bout of laughter. I grabbed at the ball for another strike, preferably at his face this time, while he caught my waist with his other hand.

“Easy, heater,” he chuckled, wrestling me into him.

And why did the jerk have to use those cute little nicknames on me?

“You wanna see my heat?” I growled back as I grappled with him, trying to strip the ball.

“I’ve seen your heat,” he said through another laugh, “and it’s not that impress. . . What is that?”

The change in his tone slowed my fight, and I suddenly realized with a drainage of blood from my face that my hair wasn’t covering my scar. Quickly, I pushed away, almost falling to my knees in the process, and pulled my hair down. “It’s nothing.”

His eyebrows drew in. I hadn’t seen an earnest expression on him in such a long time, and it took me off guard. “Come here,” he said, grabbing too fast for my hand to dodge his, and then urging me close again.

The fear and panic in my eyes must’ve made him pause.

“There you are,” a female voice lilted through the gym. Our heads turned in unison.

Paige.

“I’m done with my test,” she spoke in a questioning voice.

Speechless didn’t begin to describe it, though that certainly was one of my several reactions. Along with a shot of fire that went zipping through my veins, like hot concrete on my bare feet. I backed out of her fiancés arms.

“Am I interrupting?” Her innocent eyes went straight to Nick.

“Heather Robbins, Paige Westwood, you remember each other?” Nick spoke to both of us and I nodded as if I expected to see her there.

In some distant part of my brain I knew exactly what to say, how to fix this. But I didn’t want to. And really, it wouldn’t fix anything about this mess.

“I’ll grab my stuff,” he finished, walking toward the locker room with his ball dangling from his hip, leaving both of us in a loud silence.

Silence, until a short laugh from his direction barely made it to my ears.

Was that him? Seriously? Did he really just laugh? I almost turned around and yelled at him from across the court. There was nothing remotely funny about what just happened. Nothing. Worst of all, he left me all alone with
her
. Did he think I was some goddess of self-possession? A real superhero or something? Like I could handle all of this in stride? That I’d rise to the occasion and be the bigger person? Was this some sort of test? Why was he constantly testing me? First the banquet, and now this. And what, the one with the most superpowers wins?

Haha, yeah, really funny.

I shifted my eyes around the gym. “Alright, then,” I said under my breath, turning to leave. After all, what did we have to say to each other?

Sadly, she had the answer to that question.

“Who do you think you are?” She moved toward me, her high heels tap-tapping on the gym floor.

Strange how a place where I’d felt more alive than I had in the last three years suddenly became enemy territory. After the high of him, the low of her took the fight right out of me. I wanted nothing more than to just go home.

“Stay away from him,” she ordered.

“What?”

“I said, stay away from him.”

“Yeah, whatever.” And I turned to leave.

“He told me all about you and your little stories. How you lied to him about your mom dying and your dad being in jail. For your information, he thinks you’re a joke. People don’t like being around people they don’t trust.”

Her words slowed my retreat, but continued to hit the back of my head. “You’re even more of a joke than I thought if you think he would choose you over me. What do you have to offer him that I can’t? As I see it, you have nothing and I have everything.”

I turned and watched her freshly painted nail tap against her chin. She was right about one thing. She not only had all she wanted, she had what
I
wanted. But did she really just call me a joke?

“And besides, you left him,” she continued to speak
at
me. “And if you haven’t noticed, he’s engaged now. To
me
.”

My eyes couldn’t help but fall to her nose; it was doing strange things. With each breath, her nostrils flared in and out, and it took all my willpower to not break out in laughter.

“Funny,” I spoke for the first time, matter-of-factly, the anger behind my words lost in the pointlessness of the discussion. “I think it was Nick who once told me that unless someone’s married, they’re fair game.”

“Is that what this is to you? A game?”

A game?
I wanted to say.
A game? Being so wildly and permanently in love that it hurts? No. Definitely not a game.
But the only part that made it out was, “No.”

“Don’t you get it? He’s happy being with me. He asked
me
to marry him, not you. What don’t you understand about that? He’s not available. Go find someone else to flirt with, and leave us alone.”