I know I did the right reading. I know it.
My breathing accelerates as I rack my brain, trying to figure out how I messed this up.
I’m about to fail the first quiz of the semester and it’s all my—oh my God!
My brain rockets back to the email I received last week alerting me to an error in the syllabus. At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. Mistakes happen all of the time.
But why wouldn’t we have gotten an updated version of it in our class portal?
Why wasn’t the update mentioned in class?
Understanding hits me with the force of an arrow plunging into a bullseye.
This wasn’t a mistake at all. I didn’t mess anything up. I was sabotaged.
Anger pulses within me, like the beat of an angry drum. My blood boils and my jaw clenches as I fight the urge to march down to Sterling’s desk and let him have it. But master manipulator that he is, I know he’d only turn it around on me.
He wants me to make a scene. I’m sure of it. So sure, I’d bet every pretty penny of the inheritance my dad left me. He wants me to throw a fit, to beg and plead.
Well, I won’t give him the satisfaction. I refuse.
Instead, I put my pen to the page, and answer the questions to the best of my ability.
I try not to let it get to me as one-by-one, my classmates hand in their papers and exit the classroom. Minutes trickle by until, eventually, only the two of us remain. The smug grin on his face as I stand from my desk and head his way is all the confirmation I need.
“Tell me,” he says, kicked back in his chair, looking as regal as a king. An evil king.
“Tell you what?” It’s a struggle to control my voice. I want to lash out at him, to scratch him with my claws and wound him with my sharp tongue.
“How do you think you did?”
“We both already know the answer to that, don’t we?”
His grin widens, and it takes my all not to knock it from his face.
“You’re a real piece of work,” I seethe, wondering not for the first time how someone that attractive can be so awful. Shouldn’t men like him have some kind of marker to denote the evil in their blood?
You know very well they don’t, my inner voice cruelly reminds me.
He shrugs before adopting a careless pose. “I hear it takes one to know one.”
“For a grad student, you sure sound like a schoolyard bully.”
Sterling tips his head back and laughs. My eyes are drawn to his Adam’s apple, seemingly transfixed by the way it bobs as the tenor of his voice winds itself around me like a toxic fog.
He has the kind of laugh you could live in, get lost in, if only he weren’t so wicked.
“You think you’re so clever, that you can hurt me. But you can’t, Sterling. It’s not possible.” To break me any further, I add in my head.
“Guess I’ll have to try harder.”
“Your loyalty’s misplaced,” I mutter under my breath. This man here before me, he’s so different than the boy I used to know. He’s sharper, more cunning, colder.
While he wasn’t ever particularly sunny, he was still a bright spot for me, because his presence in our home always meant as a reprieve from Rob’s torture.
“What was that?”
“One day...” I sigh and shake my head. “No, you know what? Forget it. I’m not wasting my breath trying to plead my case to you. You’re nothing more than a lapdog. Newsflash, your master is a sociopath.”
I crumple my quiz and toss it down onto his desk before spinning on my heel and hoofing it toward the door. I’m over him, over his antics, and desperately in need of pizza.
Preferably multiple slices with extra cheese, black olives, and bell peppers. And a side of ranch.
He calls my name just as I reach the door. I slow my pace but keep moving. “Have a great lunch.”
Somehow, his parting words sound more like a threat.
Freaking psycho.
* * *
“Stupid, arrogant, no good jackass,” I swear under my breath as I stalk across the campus like a woman on a warpath.
I’m enraged, barely hanging on by a thread, and in serious need of carbs. God help anyone who stands between me and my pizza.
“I’ll show him.”
“Show who?” Stella asks, appearing at my side, seemingly out of thin air.
“Jesus Christ!” I whisper-shout. “Where did you come from?”
“Uh, I’ve been walking beside you for like two minutes.”
“Really?”
“Yup,” she says with a pop of the P. “I showed up right around no good jackass.”
“Huh.” I must have been deep in my feels to not notice my best friend at my side. Which only serves as a reminder of my lacking self-awareness.
No wonder Sterling was so easily able to pull the wool over my eyes; I may as well have my head in the damn clouds.