Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(109)

“Watch the clip,” Banner says. “And let me know if you need anything.”

“Bye.” I hang up and grab the link from her text.

The preview of the video already has me gritting my teeth before I’ve even pressed play. It’s the Baller Bae logo and a still of Bridget at lunch with two other cast members in the sequence.

“I tried to make it work.” Bridget shakes her head, apparent sadness and regret on her face. “I know it wasn’t right, what I did, but Kenan abandoned me in the marriage. I was so BEEP lonely, and he didn’t care about anything but ball.”

A sheet of ice forms over my anger. I want to stop the video and not listen to the two minutes and forty-one seconds remaining, but I need to hear what else she has to say. Banner wouldn’t have asked about Lotus if she wasn’t involved in this nonsense somehow.

“And now he’s dating this child.” Bridget rolls her eyes, touching the hand of one castmate who murmurs something to commiserate. “She’s like fresh out of college. Not much older than our daughter. Can you believe that?”

“Girl, that’s how they do,” says a woman I recognize as the girlfriend of some guy in the league, but I can’t remember who. “He married you right out of college. You raised his baby, kept his house, stood by him while he built his career, and now he wants some fresh snatch.”

“That’s why we gotta revaginate, honey,” the other cast member says. “Keep it tight or they stray like that.”

Stray? As in I strayed? In what alternate reality has Bridget existed where I’m the villain in our story?

“And he was so mad that I had one little indiscretion,” Bridget says. “But I heard she’s going behind his back with this photographer she was BEEP before he found her.”

I press the screen to stop the clip. I can’t hear anymore right now. My temples literally throb with suppressed rage.

“Why’d you turn it off?” Lotus asks.

I glance down at her with a frown.

“Babe, she’s—”

“A bitch,” Lotus says sharply, staring at the screen in the dim light provided by the city lights beyond the car. “But she can’t hurt us.”

She tosses the phone onto the seat beside me and holds my face between her hands. “We know the truth.” Her eyes pierce mine. “You know I would never cheat on you with Chase or anyone.”

“Of course,” I answer immediately. “I trust you completely.”

“And we know that I’m not almost your daughter’s age.” She teases me, chuckling. “Though there’s eleven years between Simone and me, too. Should I call you Daddy?”

“You’re laughing?” I ask incredulously.

“What do you want me to do? Cry? Pout? Throw a tantrum? There will be people who watch that, feel sorry for her, believe her lies. We can’t control it. All we can do is live our lives, and refuse to let it come between us.”

I dip my head to kiss her, caressing her jaw with my thumb.

“Thank you for being so cool about this circus act.” I heave a frustrated sigh. “I’m not. I hate having my privacy invaded and having lies told about us, about you. Doesn’t she even think about how hard it will be on Simone? Dragging us back into the tabloids like this?”

The thought of my daughter being set back after the small steps forward she’s taken infuriates me. Despite her progress, I know she’s still emotionally fragile, and so many transitions, so much pressure and attention? It’s bound to wear on her.

“Fuck!” I expel the word harshly and slam my hand on the console between us. “If this hurts Simone . . . God, why can’t Bridget just . . .”

“It’ll be okay. Whatever comes, we’ll deal with it.”

“This is the last thing I want to be thinking about when I only have a day with you before I have to fly back.”

“Then don’t think about it.” Lotus leans in to kiss me, slipping her hand between my legs to squeeze my dick.

“Damn, babe,” I rasp into the kiss.

“I had to distract you somehow.” She laughs against my lips.

“Distraction or not, you woke the sleeping beast. Now you have to handle it when we get upstairs.”

I ask the driver to drop us off in the private car garage in case there are any more reporters lurking. I tip him, grab our bags, and half-limp as fast as I can with this hard-on to the elevator. As soon as the doors close, Lotus strains up on her toes to kiss my jaw and suck my earlobe. I kiss her so deeply we’re both out of breath by the time the doors open for my floor.

We drop the bags and Lotus wraps her arms around my neck, and her legs around my waist. I walk back to the bedroom, my hands full of her ass. She scatters kisses over my face.

When we reach my bedroom the light is already on. Weird, since I haven’t been here in weeks. I’m mesmerized by the passion, the love in Lotus’s eyes as she slides her legs down to the floor. She turns toward the bed.

“Oh, my God!” she gasps.

I look past her, and my heart stops then sprints in my chest. Simone is on my bed, asleep. She looks so peaceful that at first it doesn’t compute. The open, empty bottle by her hand. My daughter’s preternatural stillness.

“Moni?” I rush over to the bed and shake her. “Simone, baby, wake up.”