The day Ethan Cole threw a stack of cash at me and announced that I was his girlfriend, everyone at Saint Lawrence Prep assumed the poor scholarship girl had finally found a price. What they did not know was that I had already overheard why he wanted me distracted, and before the week was over, I would be charging other girls for the privilege of finding him.
Chapter 5
Ethan found me in the library that afternoon.
The chairs were still hard.
The fluorescent lights were still ugly.
The room still smelled like dust, paper, and people trying to build better lives.
He placed a brown paper lunch bag beside my notebook.
“What’s this?”
“Turkey sandwich.”
I opened it.
“Pickles?”
“Extra.”
There was also a muffin for Harper and soup packed separately for Grandpa.
I looked across the table.
Ethan sat.
“Can I buy your time?”
“No.”
He nodded.
“Fair.”
“But you can earn lunch.”
His mouth curved.
“Meals included?”
“For now.”
He opened a textbook.
That surprised me more than the food.
“You study now?”
“I’m experimenting.”
“Careful. It can become a habit.”
He looked at me.
“I meant what I said before.”
“Which thing?”
“That somewhere in the middle of all this, I fell for you.”
I closed my notebook.
He waited.
No smirk.
No money.
No crowd.
I thought about the first day beside the black SUV.
The envelope.
The hot soup.
The bagels.
The stairwell.
The conference room where he admitted what he had done even though it cost him something.
“I thought about you too,” I said.
His eyes changed.
“Really?”
“Not when you were buying me.”
“That seems fair.”
“Not when you were acting like some spoiled rich kid who thought life was an auction.”
“Also fair.”
I pointed my pen at him.
“It happened when you told the truth in that room knowing it made you look bad.”
His throat moved.
“That’s not very romantic.”
“Romance is outside my tax bracket.”
He laughed.
Then he looked at the chair beside me.
“Can I stay?”
I pushed Harper’s muffin aside.
“You can sit.”
Across the room, someone whispered that I had tamed Ethan Cole.
I nearly laughed.
No one had tamed anybody.
Ethan had simply learned that people were not possessions.
I had learned that being clever enough to survive did not mean every clever thing should continue forever.
And Olivia had learned something harder.
Privilege could protect a reputation for years, but it could not protect a lie once enough evidence existed.
Harper arrived, grabbed her muffin, and looked between us.
“What are we calling this?”
“Pending approval,” I said.
Ethan leaned back.
“I’ll wait.”
I took a bite of my sandwich.
My scholarship was safe.
Grandpa’s prescriptions were paid months ahead.
My college future belonged to me.
The same students who once predicted that one taste of a rich boy’s life would make me too soft for library chairs now watched me spend every afternoon in one.
They had misunderstood me from the beginning.
Poverty had never taught me to worship money.
It taught me exactly what money could do.
It could buy medicine.
Food.
Time.
Tuition.
It could even buy a fake girlfriend for a while.
But it could not buy respect.
It could not buy integrity.
And no matter how much Ethan once paid me, love was the one thing he eventually had to earn without reaching for his wallet.
THE END.
⚠️ All characters and events are fictional. Do not imitate or apply them in real life. 😌😌😌
