Chapter 13
Jalen
For a while I just sat there with my engine still running and music still playing low through the speakers.
I kept watching the glass doors of her building like she might suddenly change her mind and walk back out onto the concrete curb.
But she didn’t.
The elevator lights behind the mirrored glass flickered once as the car ascended, then disappeared into the upper floors.
And that was it.
I leaned back in the seat, running a heavy hand over my jaw, feeling the scratch of stubble against my palm.
What the hell just happened?
The night had started off perfect.
Better than perfect, actually.
Winning always felt good.
There was no high quite like the adrenaline rush of a hard-fought four quarters.
The stadium energy.
The locker room celebration.
The way the whole city seemed to light up when we pulled out a massive win like that.
It was the exact reason I put my body through the ringer every week.
But tonight had felt different.
It hadn't just been about the stat line or the division standings.
It had been because of her.
Mars had been absolutely electric in the stands.
I saw her before kickoff when I ran out of the tunnel, the heat of the stadium lights beating down on my shoulder pads.
Everyone else in the arena had blurred into a mindless sea of random jerseys and overwhelming noise, but she stood out with terrifying clarity.
Laughing with Nia.
Leaning over the concrete railing.
Locked in on me.
And I liked that.
I liked the weight of her eyes on me on game day.
I liked the unscripted press of her lips against mine at the barrier, and the way her hand felt perfectly slotted into my palm when we walked out to the parking lot.
I liked it a hell of a lot more than I probably should have.
I looked back up at the towering high-rise, my thumb hovering over her contact name on my dashboard screen.
The corporate, untouchable walls she had put up outside the club were a complete contrast to the girl who had been dancing with me just an hour ago.
Something had shifted in that lounge, a silent play call I hadn't been privy to, and as I finally shifted the car into drive and pulled away from the curb, a stubborn knot of frustration tightened in my chest.
She could try to retreat behind her business logic and pretend this weekend was just a tactical PR maneuver.But I wasn't about to let the play end like thisI pulled away from the curb eventually, the quiet, shadow-draped streets feeling a lot different than the ones we had driven through earlier.
The silence inside the car was deafening now, a sharp contrast to how it felt when she’d been sitting next to me, smiling, talking about the game, and teasing me while the top was down.
The way she had looked at me when she said she felt the energy in the stadium... that specific moment had stuck with me all night.
Most people talked about the stats or the headlines.
They wanted to discuss the touchdown passes or what the sports analysts would say on Monday morning.
But Mars didn't care about any of that.
She talked about the actual feeling, about how it felt to be entirely in the moment.
She had explained how she could feel the pressure down on the field, describing how it felt heavier and more suffocating than anything she'd experienced at a basketball game.
She was paying attention to the details.
She was paying attention to me.
I honestly thought the night would just keep going like that.
I thought we were finally breaking through.
But somewhere between the dance floor and the ride home, something shifted.
One minute she was laughing with Nia, moving with the music like she didn’t have a single care in the world, looking vibrant and entirely alive under the club lights.
The next minute, she was completely quiet and distant.
Like someone had flipped a switch and locked her right back inside her own head.
I asked her twice what was wrong.
Both times she gave me that smooth, practiced "nothing" and stared straight out of the passenger window, watching the city lights blur past.
And Mars didn’t strike me as the kind of woman who said nothing unless she truly meant it.
Her silence was a fortress.
She used it to protect herself, to build a wall before anyone could get close enough to see what was happening underneath.
Still, something had fundamentally changed tonight, and as I navigated the empty highway back toward River Oaks, the frustration began to burn a hole through my chest.
She was running from whatever this was.
She was trying to force us back into the neat, safe little boxes of our public relations strategy.
But the way her hand had fit in mine wasn't a script, and the look in her eyes before she walked into that high-rise wasn't business.
I pulled into my driveway and shut the engine off, the silence filling the car immediately.
For a second I thought about texting her.
Did you make it upstairs?
But something about the way she’d said thanks for tonight stopped me.
Like the night had already ended in her mind.
So I left it alone and figured I’d hear from her in the morning.
But morning came and nothing. Then afternoon.
Then the next day.
Nothing.
By the third day I started to feel stupid checking my phone.
I told myself it didn’t matter.
The whole thing had been publicity anyway.
A narrative.
A storyline.
Something the team PR people had thought would help soften my image.
Mars had agreed to it.
I had agreed to it.
It was a simple arrangement except it hadn’t felt simple.
Not when we were sitting in that car leaving the stadium.
Not when she was laughing beside me in the booth.
Not when I had my hands on her hips on the dance floor and she looked back at me like she actually liked being there.
That part had felt real.
And maybe that was the problem.
I was halfway through my second coffee that morning when my phone buzzed on the kitchen counter.
Nia.
I answered.
“What’s up.”
“Hey,” she said casually. “Mars asked me to grab her car from your building today.”
I pausedI blinked.
“What?”
“I know,” Nia said quickly, her voice sharp with residual anger.
“It was stupid.
They were trying to be messy, Jalen.
And they absolutely knew she was in the room when they said it.”
I ran a hand over the back of my neck, the muscle corded with sudden, sharp tension.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I figured,” Nia said, her tone softening just a fraction.
“But she heard it anyway.”
I stood there for a moment, completely frozen in the middle of my empty kitchen, my mind racing as a heavy wave of confusion washed over me.
I didn’t sleep with bottle girls.
Actually, I didn’t participate in a single shred of the random, reckless hookup culture that people blindly assumed every professional athlete indulged in.
My entire career was built on discipline and staying out of the tabloids.
Sleeping around was entirely too messy, and it invited too many fabricated stories onto the internet.
Hearing that they were actively bragging about me in a club bathroom?
That was complete news to me.
But then, beneath the initial surge of irritation, another realization crept in, sending a strange, electric jolt straight to my chest.
Mars had gotten upset about it.
She had been bothered enough to freeze up on the dance floor, drop her defenses, and retreat behind her ironclad corporate walls.
If she truly viewed this weekend as a clinical, detached public relations strategy, a couple of lying girls wouldn't have scratched her armor.
She would have ignored it like background noise.
That had to mean something.
Maybe she actually liked me.
Or maybe she was just incredibly uncomfortable hearing total strangers talk like that about a man she had been holding hands with all night.
Either way, the pieces of the puzzle finally slammed into place.
It made total sense why she had practically fled the club and left me stranded on the curb.
I leaned back against the marble counter again, a slow breath escaping my lips as the anger began to morph into something else entirely.
“I thought it was because of something I said,” I admitted, my voice dropping into a rough, quiet register.
“What did you say?” Nia asked, her curiosity instantly spiking.
“I told her she made me happy being there.”
Nia laughed softly, a warm, knowing sound that traveled through the cellular waves.
“Oh.”
“What?” I demanded, my grip tightening on the phone.
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “That actually makes this worse.”
I frowned.
“How?”
“Never mind.”
I shook my head slightly.
“Alright.
I’ll leave the keys with my housekeeper so you can grab her car.”
Another pause.
Then I sighed, the realization of what I actually wanted to do overriding any lingering logic.
“Actually… forget that.”
“What?”
“I’ll drop it off myself.”
Nia was quiet for a second, the silence filled with the smug satisfaction I knew was spreading across her face.
“Don’t tell her,” I added, my voice deadpan.
Now she laughed, a bright, triumphant sound.
“You’re unbelievable, Jalen.”
“Just… don’t tell her.”
“Fine,” she said.
We hung up, and the quiet of the kitchen rushed back in.
I stood there for another minute thinking, the timeline of the last forty-eight hours rewriting itself in my head.
If she thought I had some sloppy rotation of bottle girls talking about me in club bathrooms, I needed to clear that up.
Fast.
The fortress she had built around herself was already hard enough to climb.
I wasn't going to let a bunch of fabricated club gossip add another brick to the wall.
Twenty minutes later, I stepped out of the shower and threw on a clean black tee and a pair of dark sweats.
I grabbed the keys to her convertible on my way out the door and made a hard left toward the city.
My first stop was a small florist off the main strip.
I bypassed the standard, dramatic arrangements of red roses and navigated the buckets until my eyes landed on a bundle of freesias.
They were bright, delicate, and carried a subtle, elegant sweetness.
Beautiful, just like Amara.
Then I made one more stop.
Gutters.