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The hair tie stayed on my wrist.

I stood at the mouth of the tunnel and listened to the crowd building above us. Twenty-three thousand people pressing sound down into the concrete and steel of a sold-out building like they were trying to fill it all the way to the foundation.

This tunnel.

Seven weeks ago, I'd walked off this court after a win and found a woman leaning against that wall right there, on her phone, captioning a latte, completely uninterested in a single second of what I'd just done. I'd been so angry. I'd told her she was wasting a seat. She'd called me Captain Miserable to my face and told me that some people had lives beyond watching other people throw balls into goals.

I put my hand flat against the cinderblock where she'd stood.

Then I walked out onto the court.

The roar changed when I came out for warm-ups.

I heard it. It deepened, shifted into a register I'd never heard from this crowd, and I understood what it was. Twenty-three thousand people welcoming not just Cameron Russo, team captain, but Cam Russo, who had posted a few honest words on a Friday night that had mattered to far more people than she'd ever let herself imagine.

There were signs. I hadn't expected signs. PROUD OF YOU CAP. A rainbow flag sewn together with a Fangs purple and teal heart in the center. A teenage girl in the second row holding a piece of poster board with marker letters so careful she must have done them three times: YOU MADE ME BRAVE.

I had to look at the floor for a second.

Then I looked for Harper, and I found her in about four seconds, which told me everything about my own internal compass. I loved that woman. I loved her so fucking much.

Courtside. Third seat from the end. Black jeans. A purple and teal jersey that made my throat close.

RUSSO. 4.

She'd found it in my closet. I'd watched her find it on Saturday and hold it up and look at me with a question in her eyes, and I'd nodded, and she'd put it straight on over her tank top and refused to take it off for an hour. Three weeks ago, I'd stood in my bedroom and watched her pull another woman's name over her head and had wanted, with a violence that scared me, to put her in mine instead. To send her out into the world with my name on her back, where everyone could see it.

I couldn't, then. My name on her back would have ended everything I was protecting.

Now, my name was on her back in the front row of the Finals, under the brightest lights in the city, and all it was ending was the hiding.

Her curls were loose and huge and gorgeous, the way she wore them out in the world. She was talking to Mia with both hands, mid-story, Laine and Isla laughing beside them. And then she saw me.

She stopped talking.

Her whole face lit up. Not a careful wave. Not the cool, practiced half-smile she'd worn courtside the night she came to say goodbye. She shot up out of her seat, pressed both hands to her heart, and then blew me a kiss with her entire arm, like she was throwing it from half court.

The cameras found her in about four seconds too.

She saw them. She looked right into the nearest lens, pointed at me, and mouthed, very clearly, that's mine.

Beside me, Trish said, without looking up from her stretch, "I knew I liked that girl."

"I know you do."

"She's going to destroy you."

"She already has." I picked up a ball and bounced it once, twice, three times. "It's the best outcome I've ever had."

From the courtside seats, over the music, I heard Harper's voice carry.

"That was a pivot! I know what a pivot is!"

Morgan nearly fell over laughing.

The game was close. It was a Finals game between two well-matched teams, and those are always close.

I played like someone who had put down a heavy weight.