I suppressed the urge to flip her off. “Heard you got a scholarship to UCD. What’s that about?”

Molly Gable, perhaps for the first time in her entire life, actually blushed. “It’s nothing major. I applied for a scholarship, found out yesterday I got it.”

“A scholarship? In what?”

“Sports,” she said, smiling softly. “Hockey.”

I found myself grinning at her, patting her on the back. Hockey had always been Molly’s great love and she had, for so long, simply existed in Connie’s shadow. To know that her talent was finally going to be recognized sparked a sense of pride in me I had not anticipated. “Fair play, Gable. Always knew you had it in you.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Don’t lie. You never noticed me on the pitch. You were always too busy stalking O’Reilly.”

It was unlikely, I realized, that Molly and I could be capable of holding a single conversation without mentioning Connie at least once. I considered pointing that out but instead, I found myself frowning at her. “I actually have a question for you.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You said before…ages ago, now….You were telling Orla about one of your hockey practices. You said something I don’t really remember, but something about Connie, I dunno, losing her shit at Saoirse? When I asked what happened you tried to backtrack but I was just wondering, you know, what really happened?”

Molly raised an eyebrow. “Where’d this come from?”

“I was just wondering. I um…I’d just like to know what happened.”

“I dunno, Ryan…” She clicked her teeth. “Why does it matter?”

Why did it matter, indeed. I shrugged, lowering my gaze. “I don’t know. I’d just like to know.”

“Well, long story short, then. O’Doherty made some comment about you. I don’t remember what it was, obviously. It was months ago. But Connie…Connie completely lost her fucking shit. She waited until after most of the others left after the match and cornered her and her friends, came up with all this shit she had on them that she threatened to expose if they ever spoke about you like that again. Threatened to have them expelled and all this other crap. Honestly, it was out of fucking nowhere. Genuinely scary to see her like that, she was livid.” Molly’s lips quirked. “And kinda hot, if I may say so myself.”

“I didn’t know,” I murmured, frowning. “I didn’t know about any of that.”

“Well, how could you? You avoided each other like the plague.”

And of course, speak of the devil and they shall appear.

Connie entered the room and our eyes locked almost instantly. She didn’t smile, or so much as change her expression in any way. We simply looked at each other for a drawn-out moment and I let her be the one to break away first when Aidan approached her. I downed the last of my drink and made to head for the door to the hallway, overwhelmed, suddenly, by the music and the heat and the drink, but Molly’s hand wrapped around my wrist.