Hoops Shorts: A HOOPS Novella Collection

No, I did not understand my emotions at the moment—just that I had too many of them. I hated being alone the last week and now that I was with my boys again, I was running away? What sense did that make?

I didn’t know! Being a woman was complicated, okay?

I shoved my carry-on suitcase in the overhead and sat down by the window seat. I clutched my small travel backpack purse in my lap and yanked out my e-reader, opening it to the latest smutty read I’d one-clicked.

I took a deep breath in. Okay. Time to get my shit together.

I was sitting in first class for a ten-hour flight overseas. Where I got to go play as part of a world-famous rock band. Could I really sit here in my whiny emotions?

Tank sat down beside me. He didn’t say a word. He just got himself situated while the plane loaded up.

Then, only once the stewardess had started moving amongst the first-class passengers for preflight beverages, did he reach out and squeeze my knee.

I felt his quiet strength pour into me.

His voice was low in the small space of the cabin. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the time and attention you deserved the other day when you came by.”

I shook my head rapidly back and forth. “No, no, no,” I reassured, reaching out to cover his hand on my knee with my own. God, it felt good to touch another person and be touched again. It filled up some place inside me that, I didn’t know, was probably real fucked up from when I was a kid being tossed back and forth between foster homes.

But whenever I was with my guys, I didn’t feel like that girl with nowhere to ever call home. They were my home.

I shoved the divider between us away and laid my head on his chest. His low, steady heartbeat was so reassuring under my ear. “Everything okay with your brothers?” I asked. My mouth was slightly muffled from being pressed up against his t-shirt, but I knew he still heard me ’cause he lifted one of his big, muscled arms and hugged me to him. “Thanks for asking, babe. I really appreciate that. But naw, don’t worry. It’s okay. I think it’s under control for the moment.”

He snuggled his chin against the top of my head. I smiled. I loved it when he did that.

“You know you can always talk to me about it if you want, right?” I asked. “About anything. I’m here for you.”

He squeezed me to him one last time before dropping his arm as the plane started to taxi forwards.

“Same to you, ya know,” he said.

Yet as the plane took off, we just held each other’s hands, neither of us saying a word.

I thought about what Bishop had said that one time—that sometimes a person just needed to feel their feelings instead of always talking about them. Huh. I guess even arrogant assholes could be right every once in a while. Like a broken clock being right twice a day, yada yada.

I nestled into Tank’s chest and looked out the window at the setting sun until we lifted above the clouds.

Onwards to Amsterdam.

TWENTY

CASH

Sometimes I thought there was a devil inside me. That shit I pulled in Vegas, for example?

It was like an itch. Not just a regular itch.

More like hives, and then I was supposed to not scratch?

At first it was just going to be betting on the big fight. I swore, that was all.

But then, even before the fight started, I got that tingly spidey sense—the one that told me I couldn’t lose. No matter the 3 to 1 odds. No matter if it was a million to one odds. I still would have won.

And like they said—once a gambler, always a gambler. And a gambler knew when they were on a winning streak. Even though I was always lucky… I didn’t know how to explain it—I felt extra lucky that night.

It was like an all-consuming drive. Logic went out the window. Along with my responsibility to the people I loved. Everything else evaporated other than the next win.

Which was what Trevor, my sponsor, kept reminding me of all week.

Because I was sick remembering Luna walking into that room full of men with guns—my stomach lurched just thinking of the scene.

And Trevor made me watch clips of the disastrous concert that I’d blown off. He was big on facing the consequences that gambling brought into our lives.

He knew it firsthand, after all. Trevor had lost his family and gone bankrupt before he hit rock bottom and quit.

“You have an impulse control problem,” Trevor said. “Most of us do. You just have to go back to the basics of learning how to channel that in healthier ways. Now, what’s your support network like? And why the hell were you in Vegas in the first place?”