Block Shot (Hoops, #2)

by Kennedy Ryan

I honestly don’t know what’s under all those layers Banner wears, but those aren’t the layers I care about. I want to peel back her surface and study her soul.

New York bustles. It hustles. It truly never sleeps and is ever-grinding. It took a while to get used to the noise and the pace and the smell of urgency in the air.

I will never be petite. I’m just not made that way. Some of it’s just genetic. My hips, my ass, my very bones are too big for that. I’m not interested in being tiny. I want to be strong and healthy and feel good in my clothes,

“Do not live someone else's life and someone else's idea of what womanhood is. Womanhood is you." -Viola Davis,

“I don’t give a damn about odds,” she says. “Odds don’t tell me what I can’t do. Odds just tell me how hard I’ll have to work to get what I want. Don’t allow anyone to make you feel less.”

“What I’m saying is be unafraid to want it all and be disciplined enough to work hard to get it.”

She is day and I am night. When day and night are absolutely equal, it’s equinox. Banner is my equinox. My equal. The revelation rattles around inside me, but my face, my surface remains smooth.

Here’s the thing about falling for a good girl: they have all these rules. And qualms. And the worst? Guilt. She has all this integrity that gets in the way of what she wants, which is me. But I won’t allow it to get in the way of what I want, which is her.

“Never do anything you can’t live with or walk away from the person you can’t live without.” -Pee Wee Kirkland,

It’s amazing, the power of words, cruel or kind, even from someone you don’t respect. How they stay with you, healing or haunting.

“I don't need to be so full of myself that I feel I am without flaw. I can feel beautiful and imperfect at the same time. I have a healthy relationship with my aesthetic insecurities." - -Lupita Nyong’o,

Some emotions are so strong, some losses so essential that the heart—not your beating heart, your feeling heart—can’t contain them, so the body absorbs the blow.

I want to tell him I had her first and I’ve had her since, and he was just the dash between. An ellipsis that should never have happened.

“Are you saying you want this for good?” I ask, more confident than I’ve ever been. “For good?” He frowns and gives a quick shake of his head. “For good is too sanitized. I want your dirt and your pain and your darkness. Your weakness and your flaws.”