Page 4 of Worth the Chase

Important.

But it was all a lie because he left the next morning and never talked to me again. And I spent years pining after the one guy I couldn’t stop thinking about, who had clearly never been thinking of me at all.

The worst part was that even though Matthew wasn’t physically here anymore, his ghost remained. Sugar Mountain raved whenever he scored the game-winning goal—or any goal really. They revered him. Claimed him. Held him up in such highregard that you would think he’d saved an entire country from ruin or something.

But Matthew O’Grady was no hero. He was a typical male athlete who slept around with every woman he laid eyes on and didn’t care who saw.

And trust me, I saw it.

Leo used to print out all of Matthew’s exploits and leave them for me on my bed. I’d begged him to stop, but he’d told me that he was doing it formy own goodand that I needed to rememberthe kind of guythat Matthew was.

With friends like that, who needed enemies?

“I thought he was your best friend?” I snapped with tears in my eyes.

“He is, Isabella. But you’re my sister. And sister trumps friend, okay? I just want you to get over this crush.” He said the words softly, but they still caused me pain.

“I am over it. I don’t need any more of your help. Please. Please stop.”

The tears started falling then, and my brother looked at me like I was the one who had wounded him somehow instead of the other way around.

“I can’t. I need you to see the kind of guy he is.”

“And what kind of guy is that exactly?” I asked through my tears.

“The kind who doesn’t fall in love. The kind who sleeps around. I’m not saying this to be cruel, Bella; it’s just the truth. Matthew isn’t relationship material. Never has been. Probably never will be.”

“It’s not like I’m marrying the guy,” I said even though I’d daydreamed about it at least a hundred times.

Leo barked out a laugh. “Exactly my point. Matthew isn’t the marrying type. And you, sweet sister, most definitely are.”

I opened up my mouth to argue, but it was no use. Even though I was way too young to even think about getting married, I knew he was right. Eventually, I wanted a husband and kids.

After our conversation, I thought Leo would stop, but he never did.

Each day after school, I’d come home to a new article waiting for me on my bed. A new headline. A new picture of Matthew and some gorgeous woman who didn’t look anything like me.

So, when I’d first heard that Matthew was officially retiring from playing in the NHL, my heart had literally skipped a beat—before I chastised it and reminded it that we were over our unrequited childhood crush. He could move back home to Sugar Mountain, and I’d be unaffected by his presence. All those past years of wanting him, wishing that he’d at least give me the decency to let me know he was thinking about me, had evaporated into thin air at some point during his seven-year absence. He’d never left my thoughts completely, but at some point, it’d started hurting a lot less.

I didn’t need Matthew O’Grady in my life.

And I learned I was perfectly okay without him in it.

But the universe must have started laughing in her mockery of me because the second that man had landed back in town, he wouldn’t leave me alone.

And, good God, the grown-up version of Matthew was even more gorgeous than the teenage version had been. His body had filled out, muscles in places that looked ridiculously good on him. Not to mention the scruff on his face when he didn’t shave for a couple of days. Matthew had morphed into a man who deserved to be in magazines.

He showed up at every shift I worked at the saloon. No matter how many times I ignored him, gave him the cold shoulder, or plain out asked him to leave, he always refused. He sat his fine ass in a barstool and stayed there all damn night.

And now, here he was, at his brother Thomas’s wedding—in a damn suit, no less—begging me to go home with him. He was buzzed, of course, which was nothing new to me. Matthew was always drinking. Take that fact out of the equation though, and I still would have told him no.

The guy the town adored might have been back in Sugar Mountain, but he was different somehow. I’d gotten pretty good at reading people over the years, and he was no exception. Matthew might have spent his time acting like the life of the party everywhere he went, all happy and fun-loving, but it was all a front, hiding something deeper. This man was sad. It was written all over his body. And I found myself wondering how no one else seemed to see it. Or did they simply ignore it because it was easier that way?

“Just one night, Bells,” he whined, but I still refused to make eye contact.

Those blue eyes of his really did something to me, poking at the soft spot I so obviously still held for him.

I knew myself well enough to know that giving in to Matthew physically would probably ruin me on some level forever. Especially if it wasn’t anything more than a one-night stand, like he kept suggesting. There was no way that I could emotionally handle that. Any box where I’d compartmentalized my feelings for him would come busting apart at the seams, forever shattered.

---