Page 71 of The Longest Shot
The words hang between us, loaded with promise, threat, memory of his hands on my hips, his mouth on mine, and the sound he makes when he comes that I definitely haven’t been thinking about during every practice, meeting, and quiet moment. A sound I'd only heard a few times, years ago, but never forgotten.
“I should get back to my team,” I say, not moving.
“Be with your team. Be human,” he says softly. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
The words follow me as Mills drags me toward what will definitely be a beer pong massacre. But the terrifying thing—the wonderful, awful, inevitable thing—is that I’m starting to think I already am. That maybe I’ve been ready since that first day he walked back into my life.
The realization should send me running and trigger every defensive mechanism. Instead, I let Mills hand me another shot—pink this time—and let myself exist in this moment where I’mnot the Morgue, not the captain, not the girl who built a fortress around her heart and her emotions.
Here, I'm just Morgan.
And across the bar, James watches, patient as gravity, certain as sunrise.
twenty-six
ROOK
The paper isdue in seven hours.
That's my overriding thought, even though my brain feels like cotton candy in a rainstorm, dissolving into nothing the second I try to think about anything else. The words on my computer screen might as well be in Mandarin, something about social stratification that reads like I had a stroke mid-sentence.
"I can't do it," I say, looking up to Morgan as the admission cracks out before I can stop it. "It's word soup, and my brain isn't working."
"Your brain works fine." Her voice could cut glass. "You're catastrophizing because you're exhausted."
She leans across the narrow gap between us—eighteen inches of real estate buried under color-coded chaos and empty coffee cups. And, suddenly, the study room that has been our second home for the last few weeks shrinks, and I can smell her shampoo.
"Look at me." Her voice is a command. "Tell me about social stratification, using hockey as an example."
Our faces are inches apart. This close, I catalog details I've been pretending not to notice for six weeks—the purple shadows under her eyes, the way she's destroyed her bottom lipfrom chewing it, and that tiny concentration line between her eyebrows that I want to smooth with my thumb.
She's been here for hours, refusing to let me quit even when I threatened to set my laptop on fire just to watch something make sense. Her gray eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that has nothing to do with sociology. But what really drives me is the knowledge that she's choosing to help, not obligated.
Our deal was help with study in return for hockey supplies.
And she's delivered ten times what I have.
"It's…" Words stumble while my brain short-circuits from her proximity. "When your defensive structure collapses because one guy abandons his assignment. When he thinks he's above the system and tries to make the hero play, ultimately costing the team."
Something shifts in her expression—recognition—so I keep babbling.
"But here's the thing, he doesn't actually change anything. The hierarchy stays intact. He just creates chaos while the power structure remains exactly—"Click."Holy shit. That's Bourdieu's whole point about cultural capital. Individual rebellion without systemic change just reinforces?—"
"Yes!" She nods, and gives a long exhale of pure victory and exhaustion. A real smile breaks across her face—not her captain smile, not her tutor smile, but something raw and unguarded that nobody, let alone me, usually gets to see. "Write that down."
We stay frozen.
She hasn't pulled back. Neither have I.
The academic breakthrough mingles with something that's been building in this cramped space for weeks. Every late night. Every accidental touch. Every time she leans over to fix my citations, I memorize the rhythm of her breathing like there's going to be a test.
The air between us thickens. Her pupils dilate, and a stray strand of hair clings to her cheek now. Her exhaustion makes her look younger, softer. Not the ice queen who treats emotion like it's contagious, but the woman who believes in me when I don't believe in myself.
The realization hits with perfect clarity: I'm done pretending this is business.
Done pretending that every moment with her isn't the highlight of my entire week. Done acting like I don't replay that stairwell kiss every night before I fall asleep. Done punishing myself for where I went wrong last time and swearing I won't make the same mistake twice.
We've been lying to ourselves for weeks, pretending the air doesn't combust when we're alone, that the stairwell kiss didn't rewire my entire nervous system, and that she doesn't feel it too. But she does. It's there in her shallow breathing, and in how she's frozen but hasn't retreated.
