The formal committee dinner at Mory's left a sour taste in Silver's mouth that had nothing to do with the cuisine. The dessert sampler Americus had enthusiastically insisted they all try was objectively perfect—delicate chocolate soufflé, raspberry tart with crystallized ginger, crème brûlée that cracked under the spoon with satisfying precision. But Eli's quietly delivered words clung to her consciousness like burrs caught in fabric, impossible to shake loose no matter how hard she tried to dismiss them.
Maybe I already do.
The arrogance of that statement should have infuriated her. Instead, it lodged somewhere under her ribs where logical arguments couldn't reach it, creating an uncomfortable awareness that maybe he saw things she'd been trying to hide from everyone, including herself.
She wanted to shove the entire conversation aside, file it under "hockey player ego" and move on with her carefully constructed Yale existence. But Monday morning offered no such mercy.
