Page 113 of A Summer of Stars

“Explain it to me, then.”

She bit the inside of her cheek and shook her head.

“You can’t keep everything buried, Luna. All it’s doing is suffocating you. Why can’t you talk to me?”

“Because I’m ashamed! I’m ashamed that you’re going to find out how much I gave up and had to suffer for because I wasn’t enough. That maybe my love wasn’t enough or maybe that it was suffocating—issuffocating. I had devoted everything to him. I gave up everything for him.I was giving up my ranking in tennis for him.My time, my sanity, my happiness, mycareer, and then he cheated on me. I tried so hard to be perfect, and it wasn’t good enough. What does that say about me?”

He cheated on her?I resisted the urge to turn around and hunt him down, trying to focus on her only.

“It says that your heart is big enough to love someone who didn’t deserve you. He never deserved you in the first place,” I told her. “He doesn’t deserve a single part of you.Heisn’t enough foryou, Luna.”

Tears filled her eyes. Instinctively, I stepped forward to catch them. I felt hollow knowing how much pain she went through, and how much she had loved someone else. How much she had sacrificed.

“Are you still in love with him?” I asked. My pulse ticked in my ears like a clock, waiting for her response.

“No.” Her voice was wet with a laugh. Her cheeks rose under my hand. “He’s kind of the worst.”

“I’m more than happy to go back out there and take care of the left side of his face,” I offered.

She smiled again, her tears lessening. “That’s pretty tempting. But I think one punch was enough.”

I nodded reluctantly. “Does he have anything to do with the PR stunt?”

She nodded. “He did an interview, months after our divorce, saying that I was verbally abusive and negligent. I assumed it was to get my attention because I refused to hear him out anymore. But the press had a field day with it. There was a recording of one of our phone calls released where I was screaming at him, and they used it as proof of what he said. I had lost everyone’s respect as an athlete. I just hid because I couldn’t get away from the noise. The PR stunt was my team’s only option to maintain my last sponsor.”

It all made sense. The constant worry of people’s opinions and having to play perfectly. The fake smiles, the flawless appearance, the subtle reactions to wins. She didn’t want to give them anything else to criticize.

I ran my thumb along her cheekbone. It took every muscle in my body to keep it at a steady rhythm. “Why did no one question whether he was lying? Why did no one on your team make a statement about the cheating?”Why did no one help her?

“If I mentioned infidelity, no journalist would’ve stopped until they found the girl he slept with. They would’ve moved on to ruining her career next.”

I loved how much she cared, but I had no sympathy for this girl. “Who is she?”

“Another tennis player.”Jesus.

“Someone needs to know how much of an asshole he is. There must be something we can do. Something I can do.” I would personally pull apart every brick in his home to make him feel as alone and scared as she had.

“There’s nothing I can do. I’m already doing everything I can so that people don’t hate me.”

“Nobody hates you,” I argued.

“They do; you don’t get it.”

“The people that matter in your life love you.”

She shook her head insistently.

“Is this why you couldn’t answer me on the beach?” I asked.

“Kieran.” She parted her lips and then closed them, pacing again. “I’m not what you want.”

I couldn’t accurately explain how far from the truth that was. But I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I could. “What doyouwant?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “I want you to leave me alone.”

“Do you love me?” The words fell out before I could collect them. I was fourteen all over again. I wanted to write her name in my notebook, put her picture in my locker, get a glimpse of her in the hallway. My love for her was scrawled into the lines of my palm, the same way the impression of a racket was embedded in hers. And now I was standing in front of her, my heart in her hands.

“There’s so much you still don’t know about me, and my career—my career, it’s hectic, and it takes so much out of me, but it comes first.”