The Bet (Dangerous Desires #6)

Chapter 1

THE WAGER

Andie

I’m pretty sure if the Minneapolis Fire Marshal ever poked his head in my dorm room, he’d condemn it immediately. It’s square, tiny, with poor ventilation, and it looks like a small pack of raccoons have been living here for a semester, when actually, it’s just me and my buddy, Simone.

Even crazier, I haven’t seen Simone in forever because she’s engaged in a torrid affair with her English Professor, Liam Thomas.

I get it because that guy is H-O-T in capital letters, but still, he’s old.

Professor Thomas is at least thirty-five, but from the way Simone moons over him, it’s clear that age is nothing but a number to that girl.

So yes, my buddy is AWOL once again (probably because she’s with her boyfriend), and I’m taking the opportunity to lounge around the room with three of my closest friends—Stella Moreland, Mary Kate Ashton, and Kayleigh McEnroe.

There’s not a clean surface in sight. Textbooks are stacked like makeshift barricades.

A web of phone chargers snags around the bedposts.

The air is a humid mixture of coconut body lotion, Bath & Body Works body spray, and the persistent undertone of microwave popcorn, which is Kayleigh’s primary food group.

There are enough empty Diet Coke cans on my desk to build a scale model of the Minneapolis skyline.

My own reflection in the smudgy window gives me a look of mild panic and perpetual sleep deprivation—cute, in a midwestern, Girl Next Door About To Lose Her Shit kind of way.

Stella’s on my bed, cross-legged, blonde hair spilling over her shoulder in a messy braid that’s about three hours from coming totally undone.

She’s painting her toenails neon orange, meticulous and unhurried.

Kayleigh’s perched on my desk chair, bare feet up on my dresser, scrolling through TikTok with an expression that’s half-zoned, half-murderous.

Mary Kate’s sprawled on the floor, knees up, eating Goldfish crackers one by one while she reads a battered paperback romance.

All of us are variations on the same theme: curvy girls who are Minnesota nice with a side of passive aggression.

If we ever committed a murder, the lineup would be an administrative nightmare.

Again, the only one missing is my roommate Simone, whose drama is the reason we’re having this impromptu girls’ summit in the room. When Kayleigh finally puts her phone down on my dresser, it’s with the exasperated flourish of a sitcom mom whose kids won’t stop bickering.

“Okay, can we talk about how that girl has been MIA for, like, ever? I don’t think I’ve seen her in class for like two weeks,” Kayleigh says, flipping her ponytail with the athletic aggression of someone who played volleyball in high school and still doesn’t understand why she didn’t get recruited.

Mary Kate makes a little tsk sound, but doesn’t look up from her book. “She was here at six this morning,” she says, “crying in the shower. I could hear it as I brushed my teeth.”

Stella’s braid swings as she looks up, her mouth puckered with concentration. “Did she say what happened?”

I roll my eyes so hard I can practically see my own brain stem. “Nothing happened. Or, more specifically, the same thing that’s been happening for the last, oh, I don’t know—” I check my phone for dramatic effect. “Eight weeks and four days.”

Kayleigh snorts. “Simone and Professor Daddy Drama?”

I reach for the giant economy-size bag of Cheetos under my bed and try to resist the urge to just stuff my face into it.

“Girlfriend’s not even subtle about it anymore.

I mean, this morning she said she was going to ‘study’ at the library.

In full makeup, a miniskirt, and over-the-knee boots.

Who studies like that? She looked like a discount Kylie Jenner. ”

Mary Kate giggles, but Stella looks a little scandalized. “You think she’s sleeping with Professor Thomas?”

I fish out a fistful of Cheetos and savor the satisfying crackle. “Sleeping with him, fighting with him, possibly plotting to kill him. All of the above.”

Kayleigh leans forward, hungry for gossip. “Okay but like, isn’t he supposed to be married?”

“No, he’s divorced,” I correct, dusting neon orange powder onto my yoga pants. “I know that for sure. But allegedly he’s knocked up a couple girls around campus, or something messy like that. Simone says it’s ‘complicated,’ but honestly, the only thing complicated is her taste in men.”

There’s a lull while Mary Kate tries and fails to surreptitiously snap a selfie, pretending to show off her “new lip gloss” to her 3000 Instagram followers, but I can see she’s trying to catch me mid-Cheeto.

I flip her off with a cheesy finger, which makes Stella giggle so hard she wobbles the nail polish brush and gets polish on her ankle.

“Simone’s been so moody lately,” Mary Kate says, finally putting her phone down and focusing on the conversation. “Yesterday she came back from class and just, like, walked past me in the hall. No eye contact, no hello, no nothing.”

I finish my snack, dust my hands off on a textbook I know I’ll never read, and flop back onto my pillow. “Really? But I saw her and Professor Thomas making out in his car in the faculty lot. Seriously, I saw them. She doesn’t even care if anyone notices.”

Ashleigh shoots us a dark look. “Or maybe Professor Thomas was rubbing her pussy while they made out, so she lost track of where she was.”

Stella shakes her head, her eyes wide. “Aren’t professors, like, not allowed to do that?”

Kayleigh grins, sharp and wicked. “Only if they get caught.”

I prop myself up on my elbows. “Apparently, Simone’s whole thing is that she likes older men. She said guys our age are ‘emotionally constipated.’”

Mary Kate nods, sage. “She’s not wrong.”

I turn my phone to show a photo Simone sent me two days ago: a close-up selfie, her hair mussed, a pink hickey rising like a battle wound on her collarbone. Caption: “Worth it.”

The girls shriek and grab for my phone, passing it around while making a chorus of “oh my god” and “that’s so slutty” and “go off, queen!” Kayleigh zooms in on the hickey, then switches to Simone’s profile and starts scrolling through her grid.

“She’s really beautiful,” Kayleigh says, almost admiring. “No wonder he risks his tenured ass for her.”

Mary Kate squints, then looks at me. “What does Professor Thomas even look like?”

Stella answers before I can. “He’s, like, thirty-five? Really tall. Kind of a James Bond vibe, but more ‘read you poetry and then spank you’ than ‘martini and a gun.’”

I snort. “He dresses well and calls her ‘Ms. McCall’ even when he’s literally holding her ass in his hand.”

There’s a moment of jealous, breathless silence.

I can feel it settle over the room, a mixture of shock and longing.

None of us are exactly innocent, but there’s something about Simone’s audacity that takes our breath away.

I mean, this girl is our age, and she’s living on the edge.

Meanwhile, despite everything, none of the rest of us have ever done anything nearly as reckless or glamorous.

The tension breaks with Kayleigh, as always. “Okay, I think I know why Simone’s obsessed,” she says, wagging her phone. “Aren’t there rumors going around that Professor Thomas has a giant dick?”

This derails all pretensions of sophistication. Stella chokes on her nail polish fumes. Mary Kate bursts out laughing. I raise both hands and surrender. “That’s what my roomie says. I think her exact words were, ‘it’s so big it makes my pussy cry.’”

Kayleigh cackles. “What if he’s, like, a porn star under the suit?”

Stella gasps, then covers her mouth. “Ew. Why am I turned on right now?”

Mary Kate leans up on her elbows, blue eyes gleaming. “We should Google him. See if there’s, like, a RateMyProfessor for his penis.”

Kayleigh grabs my laptop and slaps it open with a vengeance. “OMG, OMG. But what even constitutes as big these days?” she asks, punching the keyboard furiously. “I’m looking up ‘whitezilla’ for reference.”

I want to protest, but curiosity gnaws at me. As Kayleigh types “whitezilla” into the search bar, I brace myself for the inevitable. She hits enter, and a tsunami of porn thumbnails engulfs the screen.

“Holy shit,” Mary Kate breathes, eyes wide as dinner plates.

Kayleigh scrolls with the focus of an Olympic athlete. “Do you think—” she starts, but then she clicks on a video and it auto-plays, loud enough that if Simone were anywhere in the building she’d come running.

For a second, none of us speak. The camera zooms in on the most anatomically impossible penis I’ve ever seen. The girl in the video looks like she’s trying to swallow a baguette whole, her eyes tearing and her lips stretched so painfully thin that they look like rubber bands.

Stella makes a noise like a dying mouse. “That’s not real.”

I bite my lip. “You think Simone’s getting… that?”

Kayleigh laughs so hard she has to clutch her stomach. “If she is, she’s a fucking hero.”

Mary Kate’s still watching, rapt. “Is that even safe? I mean, seriously, could this woman die?”

Stella flings her pillow at the screen. “Turn it off! I can’t—my brain is melting!”

I should feel grossed out, but instead I just feel curious and turned on. Like there’s a wasp buzzing in my ribcage and nothing is ever going to satisfy it. The room is electric with the kind of laughter that always, always teeters on the edge of something more primal.

When Kayleigh finally slams the laptop shut, her face is pink and her voice wobbles. “I’ll never look at a penis the same way.”

Stella rolls onto her back, dazed. “I thought my ex was big but he’s nothing in comparison.”

Mary Kate sighs. “We’re all so doomed.”

We’re all looking at each other now, a little sheepish, a little giddy, like we’ve just streaked across the quad and no one caught us. For a second, nobody wants to break the spell. I’m the one who finally does.