Hook Shot (Hoops, #3)

by Kennedy Ryan

“Give yourself permission to let it hurt, but allow yourself permission to let it heal.” Nikki Rowe,

“Wild women are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves . . . she'll allow you into her chaos, but she'll also show you her magic.” — Nikki Rowe,

New York City is a beautiful bitch dipped in glitter, giving you the finger while walking the runway in her Louboutins.

“Children and bored adults need to be entertained. Grown men living with purpose require time and quiet and energy.”

she caught the summer sun and trapped its warmth inside her skin until she glowed.

there’s something exhilarating about shaking off the cloak of responsibility, the daily adulting, and playing like kids again if only for a night.

Advice is so much easier to follow when you’re giving it to someone else.

There’s something calming about sewing. The hum of the machine. The rhythm. Watching a creation take life and shape under your hands in real time.

“You don’t even understand the power you’ve been given,” she’d say. “Don’t abuse it in anger. Gentleness is power under control.”

People conveniently organize their beliefs around their agendas. Taking money, starting wars, segregating, lynching—all of it had some scripture, some tenet twisted around to fit hate. True faith is about relationship.”

“It’s us admitting to the universe we don’t have all the answers. Too often religion says yes, I do have all the answers, and if you don’t like them, you can’t sit at my table. So we have all these tables. Too many tables, and not enough love.”

It’s been more than a year, and Kenya and I keep trying to help her work through the grief, but sometimes I think she wants it. Like if all she has left of my father is grief, she’ll take it.

We sit like kids waiting for a storm to pass, only we’re the storm. This feeling between us is a tempest, and I have no desire to take shelter. When she kisses me, I forget everything and want to stand in the rain.

one in every four girls is sexually abused before the age of eighteen.

I know for a fact that if I said right now I couldn’t, I didn’t want to, he wouldn’t, but I also know that as soon as he’s sure I want this as much as he does, he will devour me. And I want to be eaten whole. Don’t parcel me up. Don’t take me in small bites. Consume me in one starving gulp, because that’s how I want him.

“I have found the one whom my soul loves,” he quotes. More tears rain over my cheeks; a release years overdue. I weep for every time I’ve felt unloved, unwanted, unnecessary, and imperfect. It’s all there in the look he settles on me. To him, I’m more than enough. I’m all that he wants.

grief has a way of making things less obvious—make less sense.

“Of course, you aren’t afraid of the storm,” MiMi had said with a smile. “You are the storm.”

“That, my beautiful girl,” she’d said, smiling, “is your crown. Your pride. Your self-esteem. The glory of knowing who you are, and that it’s enough. No one has to tell a queen to wear her crown.”

We stare at one another across centuries, across continents, across time and space, and I actually believe that I would have found him anywhere. There is no place, no spot on the continuum of time that could have hidden this man from me.

In the shadow of the place I thought was safe, I realize it’s not a tree, a city, or a particular place where I find safety. It’s in Kenan’s arms, in the harbor of his love. That’s the safest place I’ve ever known.

Doing what’s right sometimes breaks our hearts. Knowing it’s right doesn’t make it hurt any less.