Real.
The kind of real that didn’t fit with the version of Ledger I’d built up in my head.
He kept going. “I told Coach I’d figure it out, but that was before I saw the numbers. If I move off-campus, rent triples. If I move home, the commute kills my training hours. And my parents don’t have any extra money. I can’t?—”
He stopped.
Just stopped.
Like the words physically caught in his throat.
Ridge swore softly. “You’re not alone. We’ll figure it out.”
Ledger shook his head. “You don’t get it. This was my last real shot. I don’t have family money to fall back on. I don’t have a Plan B.”
My stomach twisted.
Because I didn’t know this.
Well, I didn’t know the full extent of it. And hearing it like this felt like being dropped into an entirely different story than the one we’d always lived in.
“I’m so close, Ridge,” he said. “I’ve been training for this my whole life, and everything is falling apart because I don’t have the money to stay here.”
The ache in his voice turned something in my chest over. Ledger never sounded like that.
I’d spent years assuming Ledger lived in some charmed little athlete bubble with coaches praising him, opportunities falling into his lap, and everything coming easy.
But this?
This was pressure. This was fear. This was someone whose entire future was hanging by a thread.
I stepped back, heart thudding.
I’d never seen Ledger look defeated. Frustrated, sure. Annoyed, frequently. Smug, constantly.
But this was something else.
Raw. Unfiltered. Real.
I shouldn’t have heard it.
I definitely shouldn’t have stood there frozen hiding behind a bush like a creeper.
But I couldn’t stop replaying his voice.
“I don’t have family money to fall back on.”
I thought of the trust fund I despised. The one held hostage behind marriage paperwork. The one I’d never touched.
Yes, I hated it, but it existed. It was a safety net. A choice. A cushion.
Ledger had none of that.
“Everything is slipping at once,” he murmured.
A dull ache in my chest hit me unexpectedly. I didn’t want him to lose everything.
Even if he drove me insane.
