Tutoring the Player (Campus Wallflowers #1)(69)

“Shut the fuck up. It’s not even ten o’clock. I’m not leaving your twenty-first birthday party before you’re good and drunk.”

“You are.” He stands. “I’m kicking you out.”

He comes around, and we slap hands, and he pulls me into a side hug.

“It’s about to get ugly, anyway.” He blows a breath that puffs out his cheeks, and a half-smile pulls at the left-side of his mouth. “I’ll catch you this week.”





Daisy isn’t upstairs. Dahlia and Jane tell me she went home, but where I find her is in the tree house looking over at Gavin’s party.

“Hey.” I sit beside her.

She rests her head on my shoulder. “Hi.”

“Talk to Violet?”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“You’re freezing,” I say as I run my hands up and down her arms.

“I can’t go inside.”

“Come to my place. You can work things out with Violet tomorrow after you’ve both slept.”

She comes without protest.

I kick off my shoes and loosen my tie as Daisy climbs into bed, still in her dress. It billows around her small frame, taking up half the mattress.

I sit against the headboard, and she lies down with her head against my chest. She looks up at me. “She said things about you. About us.”

I’m not shocked by that, but it picks at something that’s been on my mind all day.

Daisy sits up. “I’m sorry that she hasn’t been fair to you. You have been amazing to me, and I know you don’t like when I say nice things about you, but truly, you are wonderful.” Her eyes fall to her lap. “When we first met, I judged you too. I did. And I’m sorry.”

With a finger under her chin, I lift her face to look at me. “That’s human nature.”

“I still feel bad about it.”

“You don’t owe me any apologies.” My stomach rolls. “While we’re admitting our sins, I have something to confess about when we first met too.”

“What?” Her lips part into a hesitant smile.

“When we first met and you were into Liam, I made it my mission to get in the way of you two any chance I could. He was struggling with hockey, and you came along. A sweet little distraction.” I place a kiss on her lips.

“I was hardly a distraction. He barely noticed me.”

“Not true. He was going to ask you out, but I told him not to.”

“You did what?” Her voice lifts. She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “Why would you do that?”

“I thought if the two of you started dating, he’d lose his head. He was already having a hard time.”

“But…” she starts, brows pulling together. “You told me to ask him out. ‘He won’t say no’, remember? Why would you tell me to do that if you wanted to keep me from him?”

“That was my attempt at doing the right thing, I guess. But I couldn’t even do that. I stopped you before you could. I, uh, didn’t really need a tutor, but it seemed like you were going to finally ask him out, and I thought as long as you were busy with me, it would keep you away from Liam.” My palms sweat. “It was dumb, I know.”

“I’m confused. You wanted to keep Liam and me apart, not because you liked me but because you were afraid that it would hurt his game?”

A lump lodges in my throat, so I nod.

“That’s insane.”

“Not my brightest idea, but it did bring us together.”

“You mean while you were pretending to need my help with school? Who does that?”

Up until this very second, I assumed, or maybe hoped, that she’d find it funny. I can see now how stupid that was. Panic surges through me, but I truly don’t know what to say.

“So all this time that we’ve been hanging out it was just to keep me from him?” Her eyes widen and a pretty flush creeps up her face.

“No, of course not.”

She scrambles off the bed. “What was the plan? To string me along until after the season? To make me fall for you instead? Was any of it real for you?” Her body is shaking now. “Or are you still pretending to like me just to keep me from Liam?”

Fuck, fuck, fuck. “All of it was real. I’m crazy about you. I told you that I fell for you long before I realized it, and I meant it.”

“Then why would you keep something like this from me until now?”

“I tried to tell you once. The night in the tree house. You said whatever happened in the past didn’t matter.”

“I thought you were talking about hooking up with other girls.” She throws her hands in the air, then puts on her shoes and grabs her purse.

“What? I haven’t hooked up with anyone since you and I started hanging out.”

She isn’t even listening to me. I can practically see her thoughts spinning around in her head. “I can’t believe this. Violet was right.”

I don’t know what Violet said about me, and I’m not sure I want to know.

“Don’t go.” I get up and take her by the arm before she can flee. “Everything happened so fast. One minute we were emailing about physics and hockey, and the next I couldn’t get enough of you. I didn’t tell you sooner because I think deep down, I was always doing it for me, not him.”