Page 254 of The Locker Room

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The crowd screamed, and the game was right back on.

Xander had caught glimpses of Chris as he"d played. When he"d

been on the bench during the third quarter break, the two of them had

met bugged-out eyes every time the other damned team had scored. This

time, as the other team snapped the ball back into play and their forward

rushed past Xander in an attempt to get into an unguarded position, Chris

said, “Way to go, Xa-an!” and Xander whirled, managed to wink at

Chris, and threw himself in front of the opposing forward just in time to

intercept the ball with an unbelievably long-limbed, one-armed catch.

220 Amy Lane

Before the crowd even realized what happened, Xander was down

the court for another shot—this one from the three-point line, because he

felt like it, and suddenly, what had been a two-point lead was a seven-

point lead, and the timbers of the little tiny Arco Arena rattled with the

bloodlust of the nearly eighteen thousand rabid fans who had been long

denied.

Tonight was their night. The rest of the team helped, of course, but

for that quarter, the fourth quarter, Xander played every play as though

he was the star.

Because, for once, he was.

He handed the ball off when it was needed—Aames, Oswald,

Pollack, Burkins—all of them racked up a few points. But Xander had a

twenty-five-point quarter. Twenty-five points that he took for himself,

and made them beautiful, and made them count. Twenty-five points

where “Get the fucking ball down the fucking court and into the fucking

net” was absolute fucking poetry of muscle, blood, heartsong, and bone.

Two seconds before the buzzer, Xander made his last shot,

impossibly over the heads of two of New York"s finest, dunking again

like a rookie show pony, landing like he had nothing to fear.

The buzzer went off, and he threw his hands to the sky just like

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