Page 136 of Gamebreaker

I pulled out my leather jacket instead. Black jeans. My favorite band tee, worn thin at the hem, the kind of comfortable that takes years of ignoring the washing directions on the tag to achieve. Boots with enough heel to make me feel like a person who had her life together.

I did my makeup with a professional setting in mind, which, emotionally speaking, this was. Foundation, concealer under the eyes where almost a week of poor sleep had left evidence, a bold lip because if I was going to feel terrible, I was at least going to look excellent while doing it.

I checked myself in the mirror when I was done.

Good. I looked good. I looked like a woman who had been through worse than this and come out the other side still standing, which was true, and which I needed to keep reminding myself of.

"Okay," I told my reflection. "You came out as bisexual at twenty-six and lost your entire family. You survived Henry. You survived your mother telling you who you are is a sin and abandoning you." I held eye contact with myself. "You can survive watching your ex-whatever play basketball for a few hours. One last time. And then you're done."

My reflection looked only mildly convinced.

We were working on it.

The arena was loud because arenas always are. Crowd noise and bass-heavy playlist choices, and the electric spirit of a playoff atmosphere, which even I could feel pressing against my ribs from the moment we walked in. Isla led us to our seats with confidence. I mean, she was clearly a woman who considered professional sports venues a second home. Laine was beside her, composed and gorgeous as ever. Mia was beside me, close enough that our arms touched, which I knew was intentional and which I appreciated more than I could say.

Our seats were different from that first game. Closer to half court. Still courtside. Close enough to see everything.

The Fangs were warming up.

I found Cam before I'd consciously decided to look for her, which told me everything I needed to know about where my head was at. She was running drills on the far end of the court, moving through layup lines with a fluid ease that suggested her body did this on pure instinct. Hair in her game-day high ponytail. Expression in a focused and closed-off way, which told me immediately that she was fully inside her own head.

She hadn't looked over.

I rearranged my face into something neutral and looked at the rest of the court instead. Noticed Trish. Noticed Morgan and Destiny and Alex, all of whom I'd met at Isla's house. Noticed the way the team moved around each other with complete ease because they were people who'd spent years learning to exist in the same space.

I could do this. I was an adult. I had excellent eyeliner and emotional fortitude and approximately thirty-five dollars' worth of overpriced arena snacks on the way.

Completely fine.

The thing about watching Cam play basketball when you had feelings for her that were aggressively refusing to go away… was that you couldn't stop watching.

I'd spent the first game on my phone, interested in the sport the way I was interested in tax documentation, which was to say, not at all. But somewhere between that first game and now, between Cam sending me basketball explainers via text at eleven PM and the youth clinic and weeks of watching her light up when she talked about the thing she loved most in the world, I'd actually learned to see it.

I could see the plays developing before they happened now. I could finally recognize the way Cam's eyes tracked the whole court, processing information faster than the rest of them, making decisions three moves ahead. I could see the moment she identified a gap in the defense and how she'd already committed to exploiting it before anyone else had noticed it existed.

Weeks ago, I would've described Cam's game as: she runs, she passes, she puts the ball in the basket.

Now, I watched her fake a drive left, pull up right, and hit a midrange jumper over a taller defender's outstretched hand, and I thought: She's magnificent.

Which was deeply inconvenient information to have. Especially given that I was here to say goodbye.

She was playing possessed. That was the only word I could think of at first. Every movement was fiercer than it needed to be, every pass thrown with slightly more force than necessary, every defensive play executed with an intensity that made her opponents visibly uncomfortable. I'd seen her play well before. But this was something else.

It didn't take me long to realize she wasn't actually playing possessed. She was playing hurt.

I recognized it because I'd been doing the same thing for six days. Going through the motions of my own life with a brightness that was slightly too much like someone performing functionality rather than actually having it.

We were both pretending. Just in different arenas.

Literally, said the part of my brain that never fully shut off, in your case metaphorically. In hers, like, actually in an arena.

I told that part of my brain to take a lap.

Halftime arrived. The buzzer sounded, and the Fangs jogged toward their bench, and I was in the middle of telling Mia something about the pick-and-roll play I'd just watched—because I knew what a pick-and-roll was now, which was a sentence I never thought I'd have cause to think—when I felt it.

The particular feeling of being looked at by a specific person.

I turned toward the court.