Page 46 of Unforgettable Player

He’s shaking his head as I talk, cutting into some spaghetti with the side of his fork. “If I can’t be the best, then, what’s the point?”

My heart sinks. I’m about to argue when he says, “What would you have done if you didn’t get into Harvard?”

I shrug. “I applied for other schools.”

“But what if you didn’t get into any of them?”

My skin prickles at the thought.

“If you applied to every college in the country and you didn’t get into any of them, would you have gone to community college instead?”

“I guess, yeah. If that was my only option.”

“You wouldn’t have realized that maybe academia isn’t your calling after all? Like, how the fuck are you supposed to compete for jobs when you couldn’t even get into college?”

I swallow. I don’t like this scenario, but it’s just a scenario.

“You got into Harvard,” I point out. “You got an athletic scholarship because you’re so good at hockey.”

He starts shaking his head before I’ve finished talking. “No, I got an athletic scholarship because I showed promise. I had potential. Having potential and living up to it are two different things.”

There’s no mask when he speaks. He looks down into his food with this utterly dejected expression on his face that kills me.

“And for the record, I wanted to go to BC or BU,” he adds. “I did everything I could to get scouted, but they were never interested in me.”

“Connor—”

“It’s okay,” he says, sliding the mask back into place.

“Con—”

“It’s okay.” This time, he puts his hand on mine and I’m stunned into silence. When he moves his hand away, it takes everything in me not to desperately grasp it back. He carries his plate to the counter and scrapes the leftovers into the trash before putting the plate in the sink.

“You finished?” he asks.

I nod.

“I’ll just wash the dishes before I go.”

Now he’s here, I hate the idea of sitting in the house by myself all night, wondering when my dad will come out of his study. Or sleeping on Scout’s cot while she snores and I imagine Connor in his bed down the hall.

He turns from the sink and catches the expression on my face. “Unless you want me to stay?”

I bite my lip, a war in my head. Yes, fuck, I want him to stay. I want to finish what we started back at his parents’ house. I want to return the favor so bad it hurts.

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

I swallow so loud, it feels obscene. “You know why.”

The look he gets in his eyes doesn’t make rejecting him any easier. Is he really that turned on by the memory of giving me a blow job? Did he love what we did as much as I did? Impossible.

He leans against the counter and puts his hands in his pockets, making his shorts tighten around his crotch.

“Is it because of Scout?”

“Yes.” But not just that. I don’t want to get my heart broken by Connor Ryan. I definitely wouldn’t be the first.