a jerk.”
He chuckled. “How was practice today?”
Wrinkling my nose, I groaned.
“That bad?”
“Coach thinks I shouldn’t work,” I told him. “Not like it’s the first time he’d brought it up, but he brought up Dad, and that just...well, you know.”
“Yeah,” he replied quietly. “I know.”
“He did say he thought I had a chance at landing a scholarship if I focused more on playing.”
Sebastian flicked my arm. “I’ve told you a million times you’ve got skill out on the court.”
I rolled my eyes. “You have to say that because you’re my friend.”
“Because I’m your friend, I’d tell you if you sucked.”
I laughed softly. “I know I’m not terrible, but I’m nowhere near as good as Megan or half the team. There’s no way a scout is going to pay attention to me. And that’s okay,” I quickly added. “I’m not banking on that kind of scholarship anyway.”
“I feel you.” His grin started to slip away. His expression turned pensive, and as I watched him, the last of the sleepiness faded away.
I gripped the edges of the blanket, tugging it to my chin. A heartbeat passed. “What’s going on?”
Scrubbing a hand down his face, he exhaled heavily. “Dad...he really has his heart set on Chapel Hill.”
From previous experience, I knew to proceed with caution with this conversation. He wouldn’t talk about his dad a lot, and when he did, he quickly reached the point where he would just shut down about the whole thing. I always thought he needed to talk about it. I totally got the irony of that, since I wouldn’t talk about my dad, but whatever.
“Chapel Hill is a really good school,” I started. “And it’s really expensive, right? If you get in on a scholarship, that would be pretty amazing. You’d also be close to your cousins.”
“Yeah. I know that, but...”
“But what?”
He rolled onto his back and thrust his hands under his head. “I don’t want to go there. I don’t really have a good reason. The campus is freaking cool as hell, but just not into it.”
Knowing that Sebastian was as close to Keith and Phillip as he was to Cody, I figured maybe it had something to do with them. “Where do the guys want to go?”
“Keith and Phillip are hoping to get on at West Virginia University. Phillip really wants to play ball for them. Thinking Keith wants to go there because of the parties.” He paused. “I think Cody is set for Penn State.”
For years, WVU had been the number one party school in the United States, and I was sure it was still up in the top five, so it would be a great fit for Keith. “Do you want to go there?”
“Not really.”
I wiggled down, getting comfortable. “Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sebastian.” I sighed. “You have to know. This is our senior year. You don’t have much time left. Scouts are going to be coming to the games and—”
“And maybe I don’t care about the scouts.”
I snapped my mouth shut, because there it was, the thing I’d been sensing about Sebastian for the last year.
He turned his head toward me. “You don’t have anything to say to that?”
“I was waiting for you to elaborate.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as he stared back. “I... God, even in the middle of the night, in your room, I still don’t even want to say it. It’s like my father is going to pop out of the damn closet and lose his mind. Instead of Bloody Mary, he’d be Bloody Marty.”
I drew in a deep breath. “You don’t... You don’t want to play college ball, do you?”
His eyes closed and several moments stretched out between us. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve always played ball. I don’t even remember a time when I wasn’t being carted off to practice or seeing my mom cleaning grass stains out of my pants. And I like playing it. I’m good at it.” He said it without an ounce of arrogance. It was just the truth. Sebastian had a God-given talent for playing football. “But when I think about another four years of getting up at dawn, running and catching...another four years of Dad basing his entire existence on how the game goes...I want to turn to drinking. Hell, maybe even crack and meth. Something.”
“We don’t want that,” I said drily.
He flashed a brief grin and then it disappeared. Our gazes met and held. “I don’t want to do it, Lena,” he whispered this to me, a secret he couldn’t speak loudly. “I don’t want to spend another four years doing this.”
My breath caught. “You know you don’t have to, right? You don’t have to go to college and play ball. There’s still time to get other scholarships. A ton of time. You can do anything. Seriously.”
He laughed, but there wasn’t an ounce of humor to it. “If I decided not to play ball, my father would stroke out.”
I squirmed closer so our faces were inches apart. “Your dad will be fine. Do you still want to study recreational science?”
“I do, but not for the reasons Dad thinks.” He bit down on his lower lip, slowly letting it pop out. “He has this plan for me. I’d play college ball, then be drafted—second pick. Not first. He’s realistic.” His grin was wry as his gaze slid to mine. “I’ll play a couple of years and then move on to coaching or working with the teams, putting to use the recreational science degree.”
The all-American dream right there. “And what is your plan?”
His eyes were wide, the blue startling and vibrant. “Do you know how much you can do in recreational science? I could work in hospitals, with vets or even in psychology. It’s not all about sports injuries. I want to actually help someone. I know this sounds stupid and cliché.”
“It’s not stupid or cliché,” I insisted. “Not at all.”
A half smile formed. After a moment, some of the light faded from his eyes and he said, “I don’t know. He would flip out. It would be like the end of the world.”
I had no doubt in my mind that Sebastian was correct in that assumption. “But he’d get over it. He has to.”
His lashes lowered. “He’d probably disown me.”
“I don’t know if he’d go that far.” My gaze flickered over his face. “It’s your life. Not his. Why would you do something that you weren’t really into?”
“Yeah.” A brief smile appeared and then he shifted back so he was facing me. “You still hoping for UVA?”
