Against the Score

chapter 3

Bakley's POV

I served again.

The ball left my racket with the same sharp crack it always had, but Arthur was already moving.

The return came low and heavy, skidding just inside the baseline. I stretched, felt the old pull under my scapula, and sent it back.

The rally stretched longer than it should have. Every ball carried the weight of last night’s confession and the words Arthur had dropped on the changeover.

Whoever you’re dating doesn’t know you the way I do.

I gritted my teeth and drove the next shot cross-court. Arthur answered with a winner down the line. The crowd rose. Arthur didn’t celebrate. He only looked across the net, expression flat, and walked back to the baseline as if the point had been inevitable.

The set slipped away in pieces.

My shoulder burned. I compensated for the way Arthur had once warned me not to. Arthur saw it.

Of course he saw it. On the next changeover Arthur passed close enough for only me to hear.

“Still shifting early,” he said, voice quiet. “I told you that last night. You never listen.”

I wiped sweat from my forehead with my wristband. “You talk a lot for someone who used to leave notes instead of facing me.”

Arthur’s mouth curved—not quite a smile. “And you talk a lot for someone who needed a new body in his bed to prove he moved on.”

The umpire called time. I walked back to the baseline with the words sitting like acid under my tongue.

I started the next game with more force than control. A double fault. A netted backhand. Arthur took the game in love.

The second set followed the same pattern. I fought, scraped, forced errors when I could, but Arthur played like he had something to settle. Clean.

Precise. Merciless.

On the final changeover of the second set Arthur stopped at the net post.

“You’re playing angry,” he said. “It shows. The person you’re dating must love that temper.”

I met his eyes. “She doesn’t have to love it. She just has to stay.”

Something flickered across Arthur’s face—quick, almost invisible—then vanished. He turned away without answering.

The match ended in straight sets.

Arthur won 6-3, 6-2.

The crowd noise rolled over the court. Arthur raised his racket once, brief, professional, then walked to the net. I met him there because the cameras demanded it.

Our hands touched for less than a second. Arthur’s palm was warm, dry, familiar in a way that made my stomach tighten.

Arthur leaned in just enough for the microphones to miss it.

“I told you I’d finish it.”

My fingers curled against my side. “Enjoy the ranking points. They won’t keep you warm.”

Arthur’s eyes stayed on mine for a beat longer than necessary. Then the corner of his mouth lifted into the smallest, coldest smirk I had seen in years.

“Neither will whoever you’re dating,” he said. “But at least the points are honest.”

He turned and walked toward the exit tunnel. The cameras followed. Interviewers were already waiting in the mixed zone, voices rising with questions about the rivalry, the old “distraction” quote, my new relationship.

I stayed on the court longer than I needed to. The lights felt too bright. My shoulder throbbed in time with my pulse. I had given Arthur every reason to hate me tonight—the public claim, the dig about staying, the refusal to let the past stay buried. And Arthur had taken all of it and turned it into a clean, public victory.

In the locker room the air was cooler. I sat on the bench, unwrapping my wrist, when the door opened. Arthur walked in alone. Most of the staff had already cleared for the post-match interviews. The room felt suddenly smaller.

Arthur stopped a few feet away. The smirk was gone. What remained was colder.

“You didn’t have to invent a girlfriend to hurt me,” he said.

My head snapped up. “I didn’t invent anything.”

“No?” Arthur’s voice stayed quiet. “Then bring her to the next event. Let me see the person who replaced me eight years ago.”

I stood. The space between us shrank.

“You don’t get to ask for that. You left. You don’t get to check whether I’ve moved on.”

Arthur stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell the clean soap and the faint trace of cologne that had never changed. Close enough that the old muscle memory stirred under the hate.

“I left so you wouldn’t destroy your career trying to protect something we both knew wouldn’t survive the rankings,” Arthur said.

“You turned it into a war instead. And now you’re using some stranger’s name like a weapon. Congratul—”

A sharp knock cut him off. The door opened. PR staff filled the entrance, phones already out, voices overlapping.

“Both of you. Mixed zone. Now. They’re asking about the relationship comment and the old interview. Management wants joint answers.”

Arthur’s gaze stayed locked on mine for one more second. The unfinished sentence hung between us, heavier than the match score.

Then he turned toward the door without another word.

I followed because I had no choice.

The hallway lights were harsh. Cameras waited at the end of the corridor. Interviewers were already calling our names. Somewhere in the noise a reporter asked the question that would be clipped and replayed by morning:

“Bakley—will your partner be watching the next match between you two?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

Arthur, walking half a step ahead, spoke first, voice carrying just far enough for the nearest microphones and for me alone.

“He won’t need to,” Arthur said. “There won’t be a next match worth watching.”

The words landed like a serve I hadn’t seen coming. The cameras swung.

The reporters surged. And I stood in the middle of the hallway with Arthur’s back already disappearing into the mixed zone, the loss still burning in my shoulder, the lie about dating sitting on my tongue, and the sudden, sharp certainty that Arthur had just declared something far more final than a ranking exhibition.