Page 19 of Ready to Score

“That’s how this is going to be, then?” Lim asked.

Jade shrugged. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

She stood up and rolled her shoulders a bit, making a big show of straightening her clothes before she bent at the waist to get close to Lim again. “Just say when if you’ve had enough.”

Lim’s nostrils flared, her cheeks flushing a pale red as she tried to hold herself back. She didn’t utter a single word, just silently turned her head back to the table and picked up her dauber as if nothing had happened.

Jade took it as a capitalWwin.

7

Jeremy Bell brought some type of seafood dip to poker night. Jade was mildly allergic to shellfish, and while the stuff wasn’t deadly to her, she was more concerned with having to bow out of the game because of her swelling eye sockets than she was about the fact that she didn’t have an EpiPen on her. She’d politely asked the man to set the dip on a little coffee table farther away from the one they played cards at. But it was a hot summer night, and even with the air conditioner on, it was still so warm that the smell from the dip felt oppressive.

Lim was seated across from her in a loose-fitting, cropped button-down shirt. Her clavicle was exposed, as were the multiple small tattoos that covered both her arms. Jade was studying her fiercely, trying to figure out what her tell was. They’d been at the table for about an hour, and so far the only thing she could spot was that Lim seemed to rub her thumb over the tiny cat tattoo near her elbow every time she was about to fold. The observation was newly gained, though, and Jade needed a few more examples of it before she felt confident enough to officially declare it a tell.

Next to her, the head track-and-field coach, Mr. Byrd, cleared his throat and pulled a bit at the collar of his linen shirt. “I was at aroadside barbecue joint over in Beaufort the other day with the wife and ran into Joe Spencer.”

Joe Spencer was something of a legend in the surrounding counties. A Greenbelt native whose parents moved him to Beaufort in high school with hopes of better chances getting scouted for college ball. They’d succeeded, and he’d gone on to play for the Gamecocks, becoming the second Heisman winner in South Carolina’s history after George Rogers. A head injury during a game had resulted in a lifelong disability and stopped his chances of going pro, but it hadn’t done anything to kill his love of football. The man had spent the last twenty years coaching at one of Beaufort’s best schools while also appearing in plenty of local commercials. Jade had never met him formally, but from the way folks talked about him, she felt like she knew him personally.

“Oh yeah?” Coach Landry said, his teeth around a thick cigar. “What did the ol’ boy say?”

“Not much, but he told me about a little rumor he heard coming out of Beaufort…”

Jade had to suck down air to keep from gasping. Immediately, her head turned toward her head coach, prepared for his little secret to be spilled all over the table like poker chips. Across from her, Lim cut her eyes to Landry. He had expressed multiple times that he didn’t want anybody outside the team knowing about his impending retirement yet. She didn’t know exactly what kind of scheming he was trying to do on the low, but Jade sure as hell wasn’t about to question or needlessly step out of line—especially not now. As far as she knew, the only ones who didn’t havecoachin their official title who knew were Principal Coleman and goddamn Francesca Lim.

“A rumor about what?” Bell asked what they were thinking with all the enthusiasm of someone completely clueless.

Byrd shuffled two cards in the middle of his hand, and even with her brain on high alert, Jade made note of the movement. The man was clearly nervous, and it wasn’t because of the gossip. “There’s a school up in Hampton—don’t think they’ve ever won a single state title as long as I’ve been around—well, they’ve got this kid who’s apparently just running through ’em. Spencer went up there and saw him play, said he’s a fucking monster, and the entire team’s really shaping up because of it.”

It wasn’t good news. Bigger, badder competition never was. But it wasn’t the news she’d expected to hear. She watched as Landry released a long breath, same as she did. It seemed like neither of them were ready to open that can of worms, though Jade figured her reasons were different from his.

“I’m not too worried about that,” Landry said, his eyes back on his own hand. “One person doesn’t make a team, no matter how good he is.”

Byrd shrugged, small beads of sweat dotting his temples. Jade figured he either had a hand that was about to take all their money or one that was about to make him lose all of his.

She eyed her own again. Her cards were all right, a pair of aces. It wasn’t the best luck she could have gotten, but it had the potential to win her something. She held the cards close to her chest, her eyes darting back to Lim as the excitement over Byrd’s little purposeful distraction died down.

The other woman’s face was as close to stoic as she could get it. Plump lips in a straight line. Even her posture was relaxed. She looked completely unassuming, inoffensive, and it only served to make Jade more and more annoyed as the seconds passed. She found herself unable to draw her eyes away in time, suddenly flushed with a little panic when Lim’s gaze met hers.

Jade had been riding a real high from her little bingo night antics. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes before going to bed at night, she pictured the embarrassment and fury on Lim’s face before she fell asleep. A win like that should have given her unshakable confidence, but Jade knew that there was more to be done. It was going to take more than one stumble to bring Lim down.

Lim smirked when she caught her staring. The same one she’d given her days before during their little spat on the field. It was infuriating, and it made an awful feeling settle in the bottom of her belly. Something fluttered there, flying around, then crashing against the size of her. It was so intense it made her queasy.

Then, to make it worse, Lim winked at her. The action was so smooth, Jade almost didn’t believe it had happened. Suddenly, she felt nothing but the urge to jump across the table and…

She shook her head, trying to clear it of the only image that seemed to settle in her mind. For some reason, it wasn’t a snapshot of her tackling Lim out of her chair and onto the floor. It wasn’t her scratching the other woman’s eyes out either. No, it wasn’t anything violent or hateful that popped up. Instead, it was an image of her climbing across the flimsy old poker table and pressing her mouth against Lim’s until that fucking smirk was nothing but a whisper in the wind.

Jade swallowed and bit down on her bottom lip, trying to force her body to forget the fucking motion picture playing in her head of her making out with the woman across from her.

Next to her, she heard a throat clear. Her head snapped up to see multiple pairs of eyes on her.

“You all right, Dunn?” Landry asked, one of his bushy blond eyebrows raised.

Jade squared her shoulders until her posture was nearly perfect, then glued her eyes back to her hand, where she planned to firmlykeep them the rest of the night. It was one thing to be caught staring at someone—that you could blame on spacing out or something. It was another thing altogether to be caught staring multiple times.

“Just lost my train of thought there for a second,” she assured the table with a short, nervous laugh.

Jeremy Bell nodded in understanding, but Landry didn’t seem to buy it. She didn’t dare peek across the table at Lim, but she could only imagine that infuriating mouth had curved into an even more infuriating smirk. Her fingers curled around her cards, bending the card stock.

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