Chapter Eight — Alex
I know he’s a busy man and his time is valuable. I’m hoping eight minutes was the sweet spot.
He swings the door open, and I can tell instantly that I miscalculated. His eyes narrow, and his arms cross against his broad chest. He’s annoyed.
Fuck, I think to myself.
“You know, I’ll have to make your punishment extra harsh today when you lose,” he says, “For being late.”
He cracks a smile at the end to suggest he’s joking, but a chill runs down my spine. I can tell he isn’t.
I look at him and I feel myself melt a little.
Despite his angry tone, he’s gorgeous. He’s tall, probably about six-foot-three, and somewhere between lanky and built like what I would imagine a Navy SEAL to look like.
When he stretches, I get a peek of his abs underneath his shirt and almost gasp.
His skin is smooth and tanned, contrasting against his bright green eyes. His hair is almost jet black and full.
Everything about him is effortless. His white tee. Gray sweats. Simple watch. There’s a slight stubble on his face, but besides that, no facial hair. His jaw is hard and looks more severe when he scowls, like right now.
“Sorry,” I squeak.
“You will be.” His eyebrows raise. I get another shiver through my body and slight butterflies in my stomach.
Once again, I’m struck by how weird this is. I’m struck that a man this hot is resorting to something this strange. Why can’t he just date one of the million pretty girls I’m sure are constantly flocking around him?
“I know what you’re wondering,” he says. “Why I’m doing this, why I’m single, why I don’t just date some girl in the tech scene, right?”
I stop in my tracks. Is this man a mind reader? It’s almost frightening. He smirks as if he knows exactly what he just did, how he just read my mind and how unsettling it must be for me.
I don’t know if it was just a lucky guess or if this man is really a savant. It would be quite unfair if he not only was a genius but also amazing at reading people. I’m gonna have to say it was a lucky guess, because if it’s not, the alternative is too frightening to contemplate.
“Not really,” I say, shrugging. For some reason, I feel like this man is too arrogant, and I don’t want to give him what he wants.
He’s used to being right, and while I know I’m supposed to be playing stupid right now, it’s just too much for me to feed into his ego anymore. If I did, he might just explode like that blueberry girl in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
I’m doing a public service here, I tell myself.
“Oh really?” he says, cocking his head. “Let me take that.” He grabs my jacket from my hands.
The way he does it, without really waiting for me to respond, catches me off guard. It’s domineering and kind of rude, but also kind of hot.
“This way,” he says, touching my lower back and guiding me. I walk behind him through his huge house into a room near the back.
“What were you thinking, then?” he says as he opens the door and gestures inside.
I walk in, and he walks ahead, opening another door.
Unlike the sterile room we played chess in last week, this room is a lot richer: plush sofas, a burning wood fireplace, cozy carpets, and the smell of wood and cinnamon. It’s luxurious.
In the center of the room, there’s a mahogany table with a deck of cards and chips in the center. There are two plush red chairs on either side of the table. He pulls out a chair for me, and I sit down, caught off guard again by his manners.
In some ways, he’s the epitome of a chauvinist, but in other ways, he’s the perfect gentleman.
It’s hard to square. I look at his smirk once again and feel, not for the first time, that he’s doing this on purpose — projecting two personas as if he’s deliberately trying to confuse me.
I feel like he does this frequently. He’s used to playing mind games with girls, and he’s used to winning.
Not for long, I think to myself.
“Well?” he asks as he takes a seat opposite me. “What were you thinking?”
“How I’m gonna win,” I say, absentmindedly.
He laughs. “Oh really? I’m looking forward to that.”
I nod. “Good.”
I’m trying to play it cool, not give anything away. I’ve been trying my best in the last few days to act as dumb as possible, deliberately misspelling words in texts, messing up grammar.
At times, I wondered if I took it too far. I mixed up “they’re” and “their” a few times and cringed each time. It was hard to send the texts.
I just had to keep reminding myself of what it’ll be like when I beat Callum, how surprised he’ll look, to keep myself on course. Pretending to be an idiot felt humiliating, though.
But now I can finally let the mask drop.
It’s time to play.