Block Shot (Hoops #2)(113)

“Excuse me?” I ask.

“I said so you’ve always wanted Banner?” His face may be neutral, but his eyes proclaim anger.

I prefer gloves off anyway, so I won’t bother lying to him. He wants this conversation, we can have it. It’s overdue.

“Since the first time I saw her I wanted her, yeah.”

“And you’re one of those men who just takes what he wants, huh? Even if she belongs to someone else?”

“Banner’s never belonged to anyone else.” I try to soften the declaration into an apology, but I want to be clear where I stand and what I believe. “Not really.”

In case he’s confused.

“I would beg to differ,” he says stiffly. “Since she is my girlfriend.”

WAS!

I want to stand over him and shout the past tense.

I want to tell him I had her first and I’ve had her since, and he was just the dash between. An ellipsis that should never have happened.

While we stare at one another, I don’t think of his illness, or his mortality, or how pissed off Banner will be if I upset him. I only see a threat, an obstacle between me and what I want most.

“I know it was you, the one she betrayed me with.“ Even shrunken there is command in his voice, in the look he gives me. “You can’t have her.”

“I already have her,” I answer simply, not even bothering to deny my role in their break up.

Rage sparks in his tired eyes. “Fucking her once doesn’t make her yours.”

Once?

What about a dozen times? A dozen ways?

On every surface? In every corner?

Eating her pussy until she weeps?

What will it take, Zo, for you to accept that she’s mine? Just tell me. I’ve probably already done it.

Would you like to taste her on my fingers right now?

I want to say it all, but remain silent. It feels wrong sitting here discussing her with him. I don’t want to be in his house, and I don’t want Banner here either. At least one of us can go.

“Tell Banner I had to leave.” I stand and head for the door. “I don’t think it’s the right time for this conversation.”

“When should we have it?” he asks. “After I’m dead? Is that what you’re hoping for? Biding your time, are you?”

I study his sunken eyes and his diminished frame. It sparks a memory, an unwanted one that I don’t often revisit. My mother in bed, choosing to die at home with “her boys.” With my father and me. I see her dragging herself to sit up against the pillows and checking my homework with her bird-like fingers and her scarf-wrapped head and her bloodless lips. That damn helplessness I always feel overtakes me for a nanosecond. Helpless then because I couldn’t stop what was happening, and helpless now because nothing I do will ever be enough to bring her back. And I wonder if Zo feels helpless. He said he’s in the fight of his life, and I see it. That battle-weary look, fighting off death itself, that’s how my mother looked.

“No. I hope you beat this thing,” I finally answer him, shrugging casually, my throat burning. He wouldn’t appreciate my pity, so I say what I would want to hear. “We should make it . . . what did you call it? A fair fight?”

He laughs, a deep, vibrant sound that seems too big for his emaciated body.

“It drives you mad that I convinced her not to be with you, doesn’t it? That she chose me over you. You’re worried she’ll choose me when it comes down to it, and you’re right to worry because she will.”

It comes rushing back, my resentment and anger. I grab it with eager hands, badly needing to feel something other than the old grief gripping my heart.

“I never would have pegged you as a man to exploit your sickness that way.”

He sobers, his eyes going dull again.

“You think you are the only one who will do anything to keep her?”

He stands slowly, as if each inch off the couch pains him. I stop myself from reaching down to help. The proud set of his bony shoulders tells me his rival’s assistance wouldn’t be appreciated. I can’t blame him. He follows me to the door and will probably be as glad to close it behind me as I will be to leave. I draw in a lungful of fresh air as soon as I’m on the porch.

“I would say may the best man win,” I say with him standing in the door, waiting to shut me out. “But we both know you’re a better man than I am, and I have no intention of losing her.”

“Neither did I. Things change quickly. You should remember that.” He glances back into the townhouse before looking back to me. “It would distress Banner to know I figured out it was you. What do you say we keep this between us?”

“How did you know?” I’m not making any promises about harboring a secret with him.

A wry grin quirks his mouth. “You came to the house that night with some trumped up excuse about a meeting.”

I frown, reviewing my actions. Every word I can remember from that visit and don’t recall anything that would have given away my feelings. Or my intentions.

“It was the way you looked at her,” he answers my unspoken question.

“How did I look at her?”

He slips the mask back over his face to keep the germs at bay, his answer is muffled but to me crystal clear.

“You looked at her the way I do.”