Logan’s POV
There was no reason a coffee shop should’ve been open until eight at night.
I leaned against the counter behind me, staring at the glass doors as if prolonged eye contact would bring someone through them.
Not that I really wanted more customers.
I’d already cleaned and closed out one of the espresso machines—fifteen minutes earlier than I should’ve—cleaned the bathrooms—thirty minutes earlier than I should’ve—and swept the floors—forty-five minutes earlier than I should’ve.
For a Friday, we were slow. So much so that in the entirety of my shift, I think I’d made ten drinks total.
The tip jar on the counter only had coins. But there was still an hour ’til closing—maybe I’d get lucky.
Looking back, I would not, in fact, get lucky. But at that moment, I was so bored that I just wanted someone to walk through the door.
It dinged as it opened, and I jumped straight. “Welcome—” And then my cheerful voice broke off with a sigh. “Hey.”
Noah wore one of his Jefferson Bulldogs cutoffs from two-a-days last year, loosely tucked into the band of his jeans. “Quiet?”
“Extremely.” I now shifted forward to lean against the front counter. “The last hour is going by so slow.”
“It’ll be nice when hours shift in October,” Noah said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Because, really, who wants a coffee at eight at night?”
I scoffed at that, completely agreeing. Most of the time, the only people in the coffee shop past six were people working on their laptops or reading books. I rarely ever made a coffee past seven.
The door chimed then, startling us both, and we turned to find a blonde girl walk in.
She wore a bright blue tank top with a gold skirt, and her blonde hair fell perfectly over her shoulders.
Something about her was slightly uncanny, though, and I had a feeling it had to do with the almost plastic way her face looked.
She held her chin up, kept her lips pursed out, and held it, as if she were a mannequin and this was her mask.
I instinctively gave her a welcoming smile as she approached. “What can I get started for you?”
“I’m Jade Dyer.” The girl stretched her hand across the counter, as if greeting a business partner. “Nice to meet you, Logan.”
I jolted at the sound of my name before I remembered the tag on my apron. “Nice to meet you,” I replied hesitantly, but didn’t pick up her hand. “Uh, so. Can I get you—”
“I need a favor.” Jade looked over at Noah, who was not-so-discreetly eavesdropping on our conversation. He watched Jade with narrowed eyes, like he was trying to remember where he knew her from. “You got a girlfriend?”
“Me?” I was half tempted to say yes. “Um, no?”
Jade smiled. “Perfect. I have someone I need you to flirt with—for, like, a week.”
Now I really wished I’d said yes. Before I could object, though, Noah spoke first. “Jade Dyer.” Jade and I both turned to him, whose narrowed eyes had practically gone to slits. “You’re from Brentwood.”
“Oh my gosh, you know me?” She laid her hand over her heart. “How flattering.”
She was from Brentwood. Someone popular from Brentwood, if her blonde curls were any indicator. I looked down at the purse hanging off her shoulder, at the little blue and gold pom-pom keychain that hung from it. Cheerleader. My stomach twisted at the sight.
I wasn’t die-hard committed to the Jefferson/Brentwood rivalry, but I hated the Bobcats for my own reasons. Last year, when two players on the football team couldn’t convince me to help throw the game, they targeted Noah in retaliation. Everyone said it was an accident, but I knew the truth.
And so did Noah. “You Bobcats are so soulless you can’t find a boyfriend for real?” he asked her, sneering. “You have to ask someone to flirt with you?”
“Not me. I have a boyfriend.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “And it’s a little test, you see. Sort of an… initiation ritual. I need to check her integrity.”
“By seeing how she responds to a guy flirting with her?”
“To see how she responds to a Bulldog flirting with her.” Her smile made my skin crawl.
“It’s simple, really. You’ll come to Brentwood’s open house pretending you’re a transfer student from Haven High, run into her there, flirt with her for a week, and then you’re done.
” Jade picked the pitiful tip jar off the counter and shook it, the coins rattling pathetically. “Money’s no object.”
“Go to hell.” That came from Noah, whose expression was unforgiving.
Jade’s words soured my stomach; I could remember the two guys from Brentwood’s team saying them last year.
Money’s no object, they tried to persuade.
Name your price. Just throw the game this once. “We’re not doing your dirty work.”
“I’m not asking you.” Jade didn’t look away from me. “I’m asking Logan.”
Jade was pretty; there was no doubt about that.
But her eyes were unnerving, so dark that they almost looked black.
I couldn’t imagine anyone looking into her eyes and not seeing something sinister there.
Her whole plan sounded cruel, honestly. She clearly didn’t care for the feeling of whoever’s life she was trying to toy with.
“Pass,” I said after a beat, feeling unsettled even as I spoke. “I’m sure you can find someone else.”
Of course, she didn’t back down that easily. She folded her arms across her chest. “You’re the only one I have leverage over.”
“Leverage?” I echoed. “I don’t even know you.”
Jade quirked her lips to the side, thinking. “You’ll do it,” “Or I’ll tell everyone Jefferson tried to bribe Brentwood for last year’s game?”
“What?” The word ripped out of Noah, incredulous. “That we tried to bribe you?”
My gaze jerked over at Noah, surprised. He doesn’t know, I told myself, trying to calm my sudden, racing heartbeat. He doesn’t know you turned the bribe down. He doesn’t know that his broken leg was really your fault.
“The proof part is hard,” Jade went on with a soft nod.
“But that’s the cool thing about rumors, isn’t it?
You don’t necessarily need proof—you just need it to snowball so big that its weight is crushing.
And I know how to do that.” She started counting on her fingers.
“I’d tell our coaches, the athletic director, the county football association, tell the parents.
Brentwood parents are intense, you know.
They’d do half the work for me. Jefferson’s football program would be put on hold while they investigated, and college scouts would cross it off their list.”
I wasn’t wholly sure I wanted to play football after high school, but there were so many guys on the team where that was their dream.
And here this girl was, threatening their futures as if it meant nothing to her.
My voice came out quiet. “All that just because I wouldn’t flirt with some cheerleader? ”
“Right?” Jade propped her hip against the countertop. “It’d be quite selfish of you, ruining your school’s reputation just because you wouldn’t bat your eyelashes.”
It was almost scary, the determined expression on her face.
She didn’t need proof to be dangerous—she just had a voice that people listened to, and the nerve to use it.
I’d been right about the popular assumption.
This was clearly a girl who stood at the top of a pedestal while looking at everyone below, ready to knock them off if they tried to climb up.
That must’ve been what the girl was doing, I realized.
She must’ve been trying to climb up, and Jade was preparing to knock her off.
“Just do it.”
I jerked toward Noah in surprise. His tone had been flat, almost uncaring. “But—”
“It’s just a week.” He sighed. “And the girl’s a Bobcat.”
“The guy who broke your leg has a crush on her, too,” Jade told Noah, glancing down at his now-healed leg.
“So, let’s get it straight, Logan: you get money, mess with the guy who hurt your best friend, and save your school from being blacklisted.
And I’m a woman of my word, don’t worry.
After a week, we’ll part ways, and that’ll be that. Wins all around, don’t you think?”
Yeah, sure, everyone was winning—except for the girl she wanted me to flirt with. “There’s no guarantee she’ll even like me.”
“Have you looked in a mirror?” Jade’s nose scrunched when she laughed. “She will. She needs a boyfriend, after all. To her, you’ll be like a godsend. Like fate.”
The girl would think it was a gift from God, when it’d really be because a temptation from the devil.
“I’m not taking any money.” My jaw ached as I clenched it, wishing I could take the words back, but knowing I couldn’t.
I was backed into a corner. “I’ll do it…
but I’m not taking any money for it. And only for a week. And then… I’m done.”
I’d handle it. Noah was right, after all.
She was a Bobcat. Plus, if she was friends with Jade, surely they were similar.
Maybe they were even cut from the same cloth.
Even five minutes in, I knew Jade was horrible.
Surely this girl was no different. I could handle a week.
I was a quarterback, sure, but I was also an actor.
Sure, I couldn’t flirt with a girl I actually liked to save my life, but I could flirt with a girl I had no interest in. How hard could it be?
I could handle it.
“Perfect.” Jade fished her phone out of her purse and, after she unlocked it, she offered it out to me. “What’s your number?”
Her phone was heavy as I took it, like it could’ve weighed me down to the center of the earth. Noah silently watched me plug in my number, while Jade looked on with a grin. I’m making a deal with the devil, I thought, swallowing hard.
Jade picked up a lollipop, set a dollar on the counter, and walked out of Expresso’s with a small wave. She strode past the glass window effortlessly, as if she hadn’t just blackmailed the two people standing inside.
“It’ll be fine,” Noah said to break the silence, and when I looked over, I noticed his cheeks were red.
He didn’t quite look me in the eye, as if something about it all had embarrassed him.
As if this situation was his fault, and not mine.
“You should’ve taken the money, though. Flirting with the enemy will suck, but that would’ve been a nice consolation prize. ”
“I’m not going to take money for breaking someone’s heart.” I rubbed the side of my neck, trying to swallow the storm of unease inside me. I couldn’t, though. It raged on relentlessly, leaving me sick and wrecked. “I’d feel disgusting.” I already feel disgusting enough.
“I guess.”
“That was crappy, though,” I began tentatively. “That she’d use the game where you broke your leg to threaten us.”
Noah’s shoulders went rigid. He stared at his shoes like he was watching the memory replay in the floor tiles. “I guess.”
The words stuck in my throat. I’d never told Noah about the Brentwood players who tried to bribe me before that game—how they’d promised money if I threw it, how easy it would’ve been to say yes.
And I still wondered, more often than I wanted to admit, if things would’ve gone differently if I had.
If Brentwood wouldn’t have been forced to take such drastic measures to win. If they’d never gone after Noah at all.
The guilt never really left. I should’ve told Noah, told my coaches, told someone, and none of this would be happening. So maybe this was my karma. My punishment for keeping quiet. And this was how the universe made sure I paid for it.
I knew Noah wouldn’t see it that way. He’d tell me I did the right thing, that winning the game wasn’t worth a lie. That it wasn’t my fault.
But it was. I’d never told Noah because he didn’t need to know—it would only make him relive it. Telling him would’ve been for me. To ease the weight pressing on my chest. Which was wrong.
So I’d handled it myself, just like I’d handle this.
Just like I handled everything.
Except I would soon learn that some feelings couldn’t be controlled—especially not the ones for Madison Oliphant.