Game of Temptation

left in the second quarter of Game

flat, wet crack, like a branch snapping underwater, and then the whole

with a reputation for dirty screens, had slid underneath me as I came down, and my left ankle fold

ing, the crowd's roar bending into something that sounded like a wave break

, Dr. Okafor, kneeling over me with glov

I said, whic

when you can f

dt had come halfway onto the floor with a clipboard crushed in his fist. Doyle stood over the scorer's table

ough the nois

ai

y name, ripped out of her chest like som

wore a black blazer and a crisp white shirt, her hair pulled back in the clean, careful style she

aulte

r sleeve and missed. She cut across the baseline, past a camera operator who nearly dropped his rig, past a ball boy frozen with a t

d sharply. "Ma'am, you

he said. Her voice

atched the word

e watching. A hundred came

reached, and her fingers closed around min

d. "Hey, Val

. Your ankle is

the wrong sha

s stood in her eyes, bright and furious, and she

the arena like thunder. I caught one glimpse of the big screen above the scoreboard as we passed under it, and there we were, blown up forty feet hi

uld fake that. And if I could see

om, and the doors swung shut on the noise. Dr. Okafor cut my sock o

Lena said, from som

ot in

g with your

sting m

ai

s drawn up around her ears. A security guard had followed her in and was hovering by the

," I told him.

he poli

" I said, harder than I

without looking up. "Let her stay. S

ily on the rolling stool next to me. She didn't speak. She just sat there with her hands knotted in her lap,

wo sprain of the lateral ligament, some bruising on the medial side. Could have been a lot worse. We'll get

ser

ith the heavy tread of a man who'd just lost his best player. He looked at me, then at Lena, then at our joined ha

na said, stan

," I

e

lyst in this country is about to say you lost your focus. They'll point at this. At her." He jerked his head toward the stool. "I'm n

happen aga

hout a word she pulled her hand free and tucked it into he

Dr. Okafor, who excused himself with a mumbled w

ve to call Tessa. I have to, th

en

and people saw me climb over a

worry about

l of her hand, furious with herself. "I broke protocol. I br

like

watched the sentence arrange itself behind her l

he MRI," she said fin

with my heartbeat, and I understood with the terrible clarity of a ma

t my hip. I fished it

from an unknown number,

the narrow window in the door, with perfect light. In it, a woman in a bla

nding inside the arena's restrict

ho worked