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I peered over at him. “Like another date?”
“I guess. Is it a date if Leo is there?”
“Untraditional date, I’d imagine,” I mused. “But I suppose it would be one all the same.”
“Shall we go, then?”
“I know where we can go.” I diverted him to the ice-cream stall with a quick tug on his arm. “I’m buying.”
“If I argue, will I lose?”
“One hundred percent,” I confirmed. “So choose your ice-cream.”
We both ordered, with Ollie choosing a chocolate cone while I went for strawberry in a little tub. The tiny plastic spoon they gave me was utterly useless, and Ollie ended up passing me a little bit of his cone to scoop it up with. It soon went soggy, and I used it to smudge ice-cream on his nose for my own amusement.
He side-eyed me as he used his napkin to wipe it off. “You’ve been dying to do that, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “Ever since I got that stupid little spoon.”
We walked to edge of a small lake. The water had a gorgeous clear surface, and it sparkled under the light as the moon over from the sun.
“You never answered about the hike,” Ollie said hesitantly. “Was that too much?”
“No, I—” I paused.
I needed to be so careful about how I said this. I liked Ollie. I liked him more than I’d thought I did, and I was so incredibly attracted to him, both his looks and his personality.
“You might still leave,” I said softly, looking out at the lake. “If you go back to England, Leo will be heartbroken anyway, even without there being a personal relationship there. I don’t know if I can take this any further with that uncertainty hanging over you, Ollie. I don’t want… a fling.” I turned to face him, but he was focused on the water. “I’m not a fling kind of woman. If I’m going to have a relationship, it has to be a real one that could last and… be… something special.”
He didn’t say anything.
“It’s not that I don’t like you. I do. A lot.” I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Probably more than I should right now. I love spending time with you, and I love seeing you with Leo, seeing how you care about my son… But I can’t bring someone into his life that might end up breaking his heart. And mine,” I admitted. “Equally, if you don’t want to stay here, I don’t want to be responsible for making you stay somewhere you aren’t comfortable.
“And I get it. You’re thousands of miles away from your family, and I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it is to miss out on all the things you do, not to mention how tough it is to not see them. I don’t begrudge you your feelings at all, and if I didn’t have Leo and I didn’t have to think about him, it would be a no brainer. But I do. And I have to think about Leo before me. He loves you enough as it is, and you’re just the cool soccer coach who he thinks is friends with his favorite goalkeeper and can’t toss pizza dough.”
His lips twitched at that.
“I can’t… imagine… how much it would hurt him if he saw you as a part of his family,” I finished quietly, dropping my gaze to the floor. “So as much as I would love to go on that hike with you, I just don’t think that’s an option right now.”
Ollie nodded slowly, then leaned forward and, resting his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands in front of him. “Have you ever thought that the reason I considered going back to England is because I had no reason to stay here? I hated New York. It was too busy. There were too many people. It sucked. And there are no—”
“There are no stars,” I said, staring at the ones that were coming into view in front of us.
“Stars,” Ollie finished, turning to look at me.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry.”
His lips pulled to one side. “Then I had a chance to come here, but there still wasn’t a massive reason to stay. I love my job, don’t get me wrong, but bloody hell. Kids are hard work. Wrangling them every single day sometimes makes me wonder if I’m cut out for this on this scale, but then I see kids like Tom desperately trying to score. Leo, giving it everything he has and then some to be a better keeper. Lewis told me this morning that he was going to try so hard he might break someone’s leg.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh.”
“I told him that wasn’t necessary, but that was the spirit.” He coughed to hide a laugh. “Ultimately, he just really wanted to make me proud of him and the team. There’s something special about the kids I teach that makes me want to stay here and really try. Now that the teams are coming… And I know Seb did that deliberately because he knew I wouldn’t say no…”
