When Celeste White dropped Nathan Prescott’s black credit card onto the ballroom floor, four hundred college students gasped as if they had just witnessed a saint turn down the devil himself. Nathan stood beneath the anniversary-gala lights, pale and stunned, while Celeste lifted her chin for the cameras. By midnight, everyone on campus would worship her for what she had done.
Chapter 1
“Thank you, Nathan,” she said gently, loud enough for every phone recording the scene. “But I don’t want a love wrapped in money. Real affection should be pure. If wealth is the foundation, it isn’t love.”
Applause broke out around us. Celeste looked almost embarrassed by it, which was part of what made her performance so convincing. I knew that expression well because I had watched her practice versions of it in our dorm-room mirror.
Nathan bent to pick up the card.
And the card spoke to me.
Not aloud. The voice appeared inside my head, dry and oddly sympathetic.
Poor kid. Twenty years old. Never held a girl’s hand. Heart pounding like a jackhammer. He thought a grand gesture would make him lovable, and she just humiliated him in front of half the university.
I nearly dropped my purse.
The black card remained on the polished floor beneath Nathan’s fingers. Yet the voice continued.
Parents offered houses, boats, connections, anything to help him find someone. He believes money is the only thing about him worth keeping. Whoever reaches for him now will own his loyalty forever.
For one dizzy second, I wondered whether exhaustion had finally broken my mind. I had been sleeping four hours a night, taking classes during the day and tutoring freshmen in the evenings while my grandmother lay in intensive care forty miles away. Her hospital bills had already swallowed our savings.
Then Nathan straightened.
His face wasn’t angry. That would have been easier to watch.
He looked ashamed.
I thought about Grandma lying beneath fluorescent lights, apologizing every time another bill arrived. I thought about Celeste smiling for the cameras while Nathan stood alone in the wreckage she had carefully created.
Before common sense could stop me, I stepped forward.
“Nathan.”
He looked at me.
“Would you consider being my boyfriend?”
The room went silent.
Somebody laughed.
Nathan stared as if I had spoken in another language. “I—”
“You don’t have to answer now,” I said, suddenly aware of hundreds of faces turning toward me. “Just think about it.”
His ears turned red. “Okay.”
By the time I returned to our dorm, my humiliation had already traveled faster than I had.
Megan had one sneaker planted on my economics notes. Rachel stood beside my desk with my water bottle in her hand. Celeste sat on her bed, calm as a painted Madonna.
“Well,” Megan said, “the scavenger returns.”
Rachel tipped my water bottle over my desk. “Celeste rejects a billionaire, and you dive in before his card even cools off.”
Water ran through the notes I had spent all week preparing.
I knelt and began gathering them.
“She’s an angel,” Megan said. “And you’re what? The bargain-bin replacement?”
“Stop,” Celeste murmured.
Megan immediately softened. “See? You’re defending her after what she did.”
Celeste looked at me with compassionate sorrow. “Ava’s under pressure. Her grandmother is sick, and hospital bills are terrible. We shouldn’t judge desperation.”
There it was.
Her favorite weapon.
Kindness sharpened into a knife.
I stood slowly. “You’re right about one thing. I need money.”
Rachel snorted.
“But Celeste,” I continued, “you spent weeks flirting with Nathan. You studied with him, texted him after midnight, sat beside him at every alumni event. If he was so awful, why encourage him?”
Celeste’s smile tightened. “I was being friendly.”
“You were building an audience.”
Megan stepped toward me. “Take that back.”
Celeste raised one graceful hand. “No. Ava’s upset.”
Then she came closer and took my wrist as if comforting me. “Let me organize a fundraiser for your grandmother. And I can talk to Nathan for you. Boys like him confuse money with affection. His confession was probably a dare.”
“He looked sincere.”
“So do practiced men.”
Her voice was gentle enough to fool everyone except me.
I pulled my hand away. “If you all want him so badly, confess to him yourselves.”
Nobody answered.
Celeste’s face changed for half a second. The sweetness disappeared, revealing something cold underneath.
Then she walked out.
My phone buzzed.
Nathan Prescott had sent me a friend request.
I accepted it.
A banking alert appeared almost immediately.
$50,000 received.
Then his first message arrived.
Daily transfer limit. Send bank information.
I stared at the screen.
The voice of the black card returned in my memory.
The more you need his money, the safer he feels.
I should have been offended.
Instead, for the first time in months, I realized Grandma’s ICU bill could be paid.
I sent him the information.
Then I waited.
One minute. Five. Twenty.
Nothing.
Maybe I really had imagined the voice. Maybe the fifty thousand dollars was his way of buying silence from an embarrassing stranger.
I closed the conversation and opened my scholarship applications.
Whatever Nathan Prescott was, I had survived before meeting him.
I would survive without him too.
By the following afternoon, the entire campus had decided otherwise.
A video showed me crouching near Nathan’s discarded card, edited to make it look as though I had snatched it from the floor. Comments called me a gold digger, a parasite, and worse.
Celeste pinned a message beneath the most popular post.
Please be kind to Ava. Financial fear can make people lose their way. I hope she remembers that love cannot be purchased.
The response was immediate.
Celeste, you’re too good for this world.
Nathan could never want Ava.
She’s obsessed.
She needs help.
At lunch the next day, I stood in the discount line with a bowl of soup and a bruised apple.
Celeste appeared beside me surrounded by admirers.
“Ava,” she said loudly, “that isn’t enough food. Use my meal plan.”
“No, thanks.”
“Please. Pride isn’t worth going hungry.”
People around us watched with approving smiles.
I tapped my student ID against the register.
The cashier frowned.
“What?”
She looked at the screen again. “Your dining balance says one million dollars.”
Someone behind me choked.
“A million?”
The dining hall erupted.
I stared at the screen, equally stunned.
Then something inside my purse practically shouted.
Poor master. Stuck in a ten-hour European finance summit. Couldn’t use his phone. Told his assistant to make sure his girlfriend had enough lunch money.
Lunch money.
One million dollars.
Celeste’s face went white.
And for the first time, I realized Nathan Prescott had not forgotten me at all.
