DEUCE WITH THE CAPTAIN

RAINE.

The iron and gold gates came into view first, tall enough to make a girl from Brooklyn feel like she'd pedaled straight into a postcard.

I stopped my bike just to look at them.

"I made it."

Six months of waking up at five a.m., sprinting from home to the local court, practicing for four hours until my arm went numb, then going to school to study. Finally, I got in.

Ten hours of travel from JFK, one layover in Charlotte, and I was finally here.

Blackridge College of Sports (BCS) didn't accept people like me. Not really. This was a school built for money, influence and power. Only a tiny fraction of the world's wealthiest and most connected families could get their children through those gates. You could have all the money, influence, and power in the world and still not get in. That was how tough it was to get accepted here. The entire college revolved around athletics.

I'd gotten in on a scholarship because of my grades and, most importantly, my tennis skills.

I pedaled through with a smile, my racket bag bouncing against my back, school books rattling in the wire basket.

Kids drifted across the perfect lawns in clusters, blazers open, sunglasses in place, laughing carefreely, phones out, walking like the world owed them everything. Designer sneakers. Expensive watches. A boy walked past in a varsity jacket with his last name stitched over the crest. A girl laughed into her phone, diamond studs catching the light. I looked down at my thrifted jeans, the hoodie I'd bought for six dollars off a folding table in Bed-Stuy, and I didn't feel small.

My clothes were secondhand. My mind wasn't.

Nobody here was going to make me feel like I didn't belong. I'd earned every square inch of pavement under these tires.

I inhaled. The air was clean. No street-food smoke, no bus exhaust, no constant city noise grinding against your skull. Just quiet money and the distant thwack of tennis balls. But the courts I'd ridden past were my favorite part. Perfect surfaces and nets that looked like they’d never seen a cheap repair.

This was where champions got made. My ticket. Blackridge didn't just train athletes. It turned them into professionals. They had programs that put you on the pathway that opened doors to success if you survived it. Leaving Ma and Dad back in Brooklyn had hurt, but this? This was the only shot that mattered.

I hummed off-key, swaying with my pedals, and cut toward the intersection. Some guy at the entrance said the Dean's office was that way.

The signal blinked green for pedestrians and cyclists. I checked left, checked right. Seeing that the road was all clear, I pushed forward.

Out of nowhere, a yellow Lamborghini nosed around the corner, engine snarling low. Even before I saw the driver, I felt that flicker, that stupid, involuntary human flicker because the car was gorgeous, and for half a second, so was the idea of whoever sat behind that wheel.

Then it turned. Fast. Too fast.

Our eyes met through the windshield for exactly one heartbeat, his widened, mine did too, and he slammed the brakes at the same second I yanked mine.

We were both too late.

The impact jolted straight through me. The handlebars ripped out of my hands, my books exploded out of the basket, and the pavement came up hard to meet my knee.

I lay there for a second, staring at the sky, ears ringing, knee burning.

"What the fuck," I hissed in pain.

I heard the car door open. He took his sweet time, like he was stepping onto a red carpet to meet his fans instead of rushing over to check if he'd just paralyzed somebody.

He was tall. Unfairly tall, with a face that made you angry on principle, because nobody should get to look like that and drive like a maniac. Dark hair, sunglasses pushed up into it. Crazily, even with this disaster, I noticed his broad shoulders under a fitted black shirt. Long legs. For one traitorous second, my brain went quiet.

I wasn't having a concussion, was I? Because no man had ever captured my attention like that.

Then he walked past me.

Not to me. Past me. Straight to his car, crouching down to inspect the front bumper like it was the one bleeding on the pavement.

"Oh, come on," he muttered, running a hand along a scratch the size of a fingernail. "My poor baby."

I let out one short, disbelieving laugh. No way. No way was this man actually talking to his car right now.

I pushed myself up onto my palms, gravel biting into my skin, and looked up. Dusted off my jeans. He wasn't going to help me, apparently.

"Hey. Asshole!" I yelled. "You hit me."

That got his attention. He straightened up slowly, sunglasses sliding back down over his eyes.

"Oh." He looked me up and down, clearly annoyed. "Didn't see you there."

He didn't see me? Did I become invisible overnight?

I breathed hard in total astonishment.

He pulled out his phone, thumb swiping, not even glancing up.

"Give me your account details." His gaze slid from my ruined bike to my scraped knee to my six-dollar hoodie. "So I can pay for that." He huffed like it offended him.

I wanted to punch him, square and hard, right in that perfectly pointed nose. I restrained myself. I stayed in control.

"There's no need for that." I kept my voice calm. I didn't want trouble on day one in a new school in a new city. "Just apologize. We'll call it even."

He blinked, eyes going wider than when he sighted me before crashing into me.

"Apologize?" He repeated with a condescending tone. "Me. To you."

"Yes." I crossed my arms over my chest. "An apology. For running into me with your car."

He didn't answer. He just turned and walked to the car, popped the glove compartment, and came back holding a stack of cash.

He grabbed my hand before I could pull it back and pressed the bills into my palm, closing my fingers around it himself.

"There's your apology." He nodded at the twisted metal wreck a few feet away that used to be my bike. "That thing was on its last legs anyway. Fifteen hundred. Get something that won't fall apart next time." A beat. Then, almost bored: "Watch the road."

I stood there, the bills warm from his pocket, my blood boiling from anger.

He slid his sunglasses back into place, already turning, already done with me.

I wanted to snap. Punch him square in that stupid, symmetrical, personally-insulting jaw of his. But punching him meant jail and losing out on this cash which would either help repair the bike he ruined or get a new one. Plus dinner for a week if I stretched it.

Fuck staying principled. I needed this.

I grabbed a fistful of his shirt collar and hauled him back around like I was retrieving a dog that had run off with my sandwich.

He staggered, barely, a half-step, more scandalized than actually moved, and I slapped the cash against his chest hard enough to sting my own palm. The bills fluttered down between us like they, too, wanted no part of this conversation.

"Three thousand dollars." I shoved him for emphasis. Mostly emphasis. Partly because shoving felt incredible.

"What?"

He didn't move. I just saw his mouth slightly open. He looked down at the money on the pavement, then at me. It seemed his brain appeared to be buffering.

I exhaled through my nose and made myself let go of his collar one finger at a time.

"Repair cost for my bike, plus emotional compensation, comes to three thousand dollars," I said, hands on my hips, one arm stretched between us. "Unless you'd rather I call the cops and explain how a Lamborghini tried to make a pancake out of me on a public street. Pay up. Pretty boy."

He raked a hand through his hair, somehow making the whole "I've been extorted" experience look photogenic. "This is broad daylight robbery."

"It's broad daylight compensation. Robbery is what you almost did to my spine. You should've used those pretty eyes of yours to check the road, then," I added.

"Whatever," he sneered, marched back to his car and dug through his glove compartment. He came back counting bills.

Wow. He just — had that. Casually. In the car. Like a normal amount of pocket money.

Good for me!

Angrily, he tossed it on me.

I was not, I repeat, not, start my first day at Blackridge with a fight. Nope. All that stayed behind.

"Enjoy the rest of your day, jerk," I said, and turned my back on him first.

I bent down and gathered my books, their pages bent and grass-stained. My racket bag was miraculously untouched. The bike was another story.

Breaking into a hum, I picked up the bills one by one off the pavement and put it in my pocket.

I stood, dragging the twisted wreck of a bicycle across the road toward the glass doors marked ADMINISTRATION, swaying side to side in pure joy at the unexpected cash.

My knee throbbed with every step. My palm still stung from smacking his own money against his own chest, which, frankly, felt like the most satisfying injury of my life.

I really hoped I never had to see that idiot again.

But I had three grand. So. Character growth.

Through the glass doors ahead, I caught a flash of green.

Another tennis court.

Players were already running drills, shoes squeaking, the clean pop of strings against ball carrying through the glass.

I stopped and smiled.

This. This was why I was here. Not the boy in the Lamborghini or people like him.

Tennis. Blackridge. The life I'd bled for.

I straightened my spine and wiped the grass off my palms.

First day at Blackridge. Off to a fucking legendary start, honestly.

I was almost at the doors when two girls in tennis whites blew past me, rackets bouncing against their bags.

"Hurry up, I heard Xavier's on his way to the court."

"I still can't believe he's the one picking the female player for mixed doubles today."

"I hope he picks me."

"Me too, he's so hot."

Their squealing faded through the doors, fully in orbit around a name.

I slowed.

Xavier?

Apparently there was a guy on this campus important enough to make grown women lose their entire sentence structure.

I snorted. Good for him. Truly. Living the dream.

I looked down at my crumpled bike, then up at the doors.

Whatever. I hadn't come all the way from Brooklyn to worry about some spoiled rich kid with a fancy name.

I came here to play.

"Let me deal with the Dean first," I muttered. "I'm sure I can beat whoever this Xavier guy is on the court."