Page 146 of Gamebreaker

Brown. Just brown. Regular brown, the kind that didn't shift between amber and gold depending on the light, the kind that didn't have that unsettling way of seeing more than you'd offered to show.

Fine. That was fine. Not every pair of eyes needed to be a problem.

The conversation flowed easily, which I'd expected from our texting and hoped would turn into actual chemistry once we were in the same room.

It turned into a very pleasant work lunch.

Elyse asked good questions. She laughed at my jokes, the real ones and not the polished ones, which was the fastest way to earn points with me and always had been. We talked about work, about the city, about a terrible movie we'd both seen and had identical opinions about. I caught myself smiling for real at least twice.

And yet.

There was no moment where my breath caught. No moment where I made a joke and watched the other person's expression shift in that particular way that meant they were recalibrating, suddenly paying a different quality of attention. No charge. No current. Just pleasant.

Cam and I had fought the first time we met. We'd stood in a tunnel after a basketball game and had our first conversation at a level of hostility that should have been a red flag and had somehow, perversely, become the most electric interaction of my adult life.

Elyse asked thoughtful follow-up questions and listened actively, and I was bored out of my mind, which was profoundly unfair to Elyse and entirely the fault of a six-foot-three point guard who had recalibrated my standard for human interaction without my consent.

Then Elyse mentioned basketball.

"Have you been following the playoffs? Cameron Russo is playing out of her mind right now." A genuine fan's enthusiasm, completely innocent, and it went through me like a blade. "They swept the semis Wednesday. Best point guard in the league, honestly. Maybe the best I've ever watched."

My stomach dropped straight through the artisanal hardwood.

"Yeah, she's..." I reached for my wine glass and took a sip that was slightly longer than socially standard. "She's very talented. I've watched her play courtside a few times."

"Courtside?" Elyse looked genuinely impressed. "I would kill for courtside seats. It must be incredible to watch her up close."

Up close.

I thought about watching Cam run layup lines at the last game, the fluid ease of her. I thought about the way she'd looked from fifteen feet away at halftime. The exhaustion. The ache she hadn't managed to lock down in time.

And then I thought about up close. Really up close. The way she looked from two inches away, with her hand at my throat and her eyes gone dark, all that focus she usually aimed at a basketball court aimed entirely at me. The way she'd checked under the belt with two fingers. The way she'd said my name at three in the morning, like it was a question she already knew the answer to.

"Harper? You okay?"

I surfaced from what I could only describe as a deeply inconvenient memory to find Elyse watching me with polite concern.

"Yeah, sorry." I set my glass down. "Basketball talk. Not really my area."

"You literally just said you've sat courtside."

"I meant the statistics. I don't love statistics." I smiled brightly. "Tell me about your last case. Make it interesting and completely unrelated to professional basketball."

Elyse laughed, slightly puzzled, and changed the subject. She was far too sensible and nice to deserve what I was doing to this date.

I spent the rest of dinner present with about maybe sixty percent of my brain. The other forty was locked in a civil war between the part that knew I should be here, trying, moving forward, and the part that kept replaying moments it had no business replaying.

Cam's hands positioning my stance in front of a crowd of kids at the clinic, warm through my tank top.

Cam's voice, very close to my ear, saying feet shoulder-width apart while I forgot my own name.

Cam's expression at the bar the night I'd told her I wanted to make one more terrible decision with her.

Cam, full stop. Everywhere I pointed my attention. Like she'd taken up permanent residence in the space behind my eyes and had no plans to leave.

Elyse was lovely. She was funny and kind and objectively attractive, and openly, comfortably out. I'd once dreamed of all that in a partner, and she had still not once made me feel the way Cam had made me feel just by walking into a room.

I ate my artisanal dinner and smiled at the right moments, and hated every part of this except the company, who deserved infinitely better than me.