“Why’d you change it?” she asks.
The truth of my change in surname is not just the need for privacy once I came back from New York and started college here, but what happened before that. All the many things that made me feel like leaving Kellan Drake behind. Things Cleo can never know—lest she should find out how the two of us are linked.
I would never put her through that.
“Something happened,” I say slowly. “Something that made it so... I couldn’t be that person anymore.”
“Was that something an assault charge?” she whispers.
My stomach clenches as my pulse pounds behind my eyes. “What do you know about that, Cleo?” I rasp.
“I Googled you.” She looks nervous—and guilty.
“And you read I was suspended from the Trojans for a bar fight.”
She nods quickly.
I nod with her, trying to decide what if anything to add to that.
“What else did you read?” I need to know if any of the articles mentioned Lyon. His situation.
“That’s all. You had some killer stats when you were a senior at private school. You played first string as a freshman after Mark Waldon tore his ACL.” I nod, because those are facts. “And?”
“And then you got into a fight that night. You weren’t drunk—that’s what the story said—but you were at a bar in L.A. at like... closing time. And you got into it with this guy, this other player. It said he lost his hearing,” she says in a whisper.
I grit my teeth. Fear swells in me. Worry—about what Cleo thinks of that.
“It happened in January,” she adds, as if I need reminding.
“Yes.”
Her green eyes widen just a little. “So you really did it?”
“Do you think they lied?” I snap.
She shrugs. “Sometimes people do. Or there are disputes. Someone remembers one thing, someone else remembers something different. Keeps lawyers in business, you know?”
Not in my case. Everything the papers reported about that night was true. Franks did lose his hearing in his left ear. Like both Lyon and me, he never returned to the field. My father found a way to settle out of court.
Franks runs a vineyard now. And the truth of that story is, it took me years to feel sorry for what I did to that fuck.
I nod at her comment about lawyers. I’m starting to feel twitchy now. I want this subject dropped—but Cleo doesn’t notice. She shifts her stance a little, digging her hands deeper into the pockets of her fluffy robe, and tilts her head.
“So you moved here and changed your name?”
I shrug. I wipe my face again. “Looks like it.”
“Did you? Is that how it happened?” she asks. Her tone tells me everything I need to know about the likelihood she’ll let this drop.
I smooth the irritation off my face and try to appear forthcoming. Or like not a fucking liar who’s deceiving her about almost everything.
“I did some traveling first—but yes,” I say. “I left USC and ended up here.”
I turn back toward the treadmill, eager to get back on it and run from those green eyes. After last night—after I wrapped my arms around her and used her heat to warm myself—after she hugged me in the kitchen—and after this line of questioning—I’ve decided it’s a bad thing that the universe brought the two of us together in person. I should send her packing right now, but I’m finding I’m not strong enough. If she learns more about my past, I’ll have to find the strength somewhere. Until then... For just a little longer...
I step onto the treadmill and start the belt back moving, even as part of me is waiting for her words.
She walks over by me. I keep my eyes down as I start to run. She wraps her hand around the treadmill’s grip bar. “Kellan, I’m so sorry. That sucks.”