Page 17 of Scoring Position

She arched an eyebrow. “You were serious enough to tell me about it.”

“To be fair, I didn’t so much tell you about him as you walked in on us.” He arranged himself and his phone at the bar so he could eat. Tara was only eleven months younger, and they knew far too much about each other, which explained why Tara thought she had a right to pry. He’d probably set a bad precedent when he came out to her first.

Tara pulled a face. “Don’t remind me.”

“That’s what you get for not calling first.”

“I was surprising you for your birthday!” she squawked.

He hummed and took a bite. It tasted like victory.

“Anyway, stop trying to distract me from the point.”

“Whatisthe point?”

“The point is that you broke up with your boyfriend, who was a totally nice guy. And not, like, the internet kind of nice guy. Why?”

This was dangerous territory. “Uh, because he wasn’t my boyfriend, and we’re no longer in the same country, let alone area code?”

She blew out a breath and arched her eyebrows. “Lots of people do long-distance.”

Well, she was asking for it now. “It’s not really worth doing long-distance for a casual physical relationship.” He had told her at the time that he and Mathieu weren’t serious.

“So it wasn’t because of yourthing?”

Something told Ryan he’d fallen right into her trap. “Mything?”

“The thing where you don’t even try if you think you’re going to fail.”

Fuck.She wasn’t pulling punches. “Just because I haven’t met anyone”—Tara huffed, unimpressed—“doesn’t mean that I’mrefusingto.” He’d learned the hard way that he could have hockey or he could havetwu wuv. Only one of them paid the bills.

“Ryan?” Tara sighed in exasperation. “Can you hear me now?”

She always said that when he spaced on a call. He shoved another bite of sandwich into his mouth to cover the fact that he hadn’t heard what she’d said. He probably didn’t want to hear it anyway. “Mmm.”

“As I was saying. You weren’t always like this. I remember when you had that boyfriend at Shattuck. You were nuts about him. And then in college… nothing.”

“Tara….” Ryan had had enough media training to hold a pretty good poker face. It had gotten him through his first difficult weeks with the Fuel, when reporters wanted to know how he was adjusting to learning a new system (it sucked; Vorhees was even stingier with praise than Ryan feared), his new apartment (he hated it; the furniture was uncomfortable and it didn’t have a balcony and he missed going outside), getting along with his new teammates (they were angling for a story about him and Nico, and he wasn’t giving them shit).

The poker face that had gotten him through all that and more, including a comment on a 7–0 loss, did absolutely squat against his sister.

“Thereissomething you’re not telling me!” she crowed. Then she grimaced. “Sorry, I’m assuming that since you haven’t told me, it sucks and you’re in your man pain about it.”

He sighed. If he didn’t want to spend the rest of the season fielding questions, he might as well tell her now. Shoving the plate aside, he said, “Josh.”

Tara blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Notnothing. Josh. A software engineering major. We met my junior year.” Josh was smart and bitingly funny and not afraid to hang out with Ryan’s jock friends, and he had a killer smile.

He also had a way of looking at the world like it owed him something and he was going to collect, but Ryan had liked that about him. It had only made sense to move in together their senior year. Ryan thought they were happy, thought they were on the same page… “And then he acted like I was stupid for thinking he’d want to stay with me when I moved to Montreal. And maybe I was.”

It was a sanitized version of the story, but good enough for Tara, he hoped. He could barely look at her when he said it. He didn’t want to see her pity.

Unfortunately that didn’t get him out of hearing it. “Ryan….”

He took a sharp breath and cut her off. “I always knew hockey would mean moving around.” Josh shouldn’t have rubbed Ryan’s borderline talent in his face, but hey, Ryan knew he could be a bit of a dick. “It’s hard to date with that hanging over you. Imagine that first date. ‘By the way, I could be traded at any time. I’d have to move to another city and I’d have no say in it. So if you commit to me, keep your bags packed.’” He paused, searching for levity. “Well, I guess I could if I wanted a sugar baby.”

For once, Tara allowed it. “Funny.”

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