Parker (Face-Off 1)

I close my eyes for a second, desperate for a nap, before Rico says, “Coach, look!”

I open my eyes to see Rico spinning the basketball on the tip of his index finger.

“Show-off,” I say with a grin, remembering the day I taught him that move.

He dropped the ball in my apartment as soon as it made its first rotation and broke a crystal vase I’d received from a client’s wife last Christmas. We stopped playing basketball in my apartment after that.

As the elevator doors open, I grab our bags from the floor and sling them over my shoulder. Rico runs into the hallway and crosses the ball in front of himself, the rubber slamming hard against the tiled floor.

“Hold up, kid! Don’t go running down the hallway, or Mrs. Prendergast is going to come out with her cane again.”

“Mrs. Prendergast is just jealous of my mad skills,” he says, laughing. “Think fast, Coach.”

Rico passes the ball to me, and I catch it with my right palm and bring it down to the floor. I dribble with one hand, our gym bags weighing down my shoulders, and I drop them on the floor, so I can get a better stance.

“Remember what I taught you,” I say to Rico.

He nods. He widens his feet and lowers his body as he waits for me to attack.

“The trick is reading your opponent. You want them to think you’re going to their left,” I say, moving the ball from my left to my right hand, “but you only want them to think that.”

Rico smiles as I move forward, handling the ball like I’m passing a piece of fine china between my legs. Back in my days as a shooting guard at Villanova, I was unstoppable. I had grown up with nothing, orphaned by my parents at thirteen. Basketball had kept me from falling apart. It was my love of sports and team activities that had made me feel whole, as if I were part of a family.

The only reminder I had of my parents, before I was plucked from our home, was a basketball my father had given me one year for my birthday. It was all he could afford since he spent his paycheck on drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes, and my mom had never worked a day in her life. I was lucky the foster parents, who only took me in for the money and not out of the kindness of their heart, allowed me to keep the one piece of home I had left.

I miss the game, the feeling I would get in the pit of my stomach as fans cheered my name. My signature move was dubbed the Coach Crossover by ESPN sports announcers my junior year in college. It’s the same move I have been teaching Rico for the last six months. He’s not tall enough yet to pass the ball properly between his legs, and he hasn’t figured out how to maintain the proper grip, but I’ve been working on his game. A few years from now, the kid will be running circles around me.

When I showed up at Dante Fisher’s mansion in Chicago, I used the same moves on him to keep him as a DMG client. He has a full-sized basketball court on his property, and knowing that I’m a former baller, he challenged me to a game of Horse. I still practice on my own and try to stay in game-ready shape, especially with teaching my boys how to sharpen their skills. They really keep me on my toes.

I never thought Dante wanted to leave and sign with ASG. Dante just wanted Mickey to show him that he still gave a damn after all the money he has paid him. Ever since John Parker’s death, Mickey hasn’t been the same agent.

I move to my right, and Rico pushes out his left hand to deflect the ball.

“C’mon, Coach. Bring it!”

Lifting my right foot, I lean toward Rico where his left side is weak, where he’s expecting me to dribble past him. But I do my perfected crossover dribble between my legs and switch hands, speeding past Rico to my left. He runs up behind me and jumps on my back, throwing his arms around my neck.

“You cheated,” he says into my ear. “I want a rematch.”

I hear the elevator doors close behind us. Spinning around with Rico on my back, I find one of the hottest men I have ever laid eyes on. He’s taller than me by a few inches, putting him around six feet four inches, give or take.

As he scratches the bit of stubble along his angular jaw, I see a tiny smile forming at the corner of his mouth. This man is studying me, as if we know each other, with a curious look in his grayish-blue eyes. And I think I know him.

For a second, I contemplate why his face looks so familiar and why his strong arms and toned body make me think of him slamming me against the wall. That’s because he’s Alex Parker. He looks different in person—hotter even. During games, he always looks so angry, and in the videos I’ve seen online, the ones where he was drunk out of his skull, he looks disheveled.

Alex pushes a hand through his shaggy brown hair, moving it off his forehead, with a grin. “I thought I recognized that move,” he says with a wink.

“Coach has skills that pay the bills,” Rico says, tapping me on the shoulder.

I chuckle and set Rico on the floor. “You’ve got that right, kid.” Then, I look at Alex, confused. “I thought you weren’t moving into the apartment until tomorrow night.”

He slides his big hands into his jean pockets and shrugs. “Mickey said it wouldn’t be a problem if I came early. I had to get out of DC. I didn’t see the point in sticking around any longer than I had to. Is that a problem?”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not a problem. I just wasn’t expecting you, is all.”

Scanning the hall, I notice he has an oversize hockey equipment bag on the floor behind him. Talk about being a minimalist.

“Where’s Kayla? Did you come here by yourself?”