Chapter 247: All Eyes on Stan
Pushing the hurt down, Maya forced a bright smile and waved as she approached. "Stan! You actually came."
Stan chuckled. "He practically threatened me with a hundred messages if I didn’t."
"Only a hundred?"
"He was still warming up." Maya laughed despite herself.
Meanwhile, Sophie squeezed his hand one last time at the entrance of the gym, then rose onto her toes and pressed a quick, lingering kiss against the corner of his mouth before reluctantly letting go.
"I’m watching you out there," she whispered. "Every minute."
"Is that a promise or a threat?"
"Both."
She gave him one final playful wink before turning toward the cheerleading section at the far end of the gym, her ponytail swaying with the bright, energetic steps of a woman who was, for the first time in days, in the same room as the person she had been missing.
With a slightly pained and bitter heart, Maya fell into step beside her a moment later, close enough to remain within Stan’s peripheral vision, yet far enough away not to look as though she was chasing after him. Forcing another smile onto her face, she raised a hand and waved.
Stan returned the gesture with a small nod and an easy smile before watching the two girls disappear into the crowd.
A moment later, he turned and headed the other way, toward the basketball court on the gym’s main floor.
Zack spotted him from near the half-court line and immediately broke into a wide, slightly disbelieving grin. "You actually came."
"You sounded like you’d commit international crimes if I didn’t."
"I would have. I genuinely would have."
With that, Zack jogged over and pulled Stan into a firm handshake that quickly turned into a back-slapping bro hug.
"I owe you big time," he said. "The team’s been waiting."
Stan smirked.
"Let’s see if I don’t embarrass you out there."
"The team’s at the far end. Come on. I’ll introduce you."
The Peak University basketball squad was already loose and warming up, five regulars and three bench players working through ball-handling drills under the supervision of a fourth-year assistant captain.
They paused when Zack brought Stan over.
Zack handled the introductions with the breezy confidence of a captain who had decided several days ago that this newcomer was going to solve all of their problems.
"Boys, this is Stan. He’s playing today. Yes, that Stan Harrison before you ask. And yes, he’s never played a serious game. But that doesn’t matter because I trust his skills. Let’s get him on the floor."
The regulars looked Stan over with varying degrees of skepticism.
The team had been ridiculed online for nine straight days. Introducing a complete novice less than forty-eight hours before a critical match was not, on its face, a confidence-inspiring move.
But Stan’s frame, visible now that he had pulled off his hoodie, his jersey hugging the lean, layered density across his shoulders and arms, settled some of that doubt before he had taken a single shot.
At that moment the hoodie came off cleanly.
What it revealed underneath was the kind of physique that did not need explanation.
The sleeveless jersey draped across a body that had clearly been built through years of disciplined, focused training. Broad shoulders tapered into a controlled athletic V-shape. The definition along his arms, chest, and traps suggested the kind of practical strength that mattered far more on a basketball court than sheer size. He was lean rather than bulky, but the leanness carried substance to it. Every line spoke of capability.
From the cheerleading section across the gym, the entire squad went silent for approximately three seconds.
Sophie recovered first, but only barely.
She had seen him shirtless countless times, in private, in his apartment, in her bath. She already knew exactly what was beneath that jersey.
The advantage of having seen it before was that she wasn’t standing there openly gawking like everyone else.
The disadvantage was that she now had vivid, highly specific memories of every ridge and contour currently being displayed beneath athletic fabric in front of half the campus.
She bit the inside of her cheek and forcibly redirected her attention toward her squad captain.
Maya was less prepared, even though she had seen him without a shirt before, it had been long enough that the sight caught her completely off guard. She had been close to him many times. She had felt his strength during stunt rehearsals and filming sessions, where he had caught and supported her with what had felt, even then, like impossible ease.
But she had never seen him like this.
She’d never seen him on a court, moving and standing beneath bright gym lights with a jersey stretched across a frame that suddenly made every memory click into place.
Her breath caught.
The other cheerleaders around her didn’t even bother pretending.
"Holy shit," the squad captain, a senior named Bria, muttered beneath her breath. "Sophie."
"I know."
"Sophie."
"I know."
"He’s been hiding all of that?"
"He has not been hiding it," Sophie replied immediately, trying, and failing, to sound casual.
"He’s been hiding it from us. Selectively. Maliciously."
Maya pressed her lips together and forced herself to look down at her shoes for a moment.
The hot, unmistakable twist in her chest was equal parts admiration, attraction, and something sharper.
’I want him to look at me right now. I want him to look at me the way he looks at her. I want to be the one he reaches for.’
She inhaled slowly and forced herself to steady her emotions.
’Not yet. Soon. But not by losing my composure on the sideline.’
The third cheerleader who joined them a moment later, a quieter girl with shoulder-length red hair tied into a neat French braid, whose name Sophie vaguely remembered as Fiona, said nothing.
But her eyes never left the court.
The faint color gradually rising along her neck made it abundantly clear that she was, perhaps, experiencing her first significant introduction to Stan Harrison.
Across the gym, practice resumed.
The team started Stan with the basics.
Dribbling drills. Layups. Free-throw form.
The fundamentals every player learned during their first weeks of organized basketball, building gradually toward more complex movement patterns.
Stan listened carefully each time someone explained a technique.
To everyone’s surprise, he absorbed information with frightening speed.
His enhanced perception allowed him to break movements down almost instantly, recognizing angles, timing, and body positioning after only a handful of demonstrations. Combined with his precise control over his own body, the results appeared far more polished than anyone expected from a complete beginner.
