The force of this knocks her in the gut. “I see. You’re dying to get rid of me.”
His mouth dips into a frown. There’s something obscene about the way his lower lip is fuller than the top. Such a nice mouth, wasted on someone intent on using it to talk down to her. “That’s not what I meant. I’m only saying, I understand that it’s difficult.”
This isn’t how men usually act with her. They’re either telling her she needs to slide down her bra to show a little more skin or surrendering while she’s on her knees. A move she used to think made her powerful, when the truth was that she’d never had any power. They wanted to control her, whether it was the words coming out of her mouth or where she was putting it.
Professor Nick Navarro is acting like he’s…concerned.
“You don’t participate in class,” he continues, leaning back in his chair. “You’ve barely done the homework.”
“It’s only been two weeks.”
“This class moves quickly. Everything we’re covering now is going to be a foundation for the rest of the course. So I’m just trying to figure outwhy.”
“This weekend I just—I didn’t—” she says, fumbling with an excuse. “I ran out of time.”With all her relaxing.“And then the VMAs were on, and—”
Nick’s eyes flash with something like anger as he sits up straighter, spine snapping to attention. Immediately she knows she’s said the wrong thing, but she doesn’t know how to make him understand.
“Do you think this is a joke?” he asks. “Some kind of game? You give me this speech about how you care so much, and you can’t even keep up the first few weeks? I really don’t think I’m an easy person to rile up, and I wanted to believe you. It’s only going to get harder, Wilder.”
“Look, I—I was dealing with something.”
“Right. Watching the VMAs. And then maybe you were busy deciding which dress to wear for your comeback announcement. Or whether your next album cover should be pink or purple.”
The words are ice-cold shrapnel. There it is. What he really thinks of her.
Oh, she knowsexactlythe kind of man he is now.
A card-carrying misogynist who hates her music simply because so many young girls see themselves in it. Because she dared to sing about herfeelings.
Now she tightens her grip on her purse and jabs a finger at her failure of a pop quiz, because even if he’s biting down on that full lower lip, as though seized by momentary regret, he said what he said. And that means some part of him has to believe it.
“Let me guess, you were one of those guys who loved to tear down my music. You’d call it girly or shrill or annoying, but you’ve probably only ever heard the singles.”
He folds his arms over his chest, defensive. “I’ve never listened to it.”
Bullshit. There’s no way he could escape it.
“Sure,” she says, “and you think that makes you better than everyone else.”
The tension in his jaw is back. The quiver of his gold hoop earring. He’s trying to wrestle control of this conversation back from her. “I’ve had students like you before. Maybe they weren’t famous, but they still acted like the world revolved around them. The entitled ones whose parents could buy their way into any school or job, and it wouldn’t matter if they got an A or flunked the class. And you know what? It breaks my heart a little. You think you can come in here and coast right on through because of your background, because you look a certain way—”
“Oh?” Ramona’s grin is wolfish. She’s caught him, even ifIt breaks my heart a littletugs at something inside her that’s easy enough to ignore. “What way is that?”
She can’t resist a slight pop of her hip, almost daring him to give her a compliment, whether it’s backhanded or not. This isn’t about the homework or quiz anymore. It’s self-preservation. Student vs. teacher, a battle to the death.
Nick swallows hard, Adam’s apple leaping in his throat right above where his shirt is unbuttoned. Just the top button, for decorum’s sake. His cheeks are flushed the color of ripe strawberries. She likes this, seeing him flustered. Disarming everyone’s favorite professor.
She imagines him driving home to his maybe-wife, ventingabout her over a sensible dinner of roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes. The wife would comfort him, tell him Ramona sounds like one of those words women aren’t supposed to use for other women except as a joke, only she wouldn’t be joking. She’d rub his shoulders, kiss him in his favorite spot—the side of his neck, maybe, or right behind his ear.
“Like you’d rather be anywhere else,” he finally says, fist clenched around the red pen, but the color doesn’t leave his cheeks.
“You don’t know a fucking thing about me.” Ramona’s breaths are coming faster, her chest heaving with the effort of it. She drips venom into each word. “I bet you’d just love to watch me fail.”
Nick’s face goes slack. “That’s not true,” he says. “I care about all my students. I want all of them to succeed.”
“Even the entitled ones who look a certain way?”
Now it’s his turn to wince.
