Chapter 79

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I managed to avoid Mr. Personality in the locker room. It was odd how suddenly depressed I was, considering I had just excelled at theultimate international swimming competition of the year. My name would be on the news again. It would be in the record books, right beside the already famous ones. Was all of that negated by the fact I had just been shoved to the back of the professional sports closet?

“Hey.” Damn! It was him. “Can we get together? Please?” He touched the back of my neck. He remembered. “When you flying out?” The smell of all kinds of pricy bath products seduced and also irked me.

“In the morning.”

“Me too. What say we…spend the night together?”

I thought back to what Coach Keller had just said. Ripping out Mathias’s heart was tempting. So was capturing it. “Yes,” I said, before I had too much time to think.

“For real?” He seemed surprised.

“You chickening out?”

“No way.”

“We can’t leave together, though. Coach doesn’t want me outed.”