Page 188 of Gamebreaker

"How are you?"

"Good."

"Cam."

"I'm good, Harper."

"You've been standing in your kitchen in full game-day clothes since before dawn, which I know because I woke up and your side of the bed was cold, and we've already established how we both feel about cold sides of the bed." Her thumbs moved along my cheekbones. "So I'm going to ask you again, and this time you're going to tell me the truth, because that's who we are now. How are you?"

I looked at her. My shirt. My socks. Her face turned up to mine, her attention fixed on me so completely that I felt it in my chest like a hand.

"Nervous," I said. "And more ready than I've ever been in my life. Both."

"That tracks."

"The nervous part is mostly about you."

"Me?" Her brows drew together. "Why me? I'll be in the stands."

"You'll be in the stands, and there will be cameras, and everyone knows now. They're going to find you within forty-five seconds of me walking onto that court." I covered her hands with mine. "I want to make sure you're ready for that. For whatever they do to you."

She was quiet for a moment. It wasn't the defensive kind of quiet, or the kind where she was building a comeback. It was the kind where she was actually sitting with what I'd said.

"I've been out for two years," she said finally. "I stood in my bathroom at twenty-six and decided I was never hiding myself again, for anyone." Her face cleared. "I'm not afraid of cameras finding me in the stands at my girlfriend's playoff game."

Girlfriend.

She'd said it easily, directly, without any armor. Like she'd looked at the word, decided it was accurate, and therefore picked it. She'd said it for the first time Saturday evening, standing in this kitchen while I was stirring sauce, scrolling on her phone. I'm going to post another one, and this time it's going to be your face, and I'm tagging you. Is that okay? You're my girlfriend now. I'm establishing this as fact. She hadn't asked. She'd announced it. And then she'd gone right back to scrolling before I could do anything embarrassing with my face.

I'd burned the garlic.

I was thirty-four years old. The word girlfriend had never once applied to me out loud, and it landed every single time she said it like I was hearing it for the first time.

"And the Sun," she went on, "is absolutely going to run my face. Henry still works there. He's going to see it." Her chin came up. "Good. Let him. Let him see what it looks like when somebody makes a sacrifice for me, rather than the other way around."

I didn't trust my voice. I pulled her in against my chest and held on.

"Also," she said into my shirt, muffled, "Jordan texted me last night."

I pulled back to look at her. Her brother. The only one in her family who still called.

"He saw both posts. He said he's proud of me." Her eyes went bright. "And he asked if he could come to a game. He said, and I quote, 'I want to meet the woman who finally made you cry the good kind of cry.'"

"Harper."

"I told him yes. I told him you'd get him seats." She laughed, wet. "I hope that's okay. I may have promised courtside."

"He can have my seat on the bench."

"Don't be all romantic at me before seven, I'll fall apart." She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and stepped back and pointed at the corner of my counter where her kettle and scale now lived. "Sit. I'm making real coffee. You can't play the Finals on espresso and fear."

I sat at the island and watched her.

She weighed the beans. She checked the water temperature like some kind of super hot, super gorgeous scientist. She timed the bloom on her phone and glared at me when I opened my mouth. And I sat there in my game-day clothes and watched the woman I loved make coffee in my kitchen in my socks, and I thought: This is what I almost traded away. This. Exactly this.

She set the mug in front of me and slid onto the stool beside me and leaned into my side.

"Shootaround's at ten," I said.