Long Shot: A Forbidden Basketball Standalone Romance (HOOPS Book 1)
Long Shot: Chapter 51

Every horror movie on the bayou I’ve ever seen comes to mind while I drive the long road to MiMi’s place. “Secluded” was the word Iris used. That’s a daytime word. At night, “scary as hell” seems more appropriate.

When I finally pull into the driveway, the rental car is the first thing I see. Iris was adamant that security not stay. I can’t even think about her reasons without nearly busting a blood vessel. Caleb has so much to answer for, and I plan to personally see to it that he does. Not his money, or his family’s power, or the rug we like to sweep shit under will save him this time.

The car makes no sense, and the closer I get to the house, my duffle bag in tow, the more cautious I become. The door is cracked open, an eerie invitation to come inside.

The house is so tiny, making the scene in the front room unavoidable. It’s the first thing I see, and I’m sure it will haunt me until I die.

“Iris.” I say her name out loud, but I don’t hear it. I don’t hear anything. The words are muffled. I’m underwater and drowning, burning lungs, weighted limbs, struggling to the top, fighting for air.

My Iris.

Lying in a pool of blood—still. And that monster on top of her—still. There’s so much blood, and I can’t tell where he ends and she begins, and whose blood is coming from where. For a second, I’m immobile at the door, trapped in a tragic snapshot, but then all the sounds rush in and I’m in motion, desperate and frenzied. I push the dead weight of Caleb’s body aside.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Iris lies on the floor, wearing one of my shirts. It’s shoved up past the top of her thighs. Blood blossoms across her torso, dousing the shirt from belly to shoulder.

“Iris?” I touch her arm, gentle and hesitant and desperate. “Baby?”

I search for signs of life. I don’t breathe while my heart waits to know if it’s irreparably broken.

When her eyes slowly open, it’s daybreak. It’s dawn. This moment puts everything in perspective because despite all the things I have, if Iris is gone, I’ve got nothing.

“August!” She tries to sit up, and I scoot my body under her so her head can rest on my knee. “Sarai. Where is she?”

My heart seizes when I don’t see Sarai. Did he do something to her? But then a sound from the back of the house filters into my consciousness, insistent, but faint.

“I hear her in the back. She’s calling you.”

Iris releases a long breath out and nods. “I locked her room. She must still be in there,” she rasps, her voice hoarse. She squints, focusing on the prone man a few feet away. “Is he dead?”

Her lips tremble. She’s shaking in my arms. Her cheekbone is swollen, and blood streaks down her face. Black marks stripe her throat.

God, I hope he’s dead.

“I . . . baby, I don’t know,” I say. “I need to call nine-one-one. There’s so much blood.”

“Not my blood.” She grimaces and lifts her hand, painstakingly slow, to touch her shoulder. “Some of it is. He shot me in the shoulder.”

Motherfucker.

I squeeze my forehead and claw my hair to keep myself focused on her and not tearing his arms out of their sockets. The desire to kill him is an ache in my bones. It makes my heart contract.

“He’s shot, though,” she says weakly. “We fought, and I shot him.” Pride sparks in her eyes, dulled to brown.

“You did good, Iris.” I run a shaky palm over her hair, and my fingers come away red and sticky with blood. “Jesus, baby. Are you sure you’re—”

“Is he dead?” she cuts in, her grip on my arm tight. Her eyes are wide, urgent. “I need to know, August. He won’t ever leave me alone. Do you hear? He’ll kill me. And Sarai will—”

I press my finger to her lips, staunching the panic rising in her voice. “I’ll check.”

“Now.” Tears leak from the corners of her eyes and skid over her swollen cheekbone. “Check now.”

Smudgy marks from his fingers stain her jaw. My stomach turns at what he’s done to her. At the thought that this isn’t the first time. She lived with him. She slept beside him. For months. Alone.

Fuck.

I gently shift her and scoot across the blood-covered floor to the vermin pickling in his own reckoning. Rage overpowers me the closer I get. I want to stomp on his face and press my boot to his throat. His hand is tucked under his shirt, and when I tug the shirt back, he’s covering a hole in his belly streaming blood.

“West.” His eyes flutter open. His voice is thin, withering, agonized. He grimaces, tipping his head back. Life leaks from his eyes as surely as it’s leaking from his wound. “I guess you win.”

I look back to Iris, who has pulled herself to a sitting position and leans against the wall. Even now, with him clinging to the last threads of his life, she’s wary and guarded, watching him like, shot and bleeding out, he still might strike.

She lifts her hand, revealing a small ring in her palm.

“Lo told you your days were numbered,” she says, her voice wobbling.

With eyes narrowed, she cups her hand to her mouth and blows over it.

“Fuck you, Iris,” he says, voice rough and angry.

With one hand covering the bullet hole in her shoulder, Iris drags herself across the floor until she’s beside me. A scarlet line of blood trails her.

“Iris.” I pull out my phone and nod to her bleeding shoulder. “I need to call nine-one-one.”

“No.” She fires the word like a bullet, the last one in her barrel as she looms over Caleb. “Don’t call yet.”

“But your shoulder—”

“It’s fine.” Her soft mouth lopsides in a bitter smile. “I have a high tolerance for pain. Isn’t that right, Caleb?”

Her gaze is locked on his—on the last vestiges of life draining from his eyes, from his body.

“As long as he’s alive, I’m not safe and neither is my daughter. He tried to kill me.” She draws in a long breath, her eyes narrowed. “So we wait.”

She’s my Iris, but I’ve never seen her like this. I thought I had seen all her sides, loved all her sides, but I’ve never seen this. Ruthless and beautiful and bloodied, she emanates all the strength and determination it must have taken her to survive.

And I’ve never loved her more.

We stand in silent vigil for the few minutes of life Caleb has left. His moans and his pain don’t move me—they don’t bring me satisfaction either. It’s simply a necessary end. He deserves so much worse, but at least Iris gets to watch him die.

The absolute stillness of death settles over him. His gaze is vacant and fixed on Iris. I pass a hand over his eyes, closing them; denying him, even in death, one last glimpse of my girl.

I call nine-one-one and then turn my attention back to her. I take her face between my hands, aligning our eyes.

“He’s gone.” I press my forehead to hers, and the blood on her face smears against mine. I don’t care. I wish I could share her pain as easily. I wish I could wipe it away like it had never happened.

“Yes. Yes.” Her fingers dig into my hair and her head drops to my shoulder. She kisses my neck. “I love you.”

I pull back, tilting her chin and erasing her tears with the back of my hand. Carefully, I kiss her, tasting her blood and her tears and her pain.

That night we first met, we couldn’t have known what lay ahead. If she had only kissed me—if I had only pressed for more. If the night I won the championship, I’d managed to convince her that even though we’d just met, even though she had a boyfriend, even though it didn’t make sense – we should take a chance. If I had looked closer and hadn’t missed the signs. Life isn’t a road that forks or a line of numbered sliding doors. There is no alternate universe filled with only right choices. There’s just this one—just this life, and we go where our choices take us and grow wiser from our mistakes.

Standing on the porch waiting for the paramedics, I glance up at the blackened stretch of Louisiana sky. Life is a constellation of decisions, connected by coincidences and deliberations, painting pictures in the heavens. During the day, when things are brightest, we don’t see the stars, but they are there. It’s only in the contrast of night, when things are darkest, that the stars shine.

Iris is my constellation. She took the darkness as her cue to shine. It only made her brighter, stronger, and tonight, her hard-won glimmer lights up the sky.