Chapter 153: The Ringer

The taxi pulled up to what could charitably be called a basketball court.

Charitably.

If you were feeling generous. If you’d had a few drinks. If your standards for "court" had been lowered by years of disappointment and a general acceptance that life wasn’t always going to give you regulation-size anything—more like a cracked concrete parking lot that had lost a fight with entropy and was now moonlighting as a hoop dream graveyard, complete with weeds growing through the fissures like

nature’s middle finger

to human ambition.

Phei stepped out, paid the driver—who looked at him like he’d just asked to be dropped off at the gates of hell and handed him exact change—and surveyed his kingdom.

Cracked concrete.

Faded lines that might have been white once, back when optimism was still a thing people believed in—probably around the same era as dial-up internet and honest politicians.

Two hoops that had survived what appeared to be multiple assassination attempts, their nets more hole than net, their backboards wearing rust like battle scars from a war no one remembered and everyone lost.

Beautiful,

Phei thought.

Absolutely fucking beautiful.

Because this place? This modest, beaten-down, forgotten-by-God rectangle of concrete outside Paradise’s gleaming walls?

This was

freedom

.

No one here knew his name. No one here knew he was the Maxton charity case, the punching bag, the reject who’d somehow clawed his way into a penthouse and a girlfriend who could buy this entire neighborhood for pocket change and still have enough left for a private island shaped like her initials.

No one here gave a single solitary shit about Paradise or its Legacy families or its politics or its endless, exhausting hierarchy of

who-fucked-who

and

who-owned-what.

Here, he was just the hot guy who showed up four days ago and turned out to be

disgustingly

good at basketball.

Which was its own kind of problem, actually—because nothing says

"blend in"

like dropping 40 points in a pickup game and making grown men question their life choices.

"YOOOO!"

The shout came from across the court, where five guys in mismatched jerseys were warming up—and by "

warming up,

" Phei meant

"standing around arguing about whose turn it was to buy drinks after, with occasional half-hearted stretches that looked like they were auditioning for a bad yoga video."

"HE’S HERE! THE

RINGER’S

HERE!"

That was Max who somehow always had a new excuse for why he couldn’t guard the post—bad knee one day, "spiritual reasons" the next, once claiming his horoscope specifically warned against physical exertion

and

dairy.

The man is a walking medical miracle—every part of him hurt except his ability to

invent

bullshit.

"FINALLY!" That was DeShawn, already jogging over with a grin wide enough to land planes on. "Bro, we was ’bout to forfeit. Kenji grandma got sick again."

"His grandma gets sick a lot," Phei observed.

"Man, Kenji grandma been

dyin’

every Tuesday for three months straight. That woman got more lives than a cat

and

a better healthcare plan. At this point, I’m startin’ to think she’s fakin’ it just to get out of watchin’ his sorry ass play." DeShawn reached him and clapped a hand on his shoulder—

Phei’s entire body went

rigid

.

Just for a second. Just a flash of something cold shooting down his spine, his skin crawling where DeShawn’s palm pressed against him, every instinct screaming

wrong wrong get your hand off, get it OFF—

He forced himself to breathe.

Forced the tension out of his shoulders.

Forced his face to stay neutral, maybe even slightly amused, like he was just a normal person receiving a normal friendly gesture from a normal friendly guy.

Swallow it.

Just swallow it.

If there was one thing Phei hated more than all the other things he hated the most, it was being

touched

.

Physical contact made his skin want to crawl off his body and find a new owner—one that hadn’t spent years learning that hands only ever brought pain. Made him want to flinch away, to create distance, to build walls so high and so thick that no one could ever reach him again.

But these guys had been

good

to him.

Real

good. The good that didn’t come with strings or smirks or the constant reminder that he was less than them.

They’d welcomed him without questions. Let him play without judgment. Treated him like he belonged instead of like the walking charity advertisement he was back in Paradise.

So he swallowed the flinch.

Swallowed the panic.

Swallowed the memories of hands that had never been kind.

And smiled.

Because that’s what normal people do.

And for once, he wanted to pretend he was normal.

Anyway, it has been four days now.

Four days of showing up unannounced, and they’d welcomed him like he belonged. No questions about where he came from or why a guy with purple eyes and designer cheekbones was slumming it on their broken court.

Just

"you play?"

and

"which team you want?"

and

"damn, Pretty Boy got handles!"

They’d been nothing but friendly.

Friendly.

The word tasted like expired milk—technically harmless, but you still gagged a little.

He could swallow the discomfort. Could endure and embrace wholeheartedly their camaraderie for an hour. A price he had to pay for the low profile. For the calm. For the chance to be someone other than Phei Maxton, Paradise’s favorite

punching bag

—the kid who’d been everyone’s emotional support trauma dump for a decade.

And it wasn’t like they meant ill intentions.

That was the thing.

That was what made it

bearable

.

DeShawn wasn’t trying to hurt him. Max wasn’t sizing him up for weakness. These touches were just...

human

. Normal. The casual physical vocabulary of guys who’d grown up in a world where a clap on the shoulder meant friendship, not

threat

.

One hour,

Phei reminded himself.

You can handle one hour.

"You ready to make these fools cry?" DeShawn was asking, oblivious to the war Phei had just fought and won inside his own skull—a war that had more casualties than most real ones.

The other team—five more guys in equally mismatched everything—looked over at Phei’s arrival.

And

smiled

.

Not the nervous smile of prey recognizing a predator.

The excited smile of competitors who’d finally gotten what they wanted.

"Oh, hell yes," one of them called out. Tall guy, shaved head, arms like he’d been lifting since the womb. "Pretty Boy showed up. Now it’s a real game."

"Pretty Boy"

was the other nickname they’d given him on day one.

Phei had tried to be offended. Had failed. Because honestly? After seventeen years of "charity case" and "reject" and "that Maxton kid", being called Pretty Boy felt like a fucking promotion.

From "human doormat" to "aesthetically pleasing threat."

Career advancement at its finest.