Chapter 32 #2
Guilty.
I needed you thinking about me every hour I’m gone.
Needed you feeling the same restless heat I am.
Then, out of nowhere, his next message hits like a spark straight to my bloodstream—hotter, bolder, catching me completely off guard.
Tristan:
Watched your film clips. That serve… God, Stells.
You looked so damn sexy out there. I can’t stop imagining backing you against the door the second I walk in and finally taking what we both want.
Slowly. Thoroughly. Until you’re shaking in my arms and whispering my name like you can’t remember anything else.
My breath catches hard. Heat floods my face and lower, sudden and sharp. I have to set the phone down for a second, thighs pressing together under the library desk, the ache between them blooming so fast it steals my air.
Me:
That text is dangerous Vale. But since we’re being honest… I’ve been lying in bed thinking about your hands sliding under my shirt. About your mouth on my neck, slow and hot, about how I’m not going to let you stop this time.
Tristan:
Jesus. You’re trying to kill me from three states away.
The messages keep coming, a delicious push and pull—mostly longing, wrapped in heat, but every so often one of his texts blindsides me all over again.
Tristan:
I’m in this empty hotel room and all I can picture is you. The way your body would arch under me. The way your skin would feel under my hands as I learn every curve I’ve been dying to touch. I’m aching so badly for you right now it hurts, baby.
Another surprise punch of heat. My cheeks flame. I bite my lip so hard it stings.
Me: I’m the one aching—wet and restless—because you keep doing this to me.
Tristan: Good. Save that ache for me baby.
When I get home I’m going to kiss you the way I should have in the gym—long, deep, and like I never plan to stop.
Then I’m going to spend the rest of the night showing you exactly how much I’ve been dying to touch every inch of you… until you’re trembling and mine.
I stare at the screen, pulse thundering between my legs, breath shallow, the ache so deep and sweet it almost hurts. My fingers tremble as I type one last reply.
Me: Hurry back, Vale. Because I don’t think I can wait three whole days without losing my mind.
Tristan: I do love knowing you’re burning up for me. I’ve been burning for five years…
I lock my phone, lean back in the library chair, and close my eyes.
The problem with almost being kissed by Tristan Vale at five in the morning is that the body does not care about timing.
The body does not care that there are midterms, playoff brackets, film breakdowns, recovery drills, and a twelve-page paper due by midnight.
The body does not care that Stanford expects excellence and volleyball expects blood and I have exactly zero room in my life for a basketball player with a jaw like a weapon and a mouth that stopped one inch short of ruining me.
Now every nerve ending I possess has apparently decided to unionize around that fact.
By Friday night, I’m operating on caffeine, adrenaline, and the kind of tension that feels like it could either sharpen a girl into a blade or split her clean in half.
I’m hoping for blade.
Warm-ups are a blur of movement and noise. The gym is fuller than usual, louder too. Playoff crowds carry a different kind of energy—more desperate, more personal. Like every clap means more. Like every whistle has teeth.
I’m at the end line bouncing a ball in my palm when Lila jogs up beside me and gives me a long, suspicious look.
“You’re weird today.”
I keep my eyes on the court.
“That narrows it down.”
“No.” She lowers her voice. “Like… murdery.”
I glance at her.
She grins.
“Did you hook up with someone or kill someone? Because either way the vibe is intense.”
Heat flares under my skin.
I hate how obvious I feel.
“Nothing happened.”
That only makes her grin widen.
“Sure, Cortez.”
I let the ball drop and catch it again.
My fingers flex around the leather.
Nothing happened.
That’s the sick part.
Nothing happened, and somehow that’s worse.
Nothing happened except him stepping into the half-lit gym like a storm in an oversized black hoodie.
Nothing happened except him ending things with Isa.
Nothing happened except him pinning me with that wrecked, hungry stare and telling me it was me.
Nothing happened except his forehead almost touching mine, his thumb brushing my lip, his voice low and rough and promising everything without fully taking anything.
Nothing happened except the flirty texts that went from R to X rated in hours.
And I have been on fire ever since.
“Earth to Stella,” Lila says, waving a hand in front of my face.
I blink.
“What?”
She snorts.
“Whatever’s going on in your head, bottle it. We might need it in set four.”
I would laugh if my pulse weren’t already running too hot.
“Trust me,” I mutter. “Nobody wants what’s in my head.”
That earns me a bark of laughter as she jogs away.
I roll my shoulders once, twice, and look up toward the lower section of the stands.
Emmanuel is here again wearing dark jeans, a navy sweater, expensive watch with posture like he was born in rooms people don’t get invited into. He doesn’t blend anywhere, least of all in a college gym with folding bleachers and sticky floors and students in face paint.
My father.
Even now the word still lands strangely.
His phone is angled in his hand, and when he notices me looking, he lifts it a fraction so I can see my mother’s face on the screen. She’s emotional already, obviously. She presses her fingers to her lips and blows me a kiss through the tiny rectangle.
My chest squeezes.
Emmanuel doesn’t smile.
He just gives me one short nod.
And because my life enjoys piling one emotional crisis on top of another, Tristan’s voice slides into my head right on its heels.
Play angry while I’m gone.
My grip tightens around the ball.
Fine.
I can do that.
The first set is a knife fight.
Nothing comes easy. Their setter is everywhere. Their middle closes fast. Their outside hitter starts targeting the seam between me and Mari like she found buried treasure there.
We take the set 25–23, but it doesn’t feel like winning. It feels like barely getting a door shut before the storm forces it back open.
The second set gets uglier.
Long rallies.
Bad whistles.
One net call that has our bench half-standing and Coach looking ready to commit a felony.
By the middle of it, sweat is already sliding between my shoulder blades and my thighs burn every time I land. My serve is good, but not lethal. My kills are scoring, but not clean. I’m playing smart.
And smart isn’t enough tonight.
We drop the second set by two.
The gym gets louder.
So does my head.
I towel off near the bench while Coach paces in front of us, jaw tight, clipboard tucked under one arm like he’s afraid he’ll throw it.
“Cortez.”
I look up.
She points at me.
“You are playing not to lose.”
I bristle instantly.
“I’m scoring.”
“You’re surviving.”
The team goes quiet.
Coach leans in, not yelling, which somehow makes it hit harder.
“Not the same thing.”
She’s right.
I hate that so much I could spit.
Mari elbows my knee as the timeout winds down.
“You good?”
I look back out at the court.
At the lights.
At the net.
At the other team bouncing on their toes like they smell blood.
At Emmanuel, still watching.
And somewhere miles away, too far and much too present, Tristan in somewhere— his hoodie up, jaw set, telling me with those dark, ruined eyes that when he gets back—it’s us.
I stand.
“I’m good.”
It comes out calm.
That’s how I know it’s dangerous.
Set three starts with a serve to my zone.
I pass it clean.
Lila sets outside.
I go up.
Their block closes.
I tip over fingers for point.
Next rally, I rotate back.
I spin the ball once in my hands.
Twice.
Everything narrows.
The crowd drops away.
The noise blurs.
Even my own heartbeat settles into something colder.
I toss.
Jump.
Hit.
The serve cracks down the seam and kisses back line before anyone can get there.
Ace.
The gym erupts.
Lila is in my face instantly.
“There she is.”
I don’t smile because I’m not done.
The next few points go by in flashes.
Pass.
Set.
Jump.
Swing.
Block touch.
Reset.
Cover.
Attack again.
I stop thinking in full thoughts. My body takes over.
Every part of me feels hotter, faster, more precise.
My legs have more spring. My arm feels like it’s attached to something electric.
Every time I leave the floor, it’s like I’m carrying all that want, all that ache, all that held-back fire with me and turning it into force.
The difference is important.
By 14–10, I’ve got three kills in a row and one block that sends the ball straight down on their side hard enough to make the whole front row scream.
Lila backpedals toward me with her eyes huge.
“What happened to you?”
I wipe sweat off my upper lip with the back of my wrist.
“Nothing.”
Then I rotate out and leave her staring at me like she doesn’t believe a word.
She shouldn’t.
Because something did happen.
Something dangerous.
A boy I have loved in too many versions looked me dead in the face and finally made it clear that when he comes back, he plans to choose us in the light.
And apparently that knowledge has turned me into a menace.
We take the third set 25–18.
Not because the other team folds.
Because I stop blinking first.
The fourth is war.
They come back meaner. Smarter. Their setter starts dumping second ball. Their coach challenges two line calls and wins one. Nobody is fine.
That’s playoff sports.
Pain’s dressed like momentum.
At 11–11 I go up for a swing and get stuffed so hard the ball comes straight back into my chest.
The breath whooshes out of me on impact.
I land, stagger once, recover.
The other side cheers.
For half a second the old version of me threatens to creep in—the one who spirals, the one who starts calculating, the one who gets careful.
Then I hear it again.
Not literally.
Memory.
Play angry while I’m gone.
Something hot and immediate flares low in my chest.
Fine.
The next rally, I tool the block off the outside hand and stare straight through their middle as the point hits.
Mari grabs my shoulder when we rotate.
“You are terrifying tonight.”
“Good.”
She grins like she likes that answer.
At 19–18, Lila overpasses. I’m tight to the net, almost under it. I jump on instinct and redirect with one hand before their block is even set.
Point.
At 21–20, they target me on serve receive again and I give them a pass so clean Lila could set it in her sleep. She feeds me back row. I rise behind the ten-foot line and swing through the seam so hard the ball ricochets off their libero’s arms and into the stands.
The sound that tears out of our bench is feral.
By 23–23, I can taste copper at the back of my throat.
Every inhale burns.
Every exhale scrapes.
The gym has turned into one giant heartbeat.
I look up once between points.
Emmanuel is standing now with that same unreadable intensity.
The whistle blows.
The serve comes.
Chaos.
Our libero shanks it.
I sprint.
Lila chases it down and throws up a blind set from ten feet off the court.
I pivot, plant, jump off-balance, and hit cross-court with everything I have.
The ball clips fingertips and falls in.
24–23.
Match point.
The crowd is on its feet now.
I’m breathing through my mouth.
Sweat runs down my temple.
My ponytail is half-falling out and my knees feel like they’ve been held together by tape and rage.
Lila tosses me the ball from the service line.
“End it,” she says.
I look at her.
Then at the court.
Then at the stands.
Then somewhere inward, toward the place where fear and longing and ambition all knot together so tightly they become one thing.
I toss.
Jump.
Serve.
They get a piece of it.
Not enough.
The return comes back messy.
Mari keeps it alive.
Lila sets outside.
I approach.
Everything slows.
My feet know where to go before my brain does.
Left.
Right.
Plant.
I rise.
Their block comes with me.
Too late.
I swing high and ruthless and straight through hands.
The ball smashes the line.
Whistle.
Then the gym detonates.
For one suspended second I can’t hear anything but blood.
Then my teammates are everywhere, screaming, grabbing, colliding into me hard enough to knock me half sideways.
We won. Lila gets both hands on my face, laughing and crying at once.
“What did you take and where can I get some?”
I’m laughing too hard to answer.
Mari jumps on my back.
Coach is yelling something that might be praise and might be a threat.
The bench is losing its collective mind.
My lungs are on fire.
My legs are shaking.
My whole body feels molten.
And yet somehow, beneath all that wreckage, there is a low, dangerous satisfaction unfurling through me.
Because I know exactly what happened tonight.
I took everything I was carrying—my exams, my fear,
my mother watching through a phone, the rich Spanish stranger who is somehow my father standing in the bleachers trying, the boy I want with my whole stupid heart promising me the second he comes back he’s done running—and I turned it into power.
When I finally find the stands through the blur of bodies and noise, Emmanuel is still there.
Still clapping.
This time, though, his expression is different. He gives me one brief nod. By the time the media scrum ends and I make it into the tunnel behind the court, I am obliterated.
My jersey is damp.
My hair is wrecked.
My thighs are trembling with aftershock.
I can still feel the last swing in my shoulder.
I lean against the cool concrete wall and finally check my phone.
Missed texts.
Team messages.
One from my mother in all caps and three too many exclamation points.
And one from Tristan.
My pulse kicks so hard it almost hurts.
I open it.
I watched the livestream.
You were unreal.
That last kill? Jesus, Stells.
Miss you.
My eyes lock on those last two words.
Miss you.
Not nice game.
Not good job.
Not some careful version of support he can walk back later.
Miss you.
Warmth rolls through me, slow and deep and completely unfair after everything my body just survived.
A second bubble appears.
That was vicious.
I loved every second of it.
I laugh out loud before I can stop myself.
I type back, thumbs unsteady from adrenaline and something worse.
You picked a good night to miss me.
The typing dots appear almost immediately.
That’s becoming a serious problem for me.
I stare at the screen, sweaty and breathless and smiling like I have no sense.
Then I tuck the phone against my chest for one stupid, private second and close my eyes. Am I falling in love? or have I already been there this whole time?