Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 520(@200wpm)___ 416(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“It’s not a date,” I say in an even tone. “He’s just going to help me with my essay.”
Andie looks like she wants to say something but then gives up, flops back onto her pillow, and raises her hands in surrender. “Okay. But I’m keeping my ringer on, in case you need me to rescue you.”
I smile sweetly. “Who says I want to be rescued?”
She smiles back and giggles. “Noted, girlfriend. Have a good time and write a great essay.”
I slip out into the hallway, feeling every eye on my bare legs, every scuff of my shoes on the grimy dorm floor. The air outside is bright and cold and full of possibility.
I walk to the parking lot, each step louder than the last, my body tuned to the day like a wire about to snap.
I get in my car and drive, hands tight on the wheel, heart already ten miles ahead of me.
5
PRIVATE TUTORING IS SO F*CKING NAUGHTY
LIAM
My house is an apology for my childhood. Glass and steel and pale, flawless wood, stripped of clutter, the exact opposite of the rental apartments I grew up in—every corner tidy, every object curated for maximum meaning. Most of the rooms remain unused because in general, I live in the library: floor-to-ceiling shelves groaning with books, sunlight knifing through the tall windows, laying stripes over leather spines and the battered refectory table I use for a desk. Even the air smells expensive, the ozone sting of polish layered with dust, coffee, and whatever else the previous night left behind.
I pour coffee and tell myself it’s just caffeine that has my pulse in the red. It isn’t. I’ve spent the last hour stalking my own perimeter, opening and closing drawers, arranging pens on the tabletop like a man waiting for a parole officer instead of a gorgeous twenty-year-old co-ed.
There’s a line I am not supposed to cross. Every part of me rehearses stepping over it.
This is how it goes: Simone arrives, nervous but sweet, in a skirt and a top calculated to short-circuit every vestige of academic discipline. She sits, legs crossed high, hair swinging, the smell of her—something floral and compelling—spilling through the room before her voice can. She thanks me for meeting outside campus, calls the house “cool,” and tries not to stare at my diplomas or the view or the certificates on the wall. She’s terrified and arrogant and terminally alive. It’s all I can do to stay seated.
I look out the window, wait for the glint of her car in the driveway. I shouldn’t have invited her here. I know the optics, the risk. The university would hand me my own balls if they knew I was meeting alone with the beautiful undergrad, and at my house, no less. But the university library is always loud, and coffee shops reek of burned beans and desperation, and what I really wanted was to see what Simone would do with a private stage, what she would show if no one else could see.
I sip the coffee, taste nothing.
The doorbell rings.
It’s exactly two o’clock.
I move fast, a little too eager. I catch my own reflection in the foyer mirror—blue button-down, dark hair combed but refusing to be tamed, harsh cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. I remind myself to soften my gaze, not to come off as the wolf everyone already suspects me to be. Of course, they wouldn’t be wrong.
When I open the door, Simone is standing there with a tray of cookies balanced on one hand, her other clutching the strap of a canvas backpack tight enough to leave a mark. Her hair is up in a ponytail, which gives her pretty features an air of innocence. The skirt is blue and very short; the white top highlights her big bust, telegraphing the twin shapes of her breasts so openly it feels like a negotiation.
She’s trembling slightly, but covers it with a smile that could pass for innocent if you didn’t know her.
“Hi, Professor Thomas,” she murmurs. “Thanks for inviting me. I brought snacks.”
I step aside. “You didn’t have to do that, Simone.”
She shrugs. “My roomie went crazy, and she said to share the cookies. They taste like magic.”
She follows me inside, pausing to slip off her shoes. Bare feet, toes painted mint green. I can’t help but stare for a microsecond—her feet are perfect, slender, with an arch that makes the tendons in my forearms go tight.
She glances around the main room. “Your house is really cool,” she says, then turns a circle, mouth parted.
“Come in,” I say, beckoning to the right. “My office is here.”
The golden girl steps through the doorway and stops with surprise, blue eyes wide.
“You have, like, a million books. Have you read all of them?”
“No,” I say. “Some are for show.”
She sets the cookies on a side table and moves to the nearest bookshelf. Her fingers run over the leather bindings, stopping at a massive, gilt-edged edition of Ulysses. “Wow. This is, like, a first edition or something?”