Chapter 3
Clara
The Briarcliff Café reeks of burnt espresso and old money.
Every inhale is a reminder of what I don’t have—bitter coffee, syrupy sweetness, and the stink of entitlement that seeps into concrete and bone.
Behind the counter, I steam milk for a drink I couldn’t afford if I starved for a week.
The air presses down, thick with roasted beans and pretentious little bottles labeled bourbon vanilla and golden chai.
Everything in here gleams: marble counters, concrete buffed so smooth it reflects the light, an espresso machine that costs more than what Mom and I lived on for six months after the funeral.
I watch steam rise, a white ghost twining through steel and shadow, and for half a second it feels like armor—a delicate shield between me and the predators sipping lattes on the other side.
I wipe the steam wand with a rag folded four times so I don’t burn my fingers.
I’ve learned the choreography: foam, pour, smile.
Don’t let it slip. I move like a puppet with a knife at her back, eyes alert, posture straight, mouth tilted just friendly enough to pass.
The dance of prey that knows it’s being watched.
Three hours in, my forearms ache from pounding espresso and my calves from standing too long, but my shoulders stay loose because fatigue is blood in the water here.
These people can smell it, devour it. After this, I have a shift at the library, pulling desk duty.
The thought of the quiet there is a balm.
Not a performance. Just breath. The absence of someone waiting to pounce.
The next customer slides her phone across the reader like she’s flicking away a scrap of trash. Her scarf probably costs more than my entire semester.
“Small black coffee,” she snaps, every syllable clipped and cutting. Her friends cluster behind her, all icy smiles and razor-edged laughter that isn’t aimed at me but slices just as deep.
“Maybe scholarship kids like it scalding,” one whispers, just loud enough to be heard. “Keeps them awake for all their jobs.”
The laughter is sharp, hungry; not a joke, just a ritual of power.
Their perfume clings like money turned rancid.
My hands—rough, calloused—feel too big, too dirty for the glinting glass and steel of this world.
They’re scarred currency, every blister and callous proof of an hour I’ve sold, a price they’ll never have to pay.
I hand her the cup with my best customer-service smile, flat and polished as plate armor.
I watch them float away. Gravity is beneath them.
Consequences are beneath them. They glide.
They don’t speak; they decree. And people like me? We deliver.
The bell above the door chimes. I barely look up.
It’s Professor Lansing from the History department, the one who oversees the library archives.
My grip tightens on the rag, a pulse of cold running down my spine.
Lansing doesn’t belong here. He looks like he’s carved from policy and disappointment.
He cuts straight for me, his shoes clicking like a gavel, sentencing me before I speak.
His shadow stretches huge and hungry across the polished floor.
My breath stutters. For a moment, the shadow is wrong—bigger, broader, filling a doorway that doesn’t exist anymore.
The hiss of the espresso machine recedes; the scent of coffee twists sour in my throat.
My body remembers before my mind does: fear, cold, and absolute.
I stare at the overhead lights until the world snaps back.
It’s just a shadow. You’re safe. You’re at work.
But the chill lingers, a phantom hand on my shoulder.
“Clara Harrington,” he says, his voice a scalpel.
My spine goes straight. “Yes, Professor. Can I help you?”
He waits until a girl drifts away from the counter. “The Athletic Department has flagged a case. Urgent.”
My pulse skips. “Okay…?”
“Adrian Hale.”
The name is a stone to the chest. Briarcliff royalty.
The hockey captain I’ve endured Statistics and History with, always sprawled in the back row, jaw cocky, never bothering to take notes.
He doesn’t need answers; he is the answer.
Everyone knows he takes what he wants, and the school lets him.
I’ve worked my whole life to avoid the gravity well of his world.
His name alone rearranges the air; I feel myself dragged.
I square my shoulders. “What about him?”
“He’s failing,” Lansing says. “If he doesn’t pass midterms, he’s suspended. That’s a problem.”
I bark a single, humorless laugh. “A problem for who?”
His gaze is a cold slap. “If he’s suspended, your scholarship may be at risk.”
The café dissolves. My stomach flips, a wave of vertigo sending my hand to the counter for balance. “I’m sorry—what?”
“The university bundles Adrian’s athletic package under donor-linked academic funding,” he says.
“The same fund your grant pulls from.” The bureaucratic static clears, and the truth lands, sick and heavy.
Everything I’ve clawed for—my GPA, my sleep-starved nights, my future—is tethered to a boy who’s never had to work for anything.
“You’re telling me if he fails, I lose everything.” It’s not a question.
Lansing doesn’t blink. “I’m saying the university is risk-averse.
You are a high-performing student. He is a high-profile athlete.
Right now, we need both.” He searches my face, not for understanding, but for compliance.
“This isn’t about fair. It’s about optics.
Balance sheets. And right now, you are the most efficient safeguard we have. ”
Efficient. Not worthy. Not irreplaceable. Just useful. My voice comes out brittle. “You’re assigning me to tutor him.”
“Correct.” Lansing’s gaze flicks to his clipboard. “You are top-ranked in three of his classes. Statistics. History. Biology. We considered others. None were as—reliable.”
Reliable. The word has always been my refuge, my shield.
It means I keep my promises, do the work, make myself invisible where it matters.
I have built my identity on it, and now it’s being used as a weapon to make me complicit in my own exploitation.
The urge to say no—to point out I already have a library shift today and three other tutoring appointments this week before I can even think about my homework—rises and dies in my throat. I’m the safe bet. Nothing more.
My jaw aches from holding back. “And what if he doesn’t want help?” The question isn’t fear; it’s fury. No one has ever forced a boy like that to do anything in his life.
Lansing’s eyes flicker up, a bare trace of impatience. “Then make him. Scholastic support is a condition of your grant. Any further objections?”
I shake my head, the movement tight, a single, clipped denial. What else is there to say?
“Good.” He nods, already dismissing me. “Library. Monday. Five p.m. Room A312. Don’t be late.”
He’s gone, stalking out into the crisp October morning, leaving only the bitter aftertaste of control. The conversation lasted less than two minutes, but I feel buried alive.
The bell chimes again, and I flinch, my nerves shot. For a second, his shadow still lingers by the door, a stain on the polished floor. A girl at a nearby table whispers, too loud to be accidental, “Scholarship girl’s about to tutor the captain. Pathetic.”
The words slice deeper than espresso steam, but the voice belongs to Talia Addison, her worn leather backpack slung over one shoulder.
She’s a friendly, familiar face in a sea of predators.
Coach Addison’s daughter, but she wears it like an afterthought, not a crown.
We’ve had a few classes together, worked on a project once.
She’s one of the few people here whose smile seems to actually reach her eyes.
She stops short when she sees my face. “Whoa, Clara. You look like you just saw a ghost.”
I force my lips into something that resembles a smile. It feels brittle, like it might crack. “Just a professor with bad news.”
“Lansing?” she asks, glancing toward the door. “Yeah, he has that effect on people. You okay?”
I start wiping down the already-gleaming counter, my movements jerky, the rag squealing against the glass. “I’ll live. Just a new mandatory addition to my schedule.”
Talia lets out a long-suffering sigh, her expression one of profound solidarity.
“Tell me about it. My dad just roped me into proctoring the hockey team’s new mandatory study halls on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
” She rolls her eyes. “The collective groan was audible from his office. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be the most hated person on campus for the next two months. ”
The information clicks—a small piece of a much larger, more terrifying puzzle. It’s not just Adrian. It’s the entire team. But my punishment is different. More personal. More precarious.
“That sounds… fun,” I manage.
“It’s going to be a nightmare,” she says with a wry grin.
“But at least I can get some of my reading done while I babysit a bunch of overgrown toddlers. Seriously, though,” she adds, her voice softening, “if it gets too crazy, you know where to find me. We victims of academic enforcement have to stick together.”
She orders a black coffee and gives me a small, genuine smile before she heads out. It’s a candle in a storm, gone before it matters. “Hang in there, Clara.”
I watch her go, a tiny, fragile warmth spreading through my chest before the cold reality of my situation extinguishes it. Talia gets to babysit toddlers. I have to tame a monster. If I fail, he gets benched. I lose everything.
I stand there, apron strangling my shoulders, knuckles white around a rag, my thoughts reeling.
Anger, disbelief, and the sick, helpless knowledge that it’s not hard work that matters here.
It’s connections. It’s being in orbit around someone the world has already decided is worth saving.
My name isn’t on a building. My family didn’t buy a stadium.
Everything I’ve clawed for hangs by the spoiled whim of one golden executioner.
I see my mother’s face after a sixteen-hour shift, exhaustion etched into her skin but her spine straight as steel. We survive, her eyes always seemed to say. That’s what we do.
But this feels different. The world feels like a dark room with the lights cut.
I have always been in control, always the one with the plan.
Now I’m being dragged into someone else’s game—a violent, careless world where my survival is a footnote in his story.
I’m just a variable. A safeguard. A weapon sharpened to protect an investment.
My entire future is chained to saving a boy who never bothers to pick up his own damn pen.
Adrian Hale. The last boy I’d bleed for—and the first they’ll make me.