as he fought back speaking at all. He didn’t know if he should mention the conversation he’d had with her father at the beginning of the season or that Coach had said something similar, but Ryder went on watching her, amazed, surprised that she’d been so honest.
When he kept looking at her, not speaking at all, Reese blinked, turning her attention back at Pukui and his family. “He wanted her to stay for the tournament, maybe play with my girls, but Keeana, his ex, has to get back to Maui.”
“That’s a shame,” he told her, inching closer to reach for the Baileys bottle next to her left elbow. “She would do well with your team.”
Reese looked up at him, eyebrows knitted together. “Why?”
“I saw Pukui playing with her and the other kids when I got here. She’s a natural. So were you. You could teach her a lot.” When she went on watching him, expression still curious, Ryder laughed, shooting her a smile. “What?”
“You think I was a natural?”
“Of course I do,” he said, exaggerating an eye roll that made her laugh. “So forgetful.” He took a sip, slipping a look down at her as she watched him. “I told your dad that all the time back in college. How good you were. How you were born to do this.” Ryder waved a hand around the room, pointing his glass to Wilson and Baker and the congregation of players crowded in Pukui’s living room.
“I never knew that,” she admitted, not moving when Ryder stood closer. She watched him, a twitching smile on her full lips.
“Well,” Ryder said, turning toward her, liking the look she gave him, forgetting for two seconds that he wouldn’t look at any of his other teammates the way he looked at Reese just then. “I meant it then.” He smoothed his tongue along his bottom lip as Reese watched him, her eyes shifting to stare at the movement. “I mean it now.”
If she’d just lean forward, just a bit, Ryder could almost…
“Babe,” Greer called, her voice cold. Ryder lowered his shoulders, switching his focus to his girlfriend as she stood in the kitchen doorway. He moved his head, jerking it at her in way of greeting and the woman frowned, her face pinching up as she glared at him, then to Reese and back again. “I wanna go home. Now.”
That night, Greer had gone off to her sister’s place in Orlando, pissed at him for daring to have a two-minute conversation with Reese, and bored already by the cooling temperatures. Ryder’s folks and older sister came into the city the next morning to celebrate the holiday with him. He spent most of that morning deflecting questions they had about how Reese was doing on the team.
They’d never blamed her for Rhiannon’s death. Ryder had been the only one and when his mother left the day after New Year’s, she made Ryder promise not to hold grudges.
“She loved you so much,” she said, dusting lint from his shirt. “More to the point, Rhiannon loved her. We all did. It does no good to look for guilty parties when it’s God’s will what happens to us. Be kind to her.”
He hadn’t been, though. There had never been a conversation about what had almost happened in that elevator. There had only been the memory of it and Greer’s angry exasperation when the news broke about Duke and what Reese had meant to him back there.
But there had not been an apology.
He intended to make one now.
The locker room was empty except for two ball boys that Ryder nodded away as he approached Reese. She was bent over a bench, double-knotting her laces as he approached.
“I was wrong,” he started, and she jumped. He winced, hating that he scared her.
Reese turned, hand on her chest as though that loud confession had nearly given her a heart attack. She watched him, turning on her heel to face Ryder, only a foot or so separating them. “About what?”
Her hair was back, her face smooth, free from makeup, and her full bottom lip was dewy with what Ryder guessed was some kind of balm. “I was drunk in South Carolina.” She crossed her arms, shifting from one foot to another, but didn’t speak. “I should’ve apologized when we spoke at Pukui’s party, but there wasn’t…time. Anyway, you knew, I’m sure, about me being drunk in South Carolina, and it’s no excuse…what I did. What I said…” Ryder looked up, wondering why Reese was