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That had been his fault, not hers. “Is that why you went for the Rising Star?”
“I thought, if I won, one of the schools would reconsider.” He sighed. “They didn’t.”
“Your adviser didn’t suggest that you do it?”
He shook his head.
“And you’d already been rejected everywhere?”
A nod.
“So you ruined my hard work, then broke my heart, to preserve your ego?” Allison’s voice was as dull and worn down as she felt.
Cringing, he loosened his hold on the steering wheel to run a hand over his face again. “That’s the thing. The breaking your heart part… I did thatforyou.”
Allison couldn’t hold back her stunned squawk. These were some serious mental gymnastics. She folded her arms. “You broke up with me for me? I’m not quite sure how that works.”
“I wanted to make sure you won.”
He was speaking in code. Allison wanted to shake the truth out of him. Or maybe she just wanted to shake him so she’d stop feeling the flutters that kept invading her heart every time his voice hitched or his eyes skittered around as errantly as his nervous hands usually did. “Wonwhat?”
“Everything. I wanted you to have everything.” He shook his head. “No, I wanted you togeteverything. To take it the way you ought to. The way you deserved. And I was afraid… I was afraid you couldn’t do that with me hanging around. That maybe all this failure of mine was contagious. I didn’t want to infect you.”
Allison’s breath caught in her throat. This whole time he’d been afraid he’d holdherback? How was that possible? It didn’t make sense with everything she thought she knew about Colin Benjamin. Everything she thought she understood about that afternoon at the Christmas Diner. “Colin—”
“I figured, junior year, free of me, free of everything, you’d be able to apply to the Rising Star again and win for sure.”
Allison snapped her fists into her lap, the anger his earlier words had numbed seeping back in. “Yeah, well, I didn’t.”
Surprise, and something softer, flared in his gaze. “Why?”
“I just didn’t.” The loss to him and the breakup that had followed in its wake had wounded her enough to make her not want to try, but she couldn’t tell him that. Or wouldn’t, at least.
He seemed to sense her guardedness. “If it helps, the year after graduation, I applied to another round of schools. And, again, I didn’t get in anywhere. Not even Brown.”
“Wow.” Two rounds of rejection had to be brutal.
“Yeah.” Colin shrugged. “When I reached out to one of the schools for feedback, the department chair said my application was too passé. It looked like every other application from a white, straight, middle-class dude—my words, not hers. My grades and scores and recommendations were good, my writing sample and letter were fine,but nothing made me stand out. And genre fiction is becoming too popular a field these days.” He bit his lip and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing violently. Constructive feedback was never easy, but especially not when your confidence was high. And back then, Colin’s had been as high as the moon. He must have felt so lost.
Sympathy tugged at Allison. She wished she could swat it away, but it spread, like maggots. Like rot. Like an infection she knew would have no cure.
Colin cleared his throat. “My aunt is practically famous in the world of college admissions, and she offered to throw some of her weight around to get one of those rejections revoked—”
Allison grimaced. “What’s up, white privilege.”
“Exactly. I told her no. If I couldn’t get in on my own, what was the point? It didn’t mean anything. But it was clear I had to do something different because my application wasn’t making me stand out. I had to reimagine myself as a student. Start from scratch. And, for a long time, the realization left me rudderless. Thankfully, though, Granddad’s house is full of books.”
Beneath the tension in his face, a brightness sparked. “He’s a carpenter by trade, but a historian at heart. His house is basically a library. Full of all these beautiful mahogany shelves he built himself. And every one is crammed from end to end with hardback books. Granddad does not believe in softcovers.”
“A wise man, indeed,” Allison quipped.
“And there are globes and maps everywhere, and reproductions of historical artifacts. He even has a suit of armor.”
Allison’s medievalist heart leaped. It was her dream to one day possess one of those, tucked into a corner of her office. She’d call it something absurdly mundane like Steve or Ethel.
“His name is Ned.” Colin cracked a grin.
Damnit. It was perfect. “Is Ned what inspired this sudden passion for medieval lit?”
