Block Shot (Hoops #2)(60)

A weary sigh forces its way past my lips. I’ve been here an hour already and haven’t found my baller yet. There’s no telling how much trouble he’s gotten into since Tanya texted me.

“Hakeem Okafor.” I look up and see recognition and realization on his face. “Yeah, the one who was suspended for weed twice this season. He’s here and it’s a lot worse than weed. Tanya saw him over a line of coke. He hadn’t done anything then, but I need to intervene before it gets out. One post to Instagram, one tweet, one peep about this, and he could be out of the league for good.”

“A line of coke.” A muscle knots under the sculpted line of Jared’s jaw. “Let me get this straight. You’re at what is essentially an orgy to ‘rescue’ a seven-foot man who’s probably high on cocaine, from himself? Have I missed anything? Some detail that would make this a good idea?”

My concern gives way to anger.

“I told you why I’m here.”

“And I’m telling you it’s not wise.” He places his hand at the small of my back and urges me toward the stairs. “Where are you parked?”

I dig in the heels of my Stuart Weitzmans and whip around, shoving him back.

“I need to find Hakeem first, Jared.”

“You’re his agent, not his mother, Banner,” he returns with heat.

“Right. I’m not his mother,” I snap, slicing one hand through the air for emphasis. “His mother fled a war-torn country with four children and nothing but the clothes on her back. His mother worked three jobs to support them by herself in a new place where she knew no one and had to restart their life from scratch.”

“Ban—”

“His mother is the one I looked dead in the face and promised if she sent her son to the NBA, I would do everything in my power to help him. To protect him.” I swallow an anxious lump, recalling that conversation at her tiny kitchen table on the south side of Chicago. “She’s the one who, for the first time in her life, isn’t worried about how her kids will eat or how they’ll go to college. How her family will make it, and that’s because her son is making eight figures playing basketball.”

I push past him and start toward the set of stairs that takes me to the next floor.

“I need to find him so he can keep playing basketball and I can keep my promise to her.”

“Killer with a heart,” he says softly behind me.

I freeze, one foot on the next stair, and look at him over my shoulder. The years fall away, and I’m not the high-powered agent wearing six-hundred-dollar shoes, and he’s not the ruthless man with a fleet of well-tailored suits and the fastest growing agency around. We’re just two barely-adults dreaming about our futures and wondering who we will ultimately become. I’m happy with the path I chose, and I know he’s happy with the road he’s taken. Our paths diverged, but for whatever reason, lately we keep coming back to this.

“Are you gonna help me or what?” I ask, offering a wry grudging smile.

He rolls his eyes and steps around me to lead the way up the next flight of stairs.

“Ten minutes,” he says sternly. “We look for ten minutes and then you’re leaving with or without him.”

So he thinks. If I haven’t found Hakeem in ten minutes, we’ll renegotiate.

But we do. On the next floor in a room with a few guys, and thankfully, no phones out taking pictures or recording it. And yes, with cocaine everywhere.

“Please let me handle this,” I ask Jared in the hall outside the room. “You helped me, and I appreciate it, but this is my guy. You’ll be right here if I need you.”

For a second he looks like he’ll protest, but he finally nods and leans against the wall.

“If you’re not out in five minutes . . .”

He leaves a trail of unspoken consequences in the wake of that sentence. I nod my agreement and head in, closing the door behind me.

“What the hell are you doing, Hakeem?” I ask with no preamble.

He glances up, his eyes droopy and dazed from the drugs.

“Huh?” He blinks a few times like I’m a hallucination. “Banner?”

“Yes, Banner.” I stand over him, pointing to the drugs and bottles of liquor on the table. “You already had two suspensions for weed. What do you think they’ll do to you for this shit?”

“Nobody would tell—”

“Somebody did,” I cut in, slit-eyed and furious. “And they called me.”

“It’s a private party.” Dismay and panic clear some of his haze.

“Nothing is private. I told you that day one. Maybe once your little coke party pops up on Instagram you’ll believe me.”

He glances around the room, probably seeing the faces around him with new eyes. Some he knows and some he doesn’t. I pray he’s realizing how foolhardy it is to do drugs at all, much less with guys he doesn’t know and can’t be sure he can trust.

I step closer and bend to speak so low only he will hear me.

“Think of Adeago,” I whisper his sister’s name to him. “She wants to go to Northwestern, right? She doesn’t have a scholarship. She’s depending on you, Hakeem. So are Kambili and Ekeema.”

I pull back and touch his shoulder. “So is your mother. You know this.”