Beyond the Six-Month Bet

Everyone at that party bet I'd dump the guy with the scar inside six months.

Today is day one hundred and eighty. The last one.

And right now the smartest man I have ever met is sitting on our living-room floor, drunk, practicing how to say goodbye to me. Because he thinks he lost too.

He thinks I picked him on a dare. That's the story that went around campus: pretty girl, ruined genius, a stupid little bet with an expiration date stapled to it. Everyone believes it.

He believes it.

Here's what none of them know. I didn't chase that boy for a whole semester because somebody dared me to. I chased him because I had already decided, years before he ever learned my name, that he was going to be mine.

There's a reason I will never let him go. A reason he still doesn't know.

That part comes later.

Right now he's got an empty can in one hand and my name in his mouth like it cuts him, talking to the dark doorway like I'm already gone.

"Am I not" His voice snags. "Am I not enough, like this? Just me. Only me. Is that so much to ask?"

Oh, genius.

You didn't lose the bet.

There was never a bet to lose. You were the plan.

Chapter 1

I didn't fall for Rhys. I hunted him.

Three confessions. That's what it took to catch the coldest, smartest boy at UW, and I'd do all three again.

The first one, I cornered him in the little garden behind the library.

He heard me out with the patience of a man reading a parking sign. Then he lifted his wrist and checked his watch.

"This isn't a funny joke," he said. "And you've now cost me fifteen minutes. Move, please."

Cold. Dismissive. Spine like a ruler.

Except his ears were on fire. And his knuckles had gone white around his book, every tendon standing up like he was holding on to the edge of something.

I filed that away.

The second confession, I stopped asking and started haunting. Got his class schedule off a guy in the CS department and planted myself in the seat beside him, lecture after lecture, chin in my hand, pen spinning, staring.

He took beautiful notes. Focused. Untouchable.

For about four minutes. Then the pen slowed. Then his jaw did a thing, biting down on a smile he didn't want anyone to see. Then a flush climbed his neck and just stayed there.

He hadn't written a word in a while.

I slid a note onto his desk. Blushing? You really should pay attention in class.

He went rigid. Beautifully, helplessly rigid, and didn't look at me once for the rest of the hour.

It took him less than a week to break.

Empty lecture hall, everyone gone the second the dinner bell rang, the whole room going gold with the last of the sun. Just the two of us.

"What is it you want," he said. Not a question. A man laying down his weapon.

I hopped up onto a desk and let my feet swing.

"You're a little slow for a genius, you know that?" I grinned. "I'm chasing you. Obviously."

"I already turned you down."

"You turned me down. I'm still chasing. Those two things can live side by side." I leaned in, close enough to watch his pupils blow wide. "What, you don't like being looked at? Careful. I charge for that."

"What... charge?" Barely a whisper. Somewhere between terror and hope.

"One kiss. I get one, and I'll leave you alone."

I closed the gap slow, until there were maybe two millimeters of air left and both our breaths were living in it.

"Just one," he said.

"Whatever you say, Boy Scout."

And I erased the two millimeters.

When I pulled back his eyes flew open, heart going like a fist on a door. My forehead was still resting against the soft hair falling into his.

"So," I said, against his mouth. "You want the second one or not?"

Chapter 2

He nodded.

Just a small one, chin dipping toward me like his body had answered before his brain got a vote. Then, in the last possible second, the brain slammed the brakes.

He shoved back off the desk. Grabbed his pen, his notes, his bag, all of it at once, cramming everything in like the room had caught fire.

"I've paid what I owe," he got out. "I have to I have to go."

He was almost through the door when I called it.

"Rhys."

He froze like I'd flipped a switch. Held there a beat. Then turned his head, barely, giving me his profile.

"I like you," I said, letting him hear the grin in it. "Also, your left arm and left leg are moving together. You might want to fix that before you hit the hallway."

I said I wouldn't stalk his classes. I never said a word about the rest of campus.

He'd signed up to volunteer for the museum's open week. One favor later, so had I.

Found him the second I walked up. Everyone else in twos and threes. He stood at the edge alone, eyes down, somewhere far away.

The girls beside me were not subtle.

"Isn't that Rhys? Gray hoodie. The CS one. Supposedly a monster at code."

"I heard he's a total loner. Skips anything with people in it."

"He looks kind of grim, honestly. Barely talks. Please don't put me in his group."

Grim. Sure. That's what they call it when a boy's too busy holding himself together to perform warmth for strangers. Keep passing him over, ladies. Saves me the trouble.

"Did you hear he's got this huge scar across his"

"So he has a scar. Look at that profile. Push the hair back and he'd be unreal. And a guy like that? Falls once, falls forever. Smart, loyal, gorgeous. You'd really pass?"

Across the crowd, the boy in question felt me looking. Turned his head. Found me.

His lips parted. Actual shock. It was adorable.

I smiled at him, easy, and tapped one finger to my mouth. Then I mouthed it slow, so he couldn't miss a letter of it. So. Sweet.

He read it. I watched it hit like a live wire, watched him snap his face away, watched the red start at the edge of his ear and bleed all the way through.

They split us up to hand out flyers. I got a street in an older neighborhood, all retirees who wanted to talk, and I was done in twenty minutes.

I was about to go find him when the sky cracked open.

One clap of thunder and the dry pavement went dark, the wet spreading fast, and then it just fell, a solid gray sheet of it, pinning me under an awning with nowhere to go.

My phone buzzed. The organizers, telling everyone still outside to find cover and sit tight.

So much for getting to him today.

Chapter 3

The rain came down like a beaded curtain off the edge of the awning. Steam rose off the wet pavement. The street had emptied out.

Then a gray shape at the corner. Umbrella up, head turning, looking for something.

The second he spotted me he locked on and came straight across, long strides, not slowing for the puddles.

Rhys.

Half of him was soaked through anyway, the umbrella no match for rain that came in sideways. His cuffs dripped. He stopped a careful arm's length away, like he hadn't decided whether he was allowed any closer.

"You got assigned to the mall," I said.

His face went red. His breathing had gone uneven somewhere on the walk over.

"It was really coming down," he said quietly.

He'd been worried. So he'd walked out into a storm to find me. He didn't say it. He didn't have to.

Something in my chest went soft and warm as the steam.

Naturally, I couldn't leave it alone.

"All this fuss over me," I said. "Don't tell me one kiss and you're already gone on me."

His hands twisted in the hem of his hoodie. He took a long time.

"Before this goes any further, there's something you should know."

He lifted his hand. Pushed the wet hair off his forehead, slow, like it cost him.

A scar ran the length of his brow and down past the corner of his eye, pale and raised against skin like white jade.

"I'm disfigured." His voice stayed level with effort. "When you said you liked me, maybe you didn't know. And I'm not interesting company. You'll get bored of me fast."

He snuck a look at me, caught my eyes, flinched his away.

"So if you want to take it back," he said, to the rain, "that's fine."

I didn't answer right away. His color drained. His teeth found his bottom lip, and something bleak and small crossed his face.

I stepped in. Freed the crumpled fabric out of his fists and slid my hand into his big, half-curled one. Laid my other palm flat on his chest, right over the thing hammering behind his ribs.

"If it's this," I said, "I already knew."

His heart stuttered under my hand.

"I'm not taking anything back. It was never your face I wanted."

I traced the scar up through his brow, light as I could.

"The stubborn you. The quiet you. The brave you. The you that lights up over things nobody else understands. Even this." My thumb moved along the old line of it. "Especially this. All of it. I like all of it."

I lifted his hand and pressed it to the side of my face, tipped my chin up, and grinned.

"So. Rhys. Care to kiss the girlfriend you just signed up for?"

He bent, finally, and set a kiss at the corner of my mouth, light as a feather deciding where to land.

Third time was the charm. The rain stopped. I walked home with a boyfriend.

And here's the thing nobody warned me about the coldest boy at UW.

In private, he is a menace.

Chapter 4

To the world, he was an ice prince. In private, he was a problem, and he knew the exact wire in me that wanted to reach over and pull.

On the stairs behind the little park. In the dead corner of the library. On the dark field after they cut the lights.

In lecture, the professor's favorite, the untouchable prodigy, rattling off proofs without a stumble.

Ten minutes later, pinned to the wall of a stairwell nobody used, eyes gone glassy.

Having a boyfriend was good for me. Especially this one. Especially the way he'd force out something sweet through his own embarrassment, the way he'd surface halfway through and drag himself back to sanity, jaw tight, ears scalding. Every time, the mean little spark in me caught and roared.

I was so far gone that even at dinner with friends I sat there thumbing at my phone, grinning at our text thread like an idiot.

"Wait, they're still together?" someone said.

"Together? She's reporting in. He's got her on a leash and she likes it."

"Dating a bookworm doesn't get old for you?"

I lifted my chin. "Old. You'd know. You're a pack of players and forever-alones. You don't understand what it is to have a home."

They threw up their hands, laughing, and shooed me out. No taken women allowed.

By the time I got back to the apartment we shared, he was coming out of the bathroom, towel in his hair.

He'd pushed it back off his face, and there it was, the clean line of his forehead, the whole elegant shape of him. He heard the door and looked over, eyes dark and bright at once, and that scar that should have marred him just made him look a little dangerous instead.

I dropped my bag and launched at him, arms around his waist, face in his chest, undone by how unfair it was that a person could look like that.

I climbed him. Kissed his forehead, his eyes, the scar.

I woke sometime in the dead of night.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed. Not touching me. Just watching me sleep, one hand loose at his side, and on the nightstand my phone lay face-up, screen glowing with a notification neither of us had opened.

His back had gone rigid.

"Rhys?" I mumbled.

He turned. Whatever had been on his face was already gone, smoothed flat.

He lay back down and pulled me into him. "Got up for water. Go back to sleep."

On the very edge of sleep, I burrowed into him and slurred it out. "Rhys. I really do like you."

The breathing above my head sped up. And in the last second before I dropped under, I heard him say it to himself.

"If you coax me like this, I'm going to start believing it."

A pause.

"And if the day ever comes that you throw me away, I"

A long breath, let out slow.

I found the text the next morning. From Brett, one of the crowd from the night before, the one who'd asked whether dating a bookworm got old.

Sent at some dead hour. No greeting, no lead-in.

Brett: [It was only ever a bet. Don't get too invested.]

Chapter 5

Weird guy, I thought, and put the text out of my head.

I should have kept it there.

Graduation was breathing down our necks. I'd landed an internship at the Seattle Ledger, running on no sleep to turn it into a full-time desk once I walked. My thesis sat half-defended.

Rhys had gone the other way. Meridian had seen his senior project and thrown a number at him most people don't see until forty, plus bonuses that stacked per project. He worked from home. He barely had to leave the couch to out-earn every professor we'd ever had.

So our hours flipped. I was gone. He was there.

I came home too late too often, and rather than wake him I'd crash in the guest room, or facedown on the couch. I always woke up in our bed anyway, tucked in, carried there sometime before dawn.

The morning stuff got cut. I used to crawl all over him first thing, sticky and smug, until the red climbed his face. Now I had time for one kiss on his cheek before I was out the door.

Our text thread told the whole story.

Him: [Where are you? When are you home? Did you eat? Tell me what you want, I'll have it ready.]

Him: [It's late. How are you getting back? Want me to come?]

Me: [not yet. don't wait up.]

Me: [crashing at the office probably. night.]

He started counting. I didn't see it for what it was then, but I see it now: the way he'd ask the date like it mattered, the way something wound tighter in him every week, like a man watching sand run out of the top of a glass.

One night he wouldn't hear otherwise. He was coming to get me.

Nadia and I stood at the curb in the wind, both waiting on our guys.

She spent a solid ten minutes mourning an intern's paycheck, then swore up and down: "The second I've got money, first thing I do is rent a room and a couple of gorgeous men for the girls."

I snorted. "Your boyfriend's okay with that?"

She faltered, then doubled down. "What's wrong with hiring a few pretty boys? Girls can't unwind? We each pick one. You go first, my treat. Whatever your type is, I don't care what it costs. I've got it mapped out. You like the sweet, attentive younger guy, I like the big sunny golden-retriever type, and we each"

"Nadia."

"Just pick our"

A hand landed on her shoulder from behind. Her boyfriend, face like a storm, her full name grinding out of him. "Nadia."

She got hauled off going "ow, ow, ow."

I was busy being relieved I hadn't said anything incriminating when I saw who was standing beside him.

Rhys.

Dark brows pulled into a hard knot. And underneath the cold, plain as anything on the face he thought no one could read: hurt.

Chapter 6

The sweet, attentive younger guy.

He said nothing the whole ride home. Just drove, brow knotted, radiating wounded silence. If he'd had ears they'd have been flat to his skull.

My brain was wrung dry from a fourteen-hour day and I fumbled the fix.

"Nadia was just running her mouth. The sweet-younger-guy thing, that's not even a thing, I don't"

His ear twitched. Listening.

"I swear. I stopped being into that type ages ago. You know me. My taste changes fast."

Wrong. So wrong. The words were out before my brain reviewed them.

The ear that had just perked up drooped again, and this time the hurt went all the way down, lashes lowering, throwing little fans of shadow on his cheeks.

We got home late.

I came out of the bathroom to a dark living room. He'd left one small hall light burning, a runway straight to the bedroom.

The bedroom door stood open a crack, warm gold spilling through it.

I pushed it wider.

He was propped against the headboard in nothing but a robe, chest half-bared, the clean lines of him lit low and gold, skin like something carved. One leg crossed loose over the other. A book in one long-fingered hand, and he was actually reading it, water still beading in the hair at his forehead.

He set the book down, slow. Turned his head. The lamplight cut him into something unfair.

The dangerous-younger-guy comment was apparently forgiven. His voice came low and unhurried.

"Done in there?"

Reader, I held out as long as any woman could be expected to.

I pounced.

After, wrung out, half gone into sleep, I felt him fit himself against my back and set his teeth, gently, at the side of my neck.

It went straight through me. I came half awake.

"What," I mumbled.

He was quiet a long time. Then, low, into my skin.

"Am I gentle?"

"Mm?"

The arm across my waist tightened.

"Am I gentle. Am I attentive. Does he have to be younger." A breath. "What's wrong with the same age."

Another silence, longer.

"Men out there are filthy," he said. "None of them keep themselves for anyone. If you ever want to rent a pretty boy for the night." He pressed closer, all warmth and weight and something underneath it that wasn't quite steady. "Rent me. Whatever you want to play, I'll play it."

I was already sliding under, and I hummed something back without meaning much by it, and felt him crowd in behind me, big and sulky and grieving over nothing at all.

"Just me," he said, to the dark. "Isn't that enough?"

Chapter 7