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I’d assumed he would’ve gone out with his football bros to drown his sorrows. Or maybe found Arden and lost himself in her body for a while.

But this… this made it look like he’d actually been studying between the game and whatever campaign shit he had to do for his father tonight.

I pressed the space bar on his laptop to clear the screen saver. The log-in screen was a stupid Demere wallpaper, one with the blocky blue D wearing a gold crown. There was no way I’d be able to guess his password since he didn’t seem interested enough in his girlfriend for it to be her name, and he didn’t seem interesting enough for it to be anything other than his birthday, which I didn’t know.

After showering off the sweat and dust from the garage, I changed into shorts and a clean T-shirt and lay down on my bed with my own laptop, fully intending to get ahead on prep for my Negotiations class role-play assignment before meeting up with Grace and her roommate.

Instead, I pulled up a video of the last minute of the football game and cranked the volume. It took me several replays to pinpoint it, but finally, I saw what had caught his attention in that fatal moment before his foot had made contact with the ball. What had caused the slight jerk of his body.

Arden and Senator McNeely, on the Jumbotron, looking… friendly.

There was nothing weird about it from my perspective. Especially not if Arden and Bett had been dating a while and she’d been on the senator’s campaign staff.

So what had bothered him so much about seeing it? And why the fuck had his girlfriend sided with his dad about whatever the hell fight they were talking about?

Fuck. What a shit thing to do. I’d never been in a relationship before, but even I knew you were supposed to be loyal to the person you claimed to love. Was Arden Wisbey even capable of love?

I played it again, zooming in on the Jumbotron this time. All of the other spectators in the VIP box looked shit-faced as usual. The fact that it had been a noon game hadn’t kept everyone from tailgating for hours ahead of time. Especially not the senator and his guests, who I had to imagine were campaign donors or political kiss-asses.

Was the senator there to support his kid? Or was he hoping his son’s football performance would reflect well on the father? Or possibly help his campaign by impressing the donors?

My distracted gaze wandered over to McNeely’s side of the room. On a small shelf above his desk sat the same four books that had been there since the day he’d moved in.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, The Mindful Athlete: Secrets to Pure Performance by George Mumford, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Year NFL Diary by Stefan Fatsis, and Outsmarting Tuition: How Top Applicants Get Paid to Go to Law School by Leslie Zwerling.

We’d lived together for less than two weeks, but I was still surprised it had taken me this long to realize how odd that last one was.

Everyone in Georgia knew Senator Corbett McNeely had been a very wealthy law partner at one of Atlanta’s largest corporate law firms before going into politics. He’d married into one of the state’s largest lumber companies and used his political position to get government contracts for that company. He was shady as fuck and rich as Midas.

There wasn’t a chance in hell my roommate needed to worry about his law school tuition.

So maybe the title of the book was gimmicky. Maybe its purpose was to teach rich fucks how to game the system.

Just when I’d started to feel bad for him, I remembered the latter theory was most likely correct.

McNeely was a rich asshole. Only now, he was a rich asshole who intrigued me. And after thinking a little more about his obsession with mindset, his insistence that focus was only mind over matter, I was even more inclined than before to break him. To watch his composure unravel piece by piece. To teach him what it felt like when you weren’t in control.

But six hours later, I realized the man could do it all without my help.

7

BETT

The campaign fundraiser dinner was a fucking nightmare. I’d wanted to leave from the moment I’d arrived, but after three hours of being asked about or “consoled” over my loss today, I was crawling out of my skin.

I’d tried several times to speak to my father privately, but he’d shot me down every time. First, it was a reminder that we weren’t here to discuss my needs; we were here “to serve the people.” Then an insistent “this isn’t the time or place.” Finally, he snapped, “I’m in the middle of a campaign event, for chrissake.”

“You and Arden should stay at the house,” my father said later, when I made my obligatory appearance to thank him for a nice evening.

“Can’t,” I said, trying hard to keep the fake smile on my face, since you never knew when a photographer had their lens on you. “I have important assignments due tomorrow, and I need to get up early to get them done on time. Trying to keep my grades up for law school applications.”

He waved his hand in the air. “I’m sure we can find a staffer to do that for you.”

Arden giggled from where she hung on my arm. “Oh my gosh, can you do that for mine, too? They’re making me take Physics 101 again, and it’s already killing me.”

Dad grinned at her. “Pretty girl like you shouldn’t have to worry about those hard science classes. I’m sure your daddy can get you a tutor to help.”

She reached across me to squeeze his arm—an action I’d swear was a deliberate attempt to piss me off. “You’re so sweet, Senator McNeely! I already have a tutor, but he’s so boring, and I can barely understand his accent. I keep asking Bett to help me with it instead, but he’s too busy.” She pouted.