“What are you doing?” she asked.

“This is what help looks like.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to be indebted to you.” She pointed another finger at me and stepped back. “I know how you work. I get it. You do things for students and they have to pay you back in some sick way.” Opportunity cost. Benefits. Deals. They were the foundation of my life.

“I’m not prostituting people.” I held out my blazer. “There’s not a string attached to this. I’m not expecting anything in return. Take it.”

She just kept shaking her head at me.

My hand fell. “What?”

“Why do you act like that around Caroline?” she suddenly asked.

I read into her question. I heard: Why do you like her? Caroline was a typical WASP girl. She always looked at me with predatory gaze, silently asking: What use will you be to me? Will I marry you some day and take all your fucking money?

But Rose Calloway was different. She was fashionable. But not a sorority girl. She was a genius on paper. But not a team player. She was quick to loathe others. But not against loving.

She was a complicated equation that didn’t need to be solved.

I didn’t even have time to respond. That’s how fast Rose moved in her state of irritation. She set her hands on her hips and mimicked me from earlier that day. “You ride well, Caroline. I saw you at the equestrian event last week. How’s your mother?”

“I was being kind.”

“You’re different around certain people,” she told me. “I’ve known you long enough from academic conferences to see it. You act one way with them and another with me. How do I know who the real Connor Cobalt is?”

You never will. “I’m as real with you as I can be.”

“That’s complete bullshit,” she cursed.

“I can’t be you,” I told her. “You leave a trail of bodies with your glares. People are afraid to approach you, Rose. That’s a problem.”

“At least I know who I am.”

We had somehow drawn towards each other. I towered over her, taller than most men and built like an athlete. I never hunched. Never recoiled. I wore my height with pride.

She raised her chin to combat me. I pushed her to be the best that she could be.

“I know exactly who I am,” I said with every ounce of confidence I possessed. “What unsettles you, Rose, is that you have no idea what kind of guy that is.” I stepped closer and she stiffened. “If people stare at me and see my problems, then I’m useless to them. So I give them exactly what they want. I am whomever or whatever they need.” I held out my blazer again. “And you need a fucking jacket.”

She reluctantly took the blazer but hesitated. “I can’t be you,” she said. “I can’t internalize all of my feelings. I don’t understand how you can do that.”

“Practice.”

Our eyes met for an extended moment. There was so much between us that I wasn’t ready to uncover right then. I wasn’t prepared for the deep conversations that she would force me to have.

Rose Calloway couldn’t stand me because of what I was—a guy who wanted to reach the top. The irony was that she wanted the same thing. She just wasn’t willing to do what I was to get there.

She slipped on my blazer that dwarfed her frame. “What part of you do you show me?” she asked.

“The best part.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you have nothing real to say, Richard, then why speak at all?”

I couldn’t form the words to reply with what she wanted. I spent years building barriers and defenses. I could take care of a woman better than any other guy could. But my mother never taught me how to love. She taught me about stocks and history and different languages. She made me intelligent.

She made me logical and factual.

I knew sex. I knew affection. But love? That was an illogical concept, something as fictional as the Bible, Katarina Cobalt would say. When I was a child, I thought love belonged in fantasy with witches and monsters. It couldn’t exist in real life, and if it did, it was just like religion—only there to make people feel good.

Love.

That was fake to me.

And I nearly rolled my eyes. There you go, Connor. That’s something fucking real. That’s something from the heart.

“Rose,” I began. And she turned to look at me. And her gaze was like the depths of hell. Ice cold. Bitter. Tumultuous and pained. I wanted to bear it all. But I couldn’t show her all the cards I held to do so. I couldn’t let her in. I’d lose the game first. And it had only just begun. “You’re going to do great.”

And that was it.

She was gone.

Through a friend of a friend, I learned that Rose Calloway was accepted to the Honor’s Program. I learned that she denied the request to attend Penn. For whatever reason, she chose Princeton, our rival college.

Six months later, I started to date Caroline Haverford. Not long after that, she became my girlfriend.

It was a life that I saw coming.

It was one that I was prepared for.

There was nothing spontaneous or alluring about it.

At nineteen, everything was just practical.

Five Years Later

You know the stories where the strong, brawny man struts into a room with his head high, his chest puffed, and his stocky shoulders pulled back—he’s the king of the jungle, the big man on campus, the one who quivers girls’ knees. He carries an air of unwarranted superiority for the pure fact that he has a dick, and he knows it. He expects the girl to go tongue-tied and agree to his every demand.

Well, I am living that story right now.

The man settles into a seat at the head of the conference table (instead of the chair nearest me) and just stares in my direction.

Maybe he thinks I’m going to be that stupefied girl. That I will cower beneath his deep gray eyes and his combed dishwater blond hair. He’s twenty-eight, stained with Hollywood elitism and self-righteousness. When I first talked to him, he name-dropped actors and producers and directors, waiting for me to go slack-jawed and dopey. “I know so-and-so. I did a project with what’s-his-face.”

My boyfriend had to grab the phone out of my hand before I cursed at the Hollywood exec for irritating the shit out of me.

He finally speaks. “Do you have the contracts?” His chair screeches as he leans back.

I pull out the stack of papers from my handbag.

“Bring them here.” He motions to me with two fingers.

“You could have sat beside me,” I retort, standing on two chunky heels with brass buttons, military-inspired and part of the new Calloway Couture collection.

“But I didn’t,” he says easily. “Come here.”

My heels clink across the hardwood, and I make the perilous catwalk up to Scott Van Wright.

He props one ankle on his thigh, his finger to his cheek as he unabashedly peruses my body. From my slender legs, to the hem of my black pleated dress with sheer quarter-sleeves, and to the high collar that frames my stiff neck. He traces my dark-glossed lips, my rose-blushed cheeks, and bypasses right over my pissed-off eyes, spending an extra moment fixated on my chest.

I stop by his legs and throw the contracts on the table in front of him. They slide off the polished surface and land on his lap. One stapled stack even slips to the floor. I smile wide since he has to bend down awkwardly to reach them.

“Pick that up,” he tells me.

My smile fades. “It’s underneath the desk.”

He cocks his head, giving me another long once-over. “And you dropped it.”

He cannot be serious. I cross my arms, not responding to his request. He just sits there, waiting for me to comply.

This is a test.

I’m used to them. Sometimes I even dole them out myself, but this one is going to lead me nowhere good.

If I bend down, he’ll establish this strange power over me. He’ll be able to command me in the same way that Connor Cobalt can force people to do his bidding with simple words.