Page 23 of Shot Taker

I click out of the picture…

And find myself confronted with the text Clay sent before the game.

Grumpy Baller: How’d James like his masterpiece?

I haven’t answered because yesterday messed with my head.

He took so much care helping me with the wall. Listening to me, following my lead. It almost felt like an apology for the past.

But way he grabbed my hand at the end felt very much like the present.

I swear I can still feel his touch.

It doesn’t change anything.

It can’t.

I need to purge these feelings, show us both I’m over whatever we were.

I drop the phone on her bed and cross to the closet, pointing at a silver shift on a hanger. “How about this one?”

“On a Tuesday?”

“Better to be overdressed than underdressed.”

Brooke’s eyes mist. “I’m so proud of you.”

* * *

“Damn. Didn’t know the Hadid sisters were making an appearance.”

Brooke and I turn to see Miles behind us at the bar, a grin on his handsome face.

Rookie and Jayden are behind him.

We do look good. She’s wearing a black tube top and matching skirt that show off her figure. I’m in Brooke’s dress that skims my curves and ends mid-thigh. Add my nude heels and my hair falling in waves to my collarbone and I feel sexier than I have in weeks.

The club is packed, though it’s barely eleven, the music pulsing through the floor.

The headliner tonight is Little Queen, one of my favorite DJs, though she hasn’t taken the stage.

“Did you win?” Brooke asks.

“I’m hurt you didn’t check.” Miles leans in, his button-down shirt pulling across his muscled form.

“Not as hurt as you would’ve been if you'd lost to Utah.”

He grins. “We won. Clay and Rookie lit ‘em up.”

Brooke raises a brow. “And you ate popcorn on the sidelines?”

Miles scoffs, surveying the club with a grin. A woman catches his eye, and he nods to her.

“Speaking of, first round’s on me. Coach benched me, but Clay covered for me,” Rookie goes on, nodding across the club.

I follow his gaze to see Clay shaking hands with a man in a suit.

Clay’s gorgeous, head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd, looking like a god in a room of mortals.

---