“Really?”
“Refer back to my earlier comment. I was all hockey, all the time.”
“So who was the girl?”
Tank leaned back in his chair, wiping his mouth after cleaning off his plate—and hers. “She was a girl on my hockey team. Kayla. Girl had a wicked slap shot, hot as shit. One night after a game, I offered her a ride home. We found a quiet country lane and took a different kind of ride in the back seat.”
“Of course you did.”
“Turned out she was hot for my crossovers. We hooked up a few more times before the season ended, and that was that,” he said. “So what happened to your first love?”
“I went off to college and he didn’t. We said we’d do the long-distance thing, but in the end, I guess he got tired of being alone. He started going out with one of my friends.”
Tank nodded when the waitress came by with a water pitcher. She filled their glasses before moving on. “That must have hurt.”
She took a sip of water. “At the time, I was devastated because I found out from a girlfriend that he was cheating on me with another friend of ours, who didn’t realize we hadn’t officially broken up. When I called him, he confessed and said things were never going to work out with us being so far apart. I begged him to change his mind, which makes me cringe when I think of it now. Hindsight really is twenty-twenty. Because all those tears, while claiming I’d never find anyone else, wasn’t because I was genuinely devastated but because I was nineteen, and teenagers feel things way too deeply and stupidly.”
“Isn’t that the truth? So who was boyfriend number two?”
McKenna tilted her head. “Do you really want to hear all of this?”
He frowned. “Of course, I do. I wouldn’t ask otherwise. Besides, this is the first time you’ve answered my questions with some details. I’m getting tired of playing twenty questions with you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Our time together has had a purpose,” she reminded him.
He raised his hands. “I’ll concede on that point if you tell me about guy number two.”
McKenna sighed. “Camden was very sweet, and even romantic, but the second guy, Dale, was…” She shrugged. “I think every girl in her life has to date the asshole. Just so they learn what they don’t want in a guy.”
Tank’s brows furrowed. “What kind of asshole are we talking about?”
McKenna wasn’t sure what to make of the sudden change in his tone of voice. It was deeper and even a little bit angry. She was strangely touched by the idea that Tank Phillips might feel protective of her.
“He was a nice guy at the beginning. We met my sophomore year in college. He was a junior. For the first year, it was a decent relationship. We went to parties, hung out in his apartment with his roommates, did all the typical college life stuff. Somewhere around the beginning of his senior year, there was a shift. He was suddenly wildly jealous—like, irrationally so—and he started this very subtle campaign of emotional abuse. Making sly comments meant to make me feel self-conscious or bad about myself. Eventually, it was a lot less subtle.”
“What did he do?”
“He started accusing me of being a slut, either because of what I was wearing or because he thought I was looking at some other guy. It took me some time to wiggle out of his web because his earlier, more subtle digs had taken root and my confidence was at an all-time low.”
“Guy sounds like a prick.”
“He was,” she agreed. “A total prick. One night, I hit my limit and finally woke up, finally realized I wasn’t the problem. He was. I dumped him. That was followed by a firestorm of drama because he didn’t take it well. Spent hours beating on my apartment door, demanding we talk. He blew up my phone for weeks. All the things.”
“He didn’t physically hurt you, did he?”
She shook her head. “No. It took some time, but I guess he figured out I meant it when I said we were done. After him, I wasn’t in any hurry to date anyone else, so I spent the rest of my college career single.”
“I can see why. So, if I’m counting correctly, there’s one guy left to go.”
McKenna toyed with her fork, cursing herself for being a fool. She should have foreseen where this conversation was headed, but she’d dived in anyway.
The last thing she wanted to do was talk to Tank about Eddie, because try as she may, his rejection still stung, even after more than a year. Probably because, while Dale had revealed himself to be a total douchebag, Eddie had been more like Camden…a good guy. Or at least, she’d thought so.
Her confidence had rebounded after Dale because she could see their issues had been driven by his jealousy, not by her actions. Which was why Eddie’s punch had blindsided her and knocked her out. Now, no matter how many pep talks she tried to give herself, no matter how many times she looked in the mirror and told herself she was pretty and smart and any guy would be lucky to have her, she still couldn’t quite believe that was true.
Because Eddie, whom she’d genuinely loved, hadn’t believed it enough to stay with her.
More than that, he’d felt the need to look elsewhere.
