Chapter 9
nine
MAYA
My clinical textbook might as well be Maine’s abs for all the studying I’m managing.
The memory sucker-punches me—water tracking down his chest, collecting at that criminal towel line, the flex when he’d raked fingers through his wet gold hair. My pen attacks the cardstock with personal vengeance at the thought, because he’s getting to me.
“Morning, bro.” Two words. That’s all it took to establish dominance and send Tyler scrambling like someone lit his Sperrys on fire.
Point: Maine.
Except I’d clapped back, hadn’t I?
Emerged wearing nothing but Maine’s stolen jersey, the hem playing a dangerous game of peek-a-boo with decency. And then I’d turned fruit consumption into a fellatio masterclass, working that strawberry like I was auditioning for late-night cable.
The response?
A jaw clench and a jeans adjustment that screamed “unexpected wood alert.”
Point: Maya.
My thighs squeeze together under the table, a full-body betrayal I refuse to acknowledge as I get back to the textbook.
Cardiac output regulation—hilarious, considering my heart redlines every time I think about our living situation, which is both necessary (money…) and intoxicating (everything else…).
We’re locked in this psychosexual game of chicken, each morning a fresh escalation in our war of attrition.
His shirtless pull-ups. Those gray sweatpants that violate several Geneva Convention articles.
The way he emerges from showers with that towel hanging by a prayer and physics I don’t understand.
My retaliation: yoga performed with malicious intent, nighttime skincare in silk that clings like a whisper to wherever gravity dictates, and reorganizing his shower caddy just so I can imagine him fumbling blind, wet, cursing my name in ways that make my spine tingle.
It—
“—must be so intense living with Maine.”
The voice of one of my study group members cuts through my X-rated mental montage, and reality reasserts itself—buzzing fluorescents, the clicky-clacky keystrokes of last-minute panic from every direction, and my study group staring at me with expressions ranging from concern to barely concealed thirst.
Sophie goes in for the kill. “I mean, the guy’s reputation? You probably need a bouncer just to reach your door!”
Bitch , I glare at her, but we both know there’s no heat in it, because she smirks.
The others bob their heads in synchronized sympathy. Jenny death-grips her highlighter with the intensity of someone who’s already planned her Nobel acceptance speech. Priya adjusts her try-hard therapist glasses—tortoiseshell, because of course—with the expression she’s been perfecting for months.
“Must be really challenging,” Priya coos. “Navigating that kind of… predatory masculine energy in your own safe space.”
My spine snaps straight hard enough to make the chair squeak in protest. They see me as some helpless lamb while the big bad hockey wolf prowls our shared territory. The assumption burns hot, because they should know— everyone should know—that I’m the master of any domain I step into.
Well, except my childhood home.
“You adorable idiots,” I say, the words dripping honey laced with cyanide. “You’ve got the whole food chain backwards.”
I lean in, letting them glimpse what they’ve missed—the predator hiding in scrubs and stress—and the overhead lighting catches my gloss as I bare my teeth.
“Maine’s not hunting anything,” I say, as Jenny’s eyes go wide enough that I can see her brain recalibrating. “The man broadcasts his intentions with the subtlety I’d expect from a hockey player. He’s basically a horny pigeon strutting for breadcrumbs.”
Sophie’s coffee freezes halfway to her mouth, as if she’s only just recognized the danger of everyone else poking fun at me. “Maya, I don’t think?—“
Priya cuts her off, revealing the gossip goblin underneath her too-cool attitude: “Wait, you’re saying… he’s trying to get your attention?”
“Desperately.” The word rolls off my tongue like victory champagne. “All those muscles, all that big dick energy… he wants me more than air.”
The atmospheric shift hits like a contact high. But underneath their scandalized delight, I catch it—their doubt, that flicker of “yeah, right” that ignites my competitive neurons—and I realize that there’s an opportunity to harness all the uncertainty I’m feeling around Maine to my advantage.
“I could have him in bed by the end of today,” I say, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms. “Too easy.”
“Too easy by half,” Jenny laughs. “It’s Maine Hamilton, for crying out loud. Any of us could have him in bed by the end of the day.”
The girls laugh, drawing attention from nearby tables, and I can’t say Jenny is wrong.
Maine has a reputation, and now I’ve seen the evidence to prove it.
A girl every few nights, and more if he wanted them, the whole campus basically his personal Pokemon collection. But there’s one thing he doesn’t do.
“Love,” confidence coats every syllable like designer armor. “He wants me so bad, I could have him in love with me by finals.”
Silence drops like someone cut the sound in post-production. Even the library’s white noise seems to buffer. The gauntlet clatters between us, impossible to ignore. My pulse throws a rave in my throat, but I keep my expression marble-smooth.
“Maya, that’s—“ Jenny searches for the words. “He’s one of the biggest players on campus; you need to be careful not to get played.”
Jenny’s sympathy strikes like an open-palmed slap.
My spine locks against cheap plastic as, around our cramped table, three faces morph into matching masks of pity mixed with concern. And, as always, that particular cocktail of emotions makes my skin shrink-wrap against muscle. And the fact it’s coming so soon after my parents wrong-footed me…
Well…
Let’s just say I’m feeling a bit vulnerable?—
—which is probably half the reason I’m getting off on the tit-for-tat with Maine.
But this? This is unacceptable.
Poor Maya. Poor little lamb. Sharing walls with campus’s most notorious wolf.
The hockey star, the comedy king, the evaporator of panties.
The assumption spreads through my bloodstream, and I feel a familiar burn—that feeling from every family dinner where my achievements earned distracted nods while my siblings’ merited Dom Pérignon, and every time my parents told me why I couldn’t or shouldn’t instead of should or could.
They see vulnerability. They see prey.
And that’s just not on.
The idea that anyone could play me, especially Maine… ha!
“End of the semester,” I say. “He says he loves me, or the equivalent of it, or I do a naked run across campus.”
Sophie’s coffee suspends mid-sip, her concerned expression frozen in real-time. Jenny’s bubble gum highlighter hovers, forgotten. Priya looks around at the others, trying to figure out if I’m joking and to take the pulse of the group, then just stares at me.
It’s situation and stakes combining into an explosion.
And it’s glorious.
Sophie’s voice cracks. “Maya, that’s—Maine doesn’t do relationships.”
“Ex-act-ly.” My smile sharpens. “Which makes winning so delicious.”
Jenny is fidgeting with her drugstore acrylics now. “But what if you lose?—“
I grin. “When I win, same stakes for the three of you. A streak across campus.”
Blood drains from their faces in synchronized horror, pure mortification in triplicate.
The magnitude settles heavy, final, and sterile.
This transcends Maine now. This is about power, about proving I don’t need parental money or approval, and I certainly don’t need my friends to think I’m some victim.
But it’s about more than that, even I’ll admit that (to myself only!).
It’s about attaching stakes to my cold war with Maine—finding a reason to turn it hot—because the current tension has me unable to think, unable to study, unable to do anything without his stupid (delicious) abs flashing through my mind.
It’s lust channeled to a purpose.
It’s containing nuclear fission for good, before it destroys me.
“Deal?” My hand extends across the table, steady as a suture.
They stack trembling hands on mine—Jenny’s arctic, Priya’s slick with anxiety, and Sophie’s carrying the weight of someone who’s held my hair through tequila poisoning, who knows exactly how far I’ll push any point, and who knows there’s no denying the gravity of Maya.
“Deal,” they whisper.
I recline, satisfaction flooding warm as morphine, even as they go back to studying. But no amount of studying will make them realize their blind spot: men like Maine run on code so predictable you could publish it in textbooks, and I perfected its programming years ago.
The man loves me already, and he doesn’t know it.
And these girls have lost so badly, they may as well get their tits out now.
My phone vibrates. It’s my mother:
Your sister graduated top of her class at Harvard Med. You might like to call her.
I might like to reply fuck right off , but I don’t.
It’s just another reminder that, among my family, I’m the outcast. The black sheep.
Some would view that as a tragedy, but I’ve turned it into my identity, which is why the other girls taking pity on me and assuming I’m the victim stung so bad.
And why I want to reclaim my space—my status—with them and Maine.
Because with my family?
Well, there’s no looking back there.
“Ladies,” I rise with choreographed grace. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a cardiac arrest to induce.”
Their stunned faces track my exit out of the library, and I make sure to add an extra hip sway because confidence is half performance, half delusion. My boots announce each step with authority, disturbing everyone else in the library and getting every set of male—and some female—eyeballs on my ass.
Every stride feels electric.
The bet mainlines through my system. Maine Hamilton thinks he knows the game—all testosterone and obvious need—but the game has changed. There are stakes now, and he hasn’t yet registered that every move has been charted, diagnosed, and prescribed for.
That Maya Hayes doesn’t get played.
She plays.
And she never loses.