Hook Shot (Hoops #3)(59)

“You mean after my ex-wife destroyed it.”

“Oh, no.” Lotus shakes her head. “She doesn’t have that much power over me.”

We’re pretty quiet once inside the building, and keep our distance until we board the private elevator that leads to my apartment. When the doors close, I pull her into me.

“Hi again.” I lean down and tease her lips open, then slip in to taste her. God, so sweet. She goes up on her toes, and I grab her ass and lift her.

“Kenan,” she laughs into the kiss. “Put me down.”

“Why? I bench press more than you every day.”

“Show off,” she says, her mouth curled into a happy smile.

“I have to find some way to impress you.”

She rests her elbows on my shoulders and caresses the back of my neck. She’s suspended in the air. “You’ve impressed me from the beginning,” she says.

“Oh yeah?” I set her on her feet when the doors open for my floor, take her hand, and walk to my apartment. “Is that why you were always so eager to kick it when we saw each other the last couple of years?”

Her smile slips and then disappears. “I suspected this could happen.” She waves a hand between us. “And didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“Why?” I let us into my place and immediately bring her close. She snuggles into my shoulder like she missed me as much as I irrationally missed her. All out of proportion to how long we’ve known each other. Beyond the few kisses we’ve shared.

“Why didn’t you think it was a good idea?” I ask again.

She wraps her arms around my waist and lays her head to my chest.

“The women of my family make fools of themselves over men,” she says, her voice a confession. “They let men influence them. Ruin them. I don’t want that.”

I kiss the top of her head and draw her a few inches closer. “I don’t want to ruin you or make a fool of you. I know how that feels.”

“I know you do.” She glances up at me, her eyes as guarded as they are vulnerable. “That’s why I decided to kiss you in Brooklyn.”

“Why?”

“You have as much to lose as I do—as much of a leap to trust again.” She shrugs. “Maybe I’m kidding myself because I was tired of resisting the attraction, but that’s what I told myself before I kissed you.”

I nod, thinking this may be the one time all the crap Bridget put me through has worked to my advantage. I take Lotus’s hand and lay it against my chest, cover it, completely eclipsing hers. She’s so small, but not fragile. If I’m using one of MiMi’s Bible stories that even I know, Lotus is the pebble David slung to take down Goliath. Maybe I’m not the gladiator after all, but Goliath. Am I falling? Falling from a little pebble right between the eyes?

“Let’s eat,” I say after a few moments like that.

We walk into the dining room where the chef left the food in warmers.

“Nice place,” she says, surveying the open-plan apartment and settling into the dining room chair.

“I can’t really take credit. It came furnished. The only thing I’ve really added of my own is the ice bath.”

“Ice bath?”

“I take ice baths after every game and really hard workouts. Helps with recovery. I had one installed for while I’m here.”

I press a few buttons on the wall and music, “In A Sentimental Mood,” seeps into the room. Some of the tension I’ve carried in my shoulders ever since Lotus told me about Bridget drains away. Each note from John Coltrane’s saxophone seeks out the knots in my neck, and rolls over them with precisely the right amount of pressure.

“I actually think I recognize this one,” Lotus says, propping her chin in her hand.

“Is that so?” I serve a portion of the grilled chicken and vegetables for her plate and a larger portion for mine. I set them both on the table and nod for her to start. “Dig in.”

“Yeah. It’s from the soundtrack for Love Jones,” she says and slides a forkful of mushrooms and asparagus into her mouth.

I almost spit out my water mid-sip. “One of the greatest songs of the last century, by John Coltrane, a genius, and your context for it is a movie?”

She laughs and shrugs, teasing me with her eyes and taking another bite.

“Wait,” I say. “Are you messing with me?”

She squints one eye, and squeezes her thumb and index finger together, leaving a small space. “Maybe just a little.”

That is the pointy tip of Lotus’s sharp humor.

She shows me a lot of it over the next hour. We talk so much during dinner my food gets cold, neglected because I’m absorbed in how she thinks, the way she voices her opinions. The entire night is a stream flowing easily from one topic into the next. Our conversation drifts effortlessly from movies to music to politics. We don’t align on every point, but hearing how she arrives at her opinions is as satisfying as sharing them. Coltrane yields to Chet Baker and his Funny Valentine. By the time we make our way to the couch, Miles Davis takes center stage, and we fall quiet, me sitting in the corner of the couch and her snuggled against me, knees tucked beneath her.

“It’s this one,” I tell her when “It Never Entered My Mind” begins.