Maybe he could’ve kept refusing had she continued to be demanding, but the soft, interested plea… It wouldn’t kill him to rehash the past. Maybe it would even throw up an obstacle or two between them. Maybe once she got to know him better, she’d see him differently and back off. Maybe he didn’t truly want that, but it sure as shit would be wiser.

He crossed one ankle over the other knee, balanced his plate on his lap, set his burger down, his mind tumbling over the past, his life, a lot of bad stuff, a lot of things he wasn’t proud of.

“I chose not to go to college,” he finally said, skipping over years of drama. “My high school counselor claimed I could’ve gotten in anywhere—Ivy League, Berkeley, MIT. I narrowed it down to a handful, filled out the applications, wrote the essays. Never sent a single one in.”

When Sierra remained quiet, he glanced at her. She sat there expectantly, head tilted, eyes narrowed, waiting for more. And because he’d always wanted to give her what she wanted, he tipped his head back, sucked in a deep breath, and decided to tell her. What the hell.

“I learned to read early,” he said hesitantly, “before preschool. And math… My mom says I was doing long division when I was four.”

“Wow. You’re one of those.”

“One of what?” he asked, that age-old pit-in-his-stomach feeling ramping up without his permission.

“Smarty-pants.” Sierra smiled, angled her head cutely, a long lock of damp hair falling over her cheek, distracting him from the pit feeling somewhat. “Brainiacs. Know-it-alls. Child geniuses.”

“I got called all those and more,” he said grimly. He’d never let anyone know, back then, how much those names bothered him. Was self-aware enough to understand that letting on that they bugged him would only make it worse, would encourage the names.

“I didn’t mean it as an insult,” Sierra said quickly. “High IQs are sexy.” The dip of her voice as she said that, the flirty sparkle in her eyes—that was sexy.

“Not when you’re seven,” he said, forcing himself to look away. “When you skip first grade and still get pulled out of class to go to ‘gifted’ sessions, people think you’re a freak.”

“Kids can be mean.”

“They came around pretty fast because they wanted me on their team in baseball during recess.”

“You played baseball?”

“My whole family played baseball. When my dad and uncle started North Brothers Sports in the seventies, it was a specialty baseball store. A single location, much smaller, it had nothing but baseball gear. Both of them played in the minors for a couple years. When that fell through for my dad, he had the idea for the store, and within a year, my uncle was cut from his team and they went for it.”