After Amnesia, I Took Back Everything I Gave My Football Star Boyfriend Chapter 08

After Amnesia, I Took Back Everything I Gave My Football Star Boyfriend Chapter 08

“I heard you were the one who had that trending topic about Caden and me taken down.”

“What? Were you jealous?”

After returning from my business trip, I threw Leon’s old teasing words back at him during a private pool night hosted by a friend.

I knew he had probably done it because he hated seeing Caden use my name for publicity.

We had been competing with each other for as long as I could remember.

Leon stood beside the pool table, his long fingers wrapped around the cue.

The warm light overhead fell across his sharply defined profile.

He looked up at me with a helpless expression in his eyes.

“You’ve always wanted to beat me.”

“Congratulations. You finally did it.”

“You’re probably the only person I’ll ever lose to.”

“Erin, you’re the one person I can never say no to.”

Nora immediately looked as though she had figured something out. She grabbed her boyfriend and pulled him farther away from us.

I still didn’t understand.

Leon usually seemed relaxed and careless, but once he entered competition mode, he never made mistakes.

He was the kind of genius people couldn’t help envying.

In college, he earned both a football scholarship and admission to business school. After entering the professional league, he even founded his own sportswear brand.

My father had always favored my younger brother and never acknowledged my abilities.

He always said that no matter how accomplished I became, I would eventually just get married.

That was why I had treated Leon as my rival since we were children.

He was the most exceptional person my age I had ever met.

If I was going to compete with someone, of course it had to be the best.

As I studied his profile, I suddenly remembered a conversation I’d had with Nora years ago.

Back then, the daughter of another prominent Pack family in Chicago had nervously admitted that she wanted to marry Leon.

Her father refused.

“The Carter boy is exceptional in every way, but there are far too many rumors about him. Not long ago, a woman even showed up at the training facility with a positive pregnancy test.”

At the time, I had sighed.

“How much longer is Leon going to keep living like this?”

Nora had stared at me for a long time, as though she had no idea how to answer.

“Do you really think he could stop those families from constantly arranging potential mates for him if he didn’t deliberately ruin his reputation?”

I immediately sat up straight.

“You mean there’s someone he likes?”

“Is she an ordinary woman whose family isn’t powerful enough for the Carters to accept her?”

Nora remained silent for a long time.

“You only read stories about strangers falling in love. Don’t you ever read childhood-friends-to-lovers stories?”

I shook my head firmly.

No.

Stories like that made it too easy to think about Leon and me.

We were rivals. I had absolutely no interest in him.

That conversation had sounded perfectly ordinary back then.

Now, as it resurfaced in my mind, it seemed to carry an entirely different meaning.

I looked at Leon again and realized for the first time that I was intensely attracted to the man I had treated as a friend for more than a decade.

I immediately looked away.

I had probably been working too hard lately and finally lost my mind.