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CHAPTER 5
Kylie
“I should have been able to win that match,” Dylan grumbled a week later as he devoured the dinner I’d cooked. “I guess I’m out of practice.”
I snorted after I’d swallowed a bite of my own stir-fry dish. “Don’t be a sore loser, Lancaster,” I teased. “Did it ever occur to you that I might just be a better tennis player than you are?”
“Never. Not until I lost,” he answered. “I grew up playing the game. I had private lessons when I was younger, and I rarely missed an opportunity to get out on the courts as an adult, either. Maybe that’s why it surprised me so much that I actually lost the match to you tonight. I didn’t lose very often, but now I am willing to admit that you’re an amazing player and that you are better than I am. Where in the hell did you learn to play like that?”
I smiled as I took in his disgruntled expression from my seat at the kitchen table across from him.
I wasn’t sure if Dylan didn’t like losing at all or if it was especially painful because it was a female who had kicked his ass.
My guess was the former. After nearly two weeks of observation, I’d noticed that Dylan didn’t like to be bested at anything. Period. And I’d never heard him imply that a woman couldn’t do anything just as well as a man could.
He was stubborn, which seemed to be a trait we shared, but at least he could admit that he’d been beaten, however grudging that admission might be.
Truthfully, Dylan had surprised me, too, because he was a much better tennis player than I’d expected. He’d had me on my toes to eke out my win.
I shrugged as I took a sip of my water and then put my glass down again. “I’ve been playing since I was a kid,” I explained. “By the time I was fifteen, I had enough points accumulated to qualify for the Junior Grand Slam tournaments.”
He looked at me and lifted a brow. “Then you were beyond just a good player. What happened at the tournaments?”
I sighed and pushed the rest of my food around on my plate absently. “My dad didn’t have the money to send me, but I managed to raise enough money and get sponsorship for the Australian Open. Unfortunately, I got the flu the day before I was supposed to leave for Australia. Two weeks later, I started getting some weird symptoms after I’d gotten over the flu bug. Long story short, I was put out of commission for over a year with Guillain-Barre syndrome. I missed the entire year of competitions, and I was never as good as I was before that happened.”
“What exactly is Guillain-Barre syndrome? I’ve heard of it because Mum once had a friend who had it,” Dylan admitted. “I just don’t know much about it. From what I understand, it’s pretty rare, right?”
I explained that it was pretty poorly understood why anyone developed the disease but that it usually happened after an infection or virus. And that it was a rare disorder where the immune system started attacking the nerves.
“I spent two months in intensive care, and a total of three months in the hospital,” I told him. “After that, it was months of occupational therapy and physical therapy just to get back to normal again. I lost all my physical conditioning and my mojo,” I ended in a lighter tone.
“And your sponsorship, I suppose,” Dylan mused.
I nodded. “There are no second chances for a girl who couldn’t really afford to play competitive tennis in the first place. I’d hoped for a tennis scholarship at UCLA, but I was almost seventeen by the time I could actually play again, and I wasn’t good enough. Plus, I was going to age out of juniors. I was disappointed about everything back then, but I’m not complaining. I’m happy with being a partner in an up-and-coming PR agency now. I love what I do, and I love the team at ACM.”
Every word I told Dylan was true. Maybe my heart had been broken over my lost opportunities as a teenager, but I was truly content with the way my life had turned out now.
“Really?” he asked in a doubtful tone. “You’d rather be doing what you’re doing now than be a filthy rich tennis pro?”
“Who’s to say I would have been successful as a pro?” I questioned him. “All it takes is one injury to end a career. Or some off days during some big tournaments. Nothing was guaranteed. So yeah, I’d rather be where I am than a washed-up pro player who couldn’t reach elite status. It takes a lot of skill and some luck to be at the very top, but just because I didn’t go that direction, that doesn’t mean I don’t still love to play. Really, I have the best of both worlds, right? I can still enjoy some matches and have a career I love at the same time.”
He shook his head as he went back to eating. “Bloody hell, woman, are you always nauseatingly positive? That has to get completely exhausting.”
Since I was used to his cynical sarcasm, I just smirked as I started to polish off my food. “I’m a glass-half-full kind of person now, I guess. Life is short. What’s the point of lamenting over what could have been if I’m happy with my life?”
Dylan Lancaster had been hardened by his own life experiences, and he hadn’t taken me up on my offer to talk about what happened two years ago, so there was still so much I didn’t know about him.
However, he did talk about his treatment occasionally, and it sounded pretty intense, which was probably why he seemed to look less haunted and slightly more upbeat every day.
Most of the time, we just hung out together because he seemed to prefer having company rather than being alone.
Honestly, he wasn’t a difficult man to get along with when I was able to cut through all the bullshit.
Yeah, he’d been an asshole in the past, and he was still derisive. But there was something inside me that could sense the pain he was trying to hide beneath that somewhat jaded exterior.
I just wasn’t entirely sure how to reach that tormented Dylan Lancaster that he didn’t want anyone to see.
“So what happened after your destroyed hopes and dreams of a scholarship and a tennis career?” he asked.
