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But last night, I’d gotten to see him break a little under the pressure, just as I’d set out to, and it had been really fucking satisfying… though not in the way I’d expected.

In fact, nothing about him was as I’d expected.

His perfect girlfriend wasn’t so perfect after all. His perfect father had high-as-fuck expectations. The perfect football star couldn’t handle the pressure of the season opener. The perfect student pulling his perfect hair out in the library.

The thoughts were like seeds digging their way into rich, fertile soil… rooting themselves there, no matter how hard I tried to yank them out.

For the next few weeks, as September turned to October, McNeely made it clear he’d rewritten history to completely erase our mutual masturbation session. But I couldn’t make those thoughts go away. Couldn’t help wondering if maybe the guy wasn’t as perfect as he wanted everyone to think.

Each night, I tried provoking him into a repeat just to test the waters, but he ignored me like I didn’t exist. Like I was a ghost haunting our dorm room.

I started to think McNeely derived a certain kind of pleasure from ignoring me. From sending me the message that I didn’t matter. That I was irrelevant.

Too bad for him, it only made me double down on getting under his skin.

I secretly replaced his expensive bodywash with my own cheap drugstore shit.

More than once, I lay in his bed and jacked off, leaving a crumpled T-shirt or pair of boxer briefs under his blankets.

I even left one-dollar bills on his nightstand some mornings just to hear him squawk with indignation.

“What the fuck is this for?” he’d asked the first time.

“Letting me get off to the sight of that pretty face last night.” I didn’t look up from my laptop.

“Fuck off!” he said, blushing deep red.

That blush had become my fucking Kryptonite, and triggering it was more satisfying than the low purr of a V-twin after a perfect carb sync.

Unfortunately, that was the closest I came to provoking an actual response out of him. He stopped calling me out, even when I’d jerked off or hooked up with someone while calling him princess and babygirl.

A saner person would have given up, but apparently, I wasn’t sane where McNeely was concerned. It only made me want him more.

And he wasn’t as immune as he tried to pretend.

He might’ve been too locked down to verbally spar with me, but there were signs he couldn’t hide. Like the way every babygirl made his cheeks darken. His breathing speed up. And the outline of his dick grow long and thick behind the fabric of his clothes.

He liked me implying he was mine. That he was a sweet, submissive little thing who craved nothing but my cock on his tongue and in his ass.

He wanted me, too. He just didn’t want to want me.

And that made it even better. Like a game. Like something I could beat him at.

But as the whiteboard scoreboard continued to tick over, the number started making me feel like the loser between us.

VAUGHN: 23

BABYGIRL: 1

Clearly, I didn’t know who the fuck he was hooking up with. For all I knew, the number was wildly inaccurate—hell, I hoped for his sake it was—but he didn’t correct it.

He didn’t erase it either. The fact that he didn’t throw the damned thing in the dumpster was starting to gnaw at me.

Instead, Bett McNeely seemed to become an automaton. Study, train, practice, sleep, repeat.

No frills, no fun.

The closest he came to cracking that perfect mask of his was when I caught him staring at me from across the room while I was hip-deep in someone else and biting out curses to keep from wishing it were him.