Billionaire, I Am Not Your Wife! novel Chapter 191

Chapter 186: Scouting Sedona

Sedona’s POV

The ball left my racket at an angle I hadn’t planned and was too late to correct at this point.

Claim

That was the thing about playing at this level again-your body remembered the things that your mind forgot and it takes a while before you can get used to it. The topspin came back first to me, about how it felt and looked like, then what came next to me was the footwork, then the reading of the court trying to predict the opponents moves and counter it before it is made.

The reading was what I hadn’t expected to recover so quickly. It used to be my best quality, according to my old coach who had been training me when I was still a teenager.

*You see the geometry before the ball moves,* he used to say to me and I held it to heart. *Most players react. You anticipate and make your moves based on that.*

I hadn’t known how much I’d missed being the kind of person who anticipates things before it happened as I played in a game that once gave me the thrills and satisfaction of being good at it once upon a time.

I knew Maria was there. Dante had told me the night before, the way he always told me things that are important, in that casual tone of his, trying not to make it bigger than it needed to be-*she’s coming to watch, no pressure, just play your game*-and I’d nodded and said of course, and then gone to bed and stared at my ceiling for forty minutes thinking about everything that could go wrong and if I should call Dante and tell him to cancel because I couldn’t do it anymore due to stage fright.

My body. My stamina. The gap in years. The fact that I’d been on an experimental cancer trial two months ago and I wasn’t entirely sure my left knee had fully forgiven me for the hospital corridors and still needed time of its own to heal before I can test it in a public competition in front of everyone without falling flat on my face.

But then morning came, and I drove to the facility, and I put on my shoes, and I walked onto the court- and the geometry appeared, and I stopped thinking about Maria entirely.

The player Dante had arranged for me was named Preet. I didn’t know her full name at the time; I learned it later from the tournament bracket she’d left in the locker room.

She was ranked, clearly. You could tell in the first three minutes of just seeing her and spending time in her presence. She had that quality of absolute economy-nothing wasted, everything precise and straight to the point.

She came hard on me right from the first point. No courtesy games, no easing in. Dante had clearly briefed her about what she should do, treating me as a real opponent rather than someone to be managed.

I was grateful for it.

The first set went to her. I was still finding the rhythm, still negotiating with my body about what I was asking it to do. My lungs cooperated. My legs were slower than I remembered, but the footwork compensated. I won four games in the first set, lost it six-four, and stood at the baseline during the changeover thinking: *alright. Alright.*

Scouting See 1

The second set I won. The third she won.

The fourth I won, and we stood there on opposite sides of the net for a moment-both breathing hard, both a little surprised and then she nodded at me with something that felt like respect, and I nodded back.

Claim

Two sets each. A tie. My body was aching, and my hands were shaking slightly when I walked to my water bottle, and it was the best I’d felt in years

Dante was already walking toward me from the side of the court. And behind him, at a measured distance that said *I’m assessing, not hovering*, was Maria.

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