The Secret

Chapter 20

Sky POV:

After making both free throws Paige and I make eye contact and I nod at her, signaling that I'm ready for this.

I'm not sure what my facial expression looks like but all I know is that I mean business right now. I'm getting this revenge on ohio state and nothing is going to stand in my way, I'm leaving here with that trophy in my hand.

We are doing a great job communicating as a team and our defense is on point. We've caused them 2 shot clock violations and 3 turnovers in the last 5 of their pocessions. You can tell how bad we all really want this and how much we are coming together right now to get the job done.

I am still filled with anger at what Rikki did and want to get revenge but I don't want to do anything that will jeopardize me getting thrown out of the game or us losing, so right now I'm just staying focused on winning.

Paige dribbles up the court and passes to me at the corner, Rikki is guarding me and I step back and shoot, draining the three and keeping my arm up in the air, signaling that it went in, as I jog back down court smirking at her, as she looks at me angrily.

They inbound the ball to Rikki and she jogs up the court and tries passing it to her teammate but I step in and intercept it and go on a breakaway down the court. Rikki is following quickly behind me, so I stop right under the basket, which she doesn't expect and she goes flying in the camera men below the basket, not being able to slow down in time, and I dribble the ball behind my back and through my legs, to show off a little, before I toss it up for the easy layup as I blow her a kiss when she stands up.

The game is currently 78-75 as Rikki goes to inbound the ball after my made layup and when she passes it in, her teammate loses control of the ball when Nika's hand deflects it,  and the ball starts rolling out of bounds. I start running after it trying to save it so we don't give Ohio State the ball back, but I don't want to step out of bounds because I will be unbalanced.

So I do the only "logical" thing I can think of and grab the ball balancing on one foot right next to the out of bounds line, and before I fall over, I throw it right into Rikki's stomach so it reflects off of her and out of bounds and she crouches over holding onto her stomach as the ref blows the whistle.

I look over at Paige and let out a little chuckle. Because I won't go down to Rikki's level and literally kick somebody in the face, but instead I will play fair and "accidentally" hit her in the stomach with the ball with a lot of force. Oops 🤷‍♀️.

There is 10 seconds left in the game so we can practically feel the victory on the tip of our fingers as the whole arena starts standing and getting loud cheering for us and our bench starts to stand up as well.

I take a breath as the ref hands me the ball to inbound as we get into position and toss the ball into Paige. Since there are only a few seconds left Ohio State's only option is to foul us, so they all start rushing towards Paige to foul her but before they can I step back onto the court and she passes it to me and they immediately start chasing after me.

I start hearing the bench chant down the seconds as I try to out run the whole team.

"3!"

I quickly pass to Nika when I get trapped and once they guard her she passes back to me.

"2!"

At this point I know we've won and I start running towards my dad, dribbling the ball.

"1!"

The second the game buzzer goes off I throw the ball into the air, not even caring where it goes as the bench starts clearing onto the court towards us and the air is filled with confetti and the the cameras and reporters make their way onto the court.