“Depends on who you ask.” He laughed then. “Yeah, I don’t know. When I was a freshman—those first couple of months, being around all the older girls? I probably put more effort into them than I did my classes.”

I grinned, easily able to picture that. “But not now?”

He shook his head. “So where you from?”

Okay. Obviously what changed his ex-player status was something he didn’t want to talk about. Visions of pregnancy scares danced in my head. “I’m from Texas.”

“Texas?” He leaned forward. “Really? You don’t have an accent.”

“I wasn’t born in Texas. My family was originally from Ohio. We moved to Texas when I was eleven and I never picked up any accent.”

“Texas to West Virginia? That’s a hell of a difference.”

Unfolding my legs, I stood and picked up my plate and his bowl. “Well, I lived in the strip mall hell part of Texas, but besides that, it’s kind of the same here.”

“I should clean up.” He started to stand. “I made the mess.”

“No.” I backed away with his bowl. “You cooked. I clean.”

He relented, opening the foiled bread. It did smell wonderful. “What made you choose here?”

I washed the dishes and his little frying pan before answering that doozy. “I just wanted to get away, like you.”

“Got to be hard though.”

“No.” I picked up the pot he used to boil the eggs. “It was incredibly easy to make the decision.”

He seemed to consider that as he broke the bread in half. “You are an enigma, Avery Morgansten.”

I leaned against the counter, my eyes widening and he proceeded to eat half of the loaf. “Not really. More like you are.”

“How so?”

I gestured at him. “You just ate four hard-boiled egg, you’re eating half of a loaf, and you have abs that look like they belong on a Bowflex ad.”

Cam looked absolutely thrilled to hear that. “You’ve been checking me out, haven’t you? In-between your flaming insults? I feel like man candy.”

I laughed. “Shut up.”

“I’m a growing boy.”

My brows rose, and Cam laughed. As he finished off half of the loaf, he talked a little about his parents. I made my way back to the table and sat, genuinely interested. His father ran his own law firm and his mother was a doctor. That meant the Cam came from money, not the kind that my parents rolled around in, but enough that mostly likely paid his rent. He was obviously close with them too, and I envied that. Growing up, all I wanted was for my parents to want to be around me, but with the benefits, the jet-setting, and all the dinners, they’d never been home. And after everything that had happened, the few instances they were there, neither of them could even look at me.

“So you flying back to Texas for fall break or Thanksgiving?” he asked.

I snorted. “Probably not.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Got other plans?”