I was hoping she’d offer. “That’d be cool,” I say, arms extended wide in my defensive stance. She goes up for a layup and I put both of my arms straight up in the air. Nobody gets an easy shot. Not even just-had-surgery Carli. Yeah, I’m savage like that.

“Oh, it’s like that?” she asks, getting up in my face after she makes her layup.

I step closer to her. So close our bodies are touching and I’m getting lost in the patch of freckles around her nose, in her smiling brown eyes. “Yeah, it’s like that.”

CARLI

The way Rex is looking at me . . . it’s like he knows everything about me. Everything that ever was. Everything that will ever be.

Looking straight into his dark, tender eyes, all I want to do is lose myself to the infinite parts of me that he sees and forget about what’s actually going on in my life. But the way he just opened up and poured out all his pain makes me feel bad for keeping so many secrets.

But it’s too late, I think. I’ve already lied, omitted so much truth. He can’t know I could lie to him. He needs someone to trust, someone to be his friend, someone to help heal his hurts. I can be all of that, I tell myself. I can be his everything.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” I say, and kiss him. Pressing my lips into his big, soft lips is way easier than admitting my parents are getting a divorce and I have to decide which one to live with. And rolling my tongue over and around his tongue is way better than letting him know I plan to quit basketball.

He pulls me in closer, his strong hand pressing into my back, making me feel things in low places. Low places that want to explode. Then he pulls away and looks me in the eyes. “I’m so happy I met you,” he says.

“Me, too,” I say, head tilted back, looking at his face. It’s radiating with adoration—for me. I take in as much of it as I can, whole skies of it, hoping it will stay with me forever.

He briefly kisses me again. “Seriously, my life is so much better with you in it.”

“Mine, too.”

“Carli,” he says, looking straight into my eyes.

Words cannot even touch the happiness I feel . . . here . . . with him . . . under the light of the winter sun. Happiness in a way I’ve never felt before. “Yes,” I answer.

“Who’s recruiting you?”

Hold up a second. How did we get on basketball?

“I know Texas probably is. UConn, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Duke? You’re probably getting recruited by the top schools in the country. Tell me I’m wrong.”

I don’t, because he’s not.