Chapter 27 No More Pretending
N ico Reyes had faced match point with less fear than he felt standing outside Lena Hart’s dorm.
Which was pathetic.
Accurate, but pathetic.
He stood beneath the entrance light with his hood up, his braced wrist tucked into the front pocket of his sweatshirt, and his left hand curled around his phone like it might give him instructions.
It did not.
His phone had never once helped him become less of an idiot.
The screen showed his last text to Lena.
Can we talk?
Her answer had come three minutes later.
Where?
He had typed four different places.
The media room.
No.
Too many ghosts.
The coffee shop.
Absolutely not.
The parking lot.
He had already had enough emotional damage near cars this week.
Finally, he had sent:
Court One. After dark.
She had replied with one word.
Okay.
That was twenty minutes ago.
He was now outside her dorm because apparently Court One had sounded brave until he imagined her walking there alone after everything that had happened. Threats. Anonymous messages. Someone watching them kiss in the dark.
So he had come here to walk her over.
Not because he was trying to make a gesture.
Not because he had been standing in the shower after the hearing, replaying the way she had said, Because it wasn’t mine to spend, until the words had carved something open in him.
Not because the sight of her in that hearing room—steady, fierce, refusing to use his pain even when using it would have fixed the story faster—had made him realize he had punished the wrong person with the sharpest parts of himself.
No.
He was here because of logistics.
Safety logistics.
Very normal.
Completely emotionally neutral.
The dorm door opened.
Lena stepped out.
And Nico forgot every lie he had prepared.
She wore jeans, white sneakers, and a soft blue sweater that made her look warm in a way he did not trust himself around. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, still slightly damp like she had showered recently. No makeup, or not much. Her face looked tired.
Beautiful.
Hurt.
His fault, partly.
That thought landed like a fist.
She stopped when she saw him.
For one second, they just looked at each other beneath the dorm lights while students moved behind the glass doors, laughing and talking and carrying laundry baskets like the world was not currently balanced on the edge of one conversation.
Lena folded her arms loosely. “You’re early.”
“I was nearby.”
Her brows lifted.
He deserved that.
He sighed. “I didn’t want you walking alone.”
Something moved across her face.
Soft first.
Then guarded.
“You could have said that.”
“I’m working up to direct communication.”
“Ambitious.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
A tiny smile almost touched her mouth.
Almost.
Then it disappeared, and Nico remembered why they were there.
The apology sat in his throat like broken glass.
He had said sorry before in his life. To coaches. To teammates. To his mother when he missed calls. To Sofia when he got too sharp because stress made him forget she was trying to help.
But this was different.
This was not apology as damage control.
This was standing in front of the girl he had hurt and admitting he had used pain like permission.
Lena looked toward the path. “Court One?”
He nodded.
They walked in silence.
Not the old silence.
Theirs had changed.
Before, silence between them had been sharp. Challenging. Full of all the things they refused to say because saying them would make the fake relationship harder to survive.
This silence was heavier.
It carried the memo.
The kiss.
The hearing.
His words in the lobby.
Congratulations.
Her face when he said it.
He would remember that one for a long time.
The campus was cool beneath evening shadows, the brick paths silvered by moonlight and the occasional glow of lampposts. Somewhere near the student union, music played from an open window. A group of students crossed the quad in a burst of laughter, then disappeared behind the library.
Nobody looked at them twice.
That felt impossible.
For weeks, every glance had been a camera, every whisper a match waiting to be struck. Now, for one brief walk, they were just two people moving through the dark with too much between them.
When they reached the tennis complex, Nico unlocked the side gate.
Lena noticed. “You have a key?”
He held it up. “Team captain privilege.”
“You’re not team captain.”
“Jace loses keys. I find them. Nature assigned roles.”
That almost did it.
Her mouth twitched again.
He wanted that smile so badly it scared him.
They stepped inside.
Court One waited under the floodlights, bright and empty, every white line clean against the blue surface. Nico had spent years thinking a tennis court was the one place where life made sense. Serve. Return. Point. Repeat. Rules painted right under your feet.
Then Lena Hart had walked onto this court at midnight and ruined the illusion.
Now the place held too many versions of them.
The first honest conversation.
The bad serve.
The almost-confession.
The kiss by the fence.
The click in the dark.
He stopped near the baseline.
Lena stayed several feet away, near the service line.
Distance.
He hated it.
He respected it.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “So.”
Brilliant.
He had asked her here and now his vocabulary had decided to fake its own death.
Nico dragged a hand over his jaw. “I owe you an apology.”
“You said that.”
“I’m trying to actually do it.”
“Okay.”
There was that word again.
Only this time, it did not give him cover.
It opened the door and made him walk through.
He looked at her.
Really looked.
No room full of administrators. No Jace making jokes. No cameras waiting to turn his face into evidence. Just Lena, standing under the lights, tired and guarded and still here.
That last part nearly undid him.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Her expression did not change.
Good.
He did not deserve easy.
“I’m sorry for the lobby,” he continued. “For saying you got what you needed. For making it sound like none of it mattered because the beginning was ugly.”
Her throat moved.
He kept going before he lost his nerve.
“I’m sorry I read that memo and decided it meant every good thing after it was a lie.”
Lena’s eyes shone beneath the lights, but she did not look away.
“I’m sorry I used the worst thing I could think of because I wanted you to hurt like I did.”
There.
The truth.
Ugly.
Naked.
Necessary.
Her voice came softly. “Did it help?”
He laughed once.
It broke halfway.
“No.”
The court lights hummed above them.
Nico looked down at the line beneath his shoe.
“I thought if I made you the villain, it would be easier.”
“Was it?”
“No.” He looked back at her. “It just made me the guy who hurt you and still wanted you to call.”
Her face changed then.
Not much.
Enough.
Enough to make his chest ache.
“Nico.”
“I’m not done.”
She closed her mouth.
He almost smiled, but there was too much pain in it.
“Also, I’m sorry for deciding what was safe for you.” His hand flexed inside his pocket. “I told myself pushing you away was protection. That if I stayed far enough from you, the mess wouldn’t hit you.”
Lena’s voice was quiet. “It hit me anyway.”
“I know.”
“It just hit me alone.”
The words landed harder than anything she could have shouted.
Nico closed his eyes.
He deserved that too.
When he opened them, Lena was still looking at him, and the worst part was that there was no cruelty in her face.
Only hurt.
He would have preferred cruelty.
Cruelty was easier to fight.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, because the first one had not been enough and the second would not be either. “For that most.”
Silence stretched across the court.
Then Lena dropped her arms.
Not fully relaxed.
But less guarded.
“You hurt me,” she said.
“I know.”
“No, I need to say it.” Her voice shook once, then steadied. “You hurt me because I knew you were scared and I still let that become an excuse for you to cut me open. And I hate that part of me wanted to forgive you immediately because I understood why you did it.”
His throat tightened.
“I don’t want to be the girl who makes pain convenient for everyone else,” she said.
“You’re not.”
“I have been.”
Her honesty hit him in the chest.
Hard.
She looked around the court, at the place where so much had happened because both of them kept coming here when they did not know where else to put themselves.
“My whole life,” she said softly, “I have smiled because it made other people less uncomfortable. My dad. Donors. Coaches. Players. Everyone. Then you came along and saw through it, and I thought that meant you would know not to use it against me.”
Nico’s voice came rough. “I did know.”
“But you did anyway.”
He nodded once.
There was no defense.
Only the truth.
“Yes.”
Lena looked back at him.
For a long second, neither of them moved.
Then she said, “The memo was real.”
His body went still.
“I know.”
“No.” She stepped closer. “I need to say that too. I wrote it. Those were my words. And I am ashamed of them.”
He looked away.
Not because he did not want to hear it.
Because he did.
That was worse.
Lena continued. “At the beginning, I saw you as a crisis. A headline. A difficult athlete who could either ruin my chance or help me prove myself. I hate that. I hate that you trusted me later and those words still existed somewhere.”
His jaw worked.
She came another step closer.
Not too close.
Never enough to force him.
“But knowing you changed how I saw you,” she said. “Not because you became softer for the campaign. Because I started paying attention to who you already were.”
Nico swallowed.
The night court blurred slightly, which was ridiculous because he did not cry.
He did not.
His mother cried during old movies. Sofia cried when dogs got adopted in videos. Nico got angry, silent, useful.
But Lena stood there saying exactly the thing the worst part of him had needed to hear and refused to believe.