Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tristan
I told myself watching her match would calm me down.
That was my first mistake.
My second was thinking I could sit in a generic hotel room hundreds of miles from campus with two teammates arguing over room service fries and keep my head on straight while Stella Cortez lit up a playoff court on my phone.
The stream quality was garbage. The audio kept clipping.
Somebody in the gym had a whistle that sounded like a dying bird.
Didn’t matter.
The second I saw her on screen, everything in me locked.
She looked lethal.
Hair up.
Shoulders gleaming under the lights.
Kneepads on.
Eyes hard.
There are beautiful women and there are dangerous women.
Stella has somehow always been both, and tonight the danger was winning.
I sat on the edge of the bed in sweats and a black team tee, elbows on my knees, staring at my phone like it held the code to my entire nervous system.
Maybe it did.
Kane came out of the bathroom toweling off his hair, took one look at me, then at the screen, and snorted.
“Oh, so we’re all pretending not to know what this is?”
I didn’t glance up.
“Shut up.”
He wandered farther into the room and peered over my shoulder just in time to watch Stella go up for a kill and absolutely smoke the ball through a double block.
The sound of it cracked even through the bad speaker.
Kane let out a low whistle.
“Damn.”
“Yeah.”
He looked at me.
Then back at the screen.
Then at me again.
“You are down catastrophically.”
I didn’t bother denying it.
Because denial stops being useful when your whole body reacts before your brain can invent an excuse.
Stella rotated back to serve.
Spun the ball once in her hand.
Twice.
Even through a screen, I could see it—the edge in her. The charged stillness. The way her body looked like it had found some extra voltage and didn’t know what to do with it except win.
I remembered her in that half-lit gym with my hand on the wall beside her head.
Remembered her saying she wasn’t a coward.
Remembered the tremor that went through me when she whispered she was all in.
Then she jumped and ripped an ace down the seam so clean I actually sat up straighter.
Kane barked out a laugh.
“Oh, she is terrifying.”
That pulled something dark and satisfied through me.
“Good.”
He gave me a look.
And maybe I should’ve been embarrassed by how obvious I was. By the way the whole room probably could’ve lit itself off the tension in my face alone.
Because for the first time in longer than I wanted to think about, wanting someone didn’t feel like weakness.
It felt like ignition.
On the screen, Stella rotated front row again and stuffed a hitter so hard the ball dropped straight down.
Jalen looked up from where he was massacring fries at the desk.
“That volleyball?”
I didn’t answer fast enough, so Kane did it for me.
“His girl.”
Jalen’s eyebrows went up.
I turned slowly.
“She is not—”
Then I stopped.
Because what exactly was I about to say?
Not my girl?
Not yet?
Not officially?
Not until I got back and stopped running and finally did this the way I should have done it years ago?
All of those answers sounded weak.
And worse, false.
Jalen read my face and grinned.
“Ah. So, yes.”
I looked back at the stream.
Stella rose for another swing, body arching clean and violent through the air, and put the ball away cross-court like she had a grudge against gravity itself.
Kane dropped onto the other bed.
“She plays like she’s pissed at God.”
I watched her land, jaw set, eyes blazing, teammates crashing into her.
“She plays like she means it.”
That shut both of them up for a second.
The whole rest of the match, I sat there with my forearms on my thighs and my heart beating too hard for a man who was supposed to have his own game to worry about.
Every serve she hit, I felt low in my gut.
Every jump made something in me tighten.
Every point she won felt personal.
And somewhere in the middle of the fourth set, watching her blaze through exhaustion like her body had turned into a weapon and her will had stopped being negotiable, something clicked hard and clean inside me.
All this time, I had been treating Stella like a threat. Keeping her at arms length felt safer for my game—the disciplined, locked-in version of myself I’d been trying to build out of all the worst parts of being me.
But watching her then—sweaty, ruthless, burning through a playoff match like she had fire stitched under her skin—I saw the truth.
She wasn’t pulling me off my path.
She made me want to deserve the damn thing.
That’s different.
Dangerously different.
Because distraction makes you smaller.
Stella did the opposite.
She made every part of me feel more awake.
More honest.
More hungry.
More alive.
Not scattered.
Sharpened.
When she ended it—rose for the last swing and detonated the match point through the block—I was already half off the bed before I realized I’d stood up.
The hotel room exploded around me.
Kane yelled.
Jalen slapped the desk.
Somebody in the hallway pounded on a door like they thought we’d won something ourselves.
And maybe, in a way, I had.
Not her.
Not yet.
But clarity.
I looked at the screen, at Stella grinning and gasping and shining with effort, and felt my whole chest go hot.
I texted her before the commentators finished mangling her name.
I watched the livestream.
You were unreal.
That last kill? Jesus, Stells. Miss you.
I stared at the messages for half a second, then sent another because holding back suddenly felt stupid.
I'm counting down the days until I can make you come over and over again. Save that energy for me, baby.
Kane saw my face and groaned.
“Oh, that text is filthy.”
“It’s not filthy.”
He blinked.
“Then I’m deeply concerned about what you consider filthy.”
Jalen laughed into his drink.
My phone buzzed almost immediately.
You watched?
Something warm and stupid and completely uncontrollable moved through me.
I typed back fast.
From a terrible hotel room with three teammates yelling over my shoulder. Worth it.
Kane leaned over again. “Tell her I support women’s sports.”
“Die.”
He laughed and flopped back dramatically onto the bed.
Stella’s next text came through.
You picked a good night to miss me. You can’t just say things like that… now I’m all worked up and missing you even more.
I stared at that one too long.
Because there she was.
That mouth.
That edge.
That confidence that always felt like a dare and a kiss at the same time.
I rubbed a hand over my jaw and texted the truth.
That’s becoming a serious problem for me. Also, seeing you sweaty and vicious on my screen right before bed feels personally hostile.
Kane made a scandalized sound.
“Oh, he’s gone—gone.”
“Shut up, Kane.”
But he was right.
I was gone. Not in the pathetic, all-I-do-is-think-about-her way.
Gone in the way a match catches flame the second it finds oxygen.
I almost deleted it.
Didn’t.
Because if we were done running, then we were done pretending too.
Her answer came back:
Get home first, Vale. Then we’ll talk about how fast I let you get me undressed.
That one line hit like a grin, a challenge, a promise, and foreplay all at once.
I laughed under my breath and texted:
Proud of you. Now go shower before I say something that gets us both in trouble.
Then came the final one.
The one that stayed with me all night.
Hurry back, baby.
I read it three times.
Maybe four.
Then I set the phone facedown on my knee and stared at the carpet like it had personally offended me.
Finally Kane said, “You’re smiling like a maniac.”
I hadn’t realized I was.
I dragged a hand over my mouth, but it didn’t help.
“Piss off.”
He laughed.
“Impossible. Your vibe is too loud. Don’t fuck it up with her again, Vale.”
I barely slept.
Not because I was nervous.
Because every time I closed my eyes, I saw some version of Stella.
At the service line.
At the wall in the gym.
Wearing my hoodie.
In my room...
Telling me to get back to her like she had any idea what that did to a man trying to function on four hours of sleep and pure want.
By morning, my blood felt carbonated.
The city outside the hotel windows was gray and cool. The bus ride to the arena smelled like coffee, leather seats, and guys pretending to be calmer than they were.
Coach ran through the game plan up front.
I listened.
I really did.
I also checked my phone twice for no reason.
No new text from Stella.
Which was probably good.
Necessary, even.
Because if she’d sent me one more line with that tone in it, I might’ve walked into the arena already halfway feral.
Kane slid into the seat beside me and bumped his shoulder into mine.
“You look weirdly locked in.”
“I am locked in.”
He studied me for a second.
Then, because he is the most annoying person alive, he smiled slowly.
“Right. That’s what happens when Vale gets emotionally moisturized.”
I turned my head.
“Emotionally what?”
He shrugged.
“You heard me.”
“Never say that again.”
“I’m serious. You used to act like feelings were some kind of hamstring injury. Now you look like you could put up thirty without blinking.”
I should have rolled my eyes.
I should have told him to go to hell.
He wasn’t entirely wrong.
Every ball off my fingers felt clean.
Every cut sharp.
Every defensive read half a second faster than usual.
Coach noticed before tip.
He caught me at half court while the crowd was still filling in and the band was murdering a pop song in the stands.
“You look awake,” he said.
I bounced once on my toes.
“I am.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
Not suspicious.
Interested.
“Good,” he said. “Stay mean.”
I smiled without meaning to.
“Oh, I can do that.”
From the first possession, I knew.
I was in one of those zones athletes spend whole careers chasing and only find in flashes. The rim looked wider. The floor looked simpler. Bodies moved and my brain translated before thought had to catch up.