Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(53)

“Nothing.” I shake my head because saying Chase’s name, saying any name that isn’t Kenan’s or mine right now, feels wrong.

He leans his elbows on the rail, so close the heat from his body reaches out to stroke my skin. I feel his eyes on my profile as tactile as a caress. Like his touch over the verse on my collarbone, soft and curious and savoring. He looks away from my face to the horizon. The Statue of Liberty. The Brooklyn Bridge. Bulky buildings hugging the river’s edge. And the pointy tip of one skyscraper that seems to pierce right through a pink cloud.

“I was saying the clouds are pink,” I go on with a smile. “Pink clouds mean happy days.”

“Huh?” he asks.

I climb down, turn my back to the view, and climb back up, propping my elbows on the rail. I’m facing him now and can see his response as he watches the sunset.

“I looked it up once,” I say. “I used to love watching the sunset from a tree in MiMi’s backyard.”

“This tree is magic, child. When you’re feeling blue, climb this tree.”

I swallow emotion. Still, after two years, it hurts that I can’t ask her advice. Can’t hop on a plane and see her when I want.

“What’d you find out about pink clouds?” he asks, tracing the shell of my ear, running a finger over the studs, leaving a trail of shivers in his wake.

“Well, they say—”

“’They’ being?”

“Scientists, I guess.” I laugh and shrug. “Whoever they are, they say when the sun sits low, sunlight passes through more air than during the day when it’s higher. More air means more molecules to make the violet and blue in the sky seem more distant. It literally chases the blues away.”

I catch his eyes when he turns from contemplating the pink clouds and contemplates me.

“So happy clouds because no more blues.” I smile, and I wonder if he can tell it’s ironically tinged with sadness. I long for that tree. Even on days when the sky tells me through pink clouds to be happy, it doesn’t feel the same as it did from my perch in MiMi’s backyard.

“Cotton candy clouds?” he asks, watching me closely.

“Yeah, they’re like cotton candy. I had to design a dress for my final project at FIT. It was cotton candy pink and absolutely perfect.”

“Did you make it for a model-sized person or a you-sized person?” he asks, chuckling low and deep.

“Oh, I made it for me. Exactly to my measurements.”

“I’d love to see it on you.”

“I’ve never worn it.”

“What are you saving it for? Why not wear it?”

“I’ll know when. It’ll be a special occasion,” I tell him, fake-defensive. “Get outta my closet.”

We laugh just as his phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and scowls at the screen, but answers. “Hey, Bridge. What’s up?”

His scowl deepens. If Bridget could see his face right now, she’d hang up. He looks pissed. Beyond pissed. Disgusted. I’d shudder if he ever looked at me that way, and she has no idea. Or maybe she’s gotten used to it.

“If you’re lying, Bridget—”

I hear her whining voice cutting into his comment. He squeezes the bridge of his nose and shakes his head. “Tell her to be ready in an hour, and I’ll come get her.”

My heart sinks. Our day is almost done, but I was hoping we could ride home together on the train and then he could take his Uber . . . excuse me, Uber Black . . . back to the Upper West Side.

“I’m sorry, Lotus,” he breathes out frustration. “I was supposed to have Simone tomorrow, but Bridget says she has some commitment and needs me to get her tonight instead. I know Bridget’s probably playing games and manipulating, but I don’t ever want Simone to feel like I choose not to have her with me. You know? I’m already playing catch-up with her.”

My heart contracts. He has no idea how much I know. I know how it feels for your mother to choose a lover over you. How it feels for her to choose not to have you with her. Not just for a night, but for years. To forfeit an entire childhood for an unworthy man.

“I get it,” I say simply, inadequately conveying my understanding. “Simone should be first. I’ll never begrudge you that.”

His eyes, usually so guarded, aren’t that way now with me. His face is as intimidating as the rest of him. Handsome, but comprised of sharp lines and blunt bones—austere. But when he looks at me, the hard lines soften and it’s like watching rock melt. I’m the sun.

I feel that power for a moment—the power to make someone as hard as Kenan look tender. That power surges, and then it converts into responsibility.

Gentleness is power under control.

And I feel the urge, despite him being so much bigger, a hundred and fifty pounds heavier, and ten times stronger—to be gentle with Kenan. To be careful with the power he vests in me every time he shows me more, tells me more.

I feel a sense of responsibility that a man like him, who has been betrayed by someone who should have been faithful, might just choose to trust again. To risk trusting with me again. We’re not so different, he and I. I was betrayed by the one who should have protected me, too. Not a wife, but a mother—by a family’s complicit silence. We’re not so different, and maybe that’s what my cotton candy clouds are trying to tell me. It’s a good day. A good day to trust again.