"Noted. Can we move on?"
We spend the next hour on logistics. Venue, catering, publicity. The auction format, each participant gets a brief introduction, then bidding starts. Winning bidders get a "date package.” Five dates over the two weeks leading to Valentine's Day, each documented on social media for publicity.
Five dates. Two weeks. Cameras and witnesses the entire time.
If I win Isla Monroe, I'll have two weeks to make her as miserable as she's makes me, or the thought that's been living in the back of my mind since I saw her name on that list, two weeks to prove to her, to myself, that I'm not what she thinks I am.
Two weeks where she can't walk away or avoid me.
The meeting ends. Everyone files out except Marcus, who lingers.
"Don't," I say before he can start.
"Don't what? Don't tell you this is a terrible idea? Don't remind you that she hates you for very good reasons?" He crosses his arms. "What's the endgame here, Seb?"
"There is no endgame. I'm attending a charity auction."
"You're plotting revenge on a girl who rejected you two years ago."
"She didn't just reject me. She humiliated me."
"Because she thought you were mocking her. Because your reputation preceded you." Marcus leans against the table. "You want to know what I think?"
"Not particularly."
"I think you've been obsessed with Isla Monroe since the day she called you out. I think you're angry because she's the only person on this campus who doesn't give a shit about your name and I think you're about to do something phenomenally stupid."
I meet his eyes, Marcus and I have been friends since elementary school, back when our families decided their dynasty heirs should be close. He's one of the few people who sees past the Thornhill name to the person underneath.
Which is precisely why his opinion is dangerous.
"Thank you for that psychological assessment," I say. "Are you done?"
"No. One more thing." He pushes off the table. "If you win her and you hurt her, really hurt her, you're going to have to livewith that and I don't think you're as much of an asshole as you pretend to be."
He leaves before I can respond.
I sit alone in the Thornhill Room, surrounded by portraits of my ancestors. Serious men in old-fashioned clothes, all of them looking vaguely disappointed. The weight of expectation.
My phone buzzes. A text from my father:Board meeting next month. You're expected to attend. Time to start learning the business.
The business. Thornhill Industries. Real estate, investments, legacy upon legacy upon legacy. My future mapped out since before I was born.
I don't respond to that either.
Instead, I open my laptop and pull up a document I haven't looked at in weeks. A collection of poems I've been writing since high school. Pretentious, probably. Self-indulgent, definitely, but they're mine in a way nothing else in my life is.
The most recent one is dated three days ago, after I saw Isla in the library at midnight, exhausted and beautiful and so fucking stubborn.
She builds walls from pride and povertyEach shift another brickEach slight another layerI throw stones because I can't climb themBecause she'd never let me through the gate
I close the laptop quickly, like someone might see.
My father would be horrified if he knew I wrote poetry. "Thornhills build empires, not verses," he told me once when he found my notebook in high school. I've been careful since then.
Careful to hide the parts of me that don't fit the mold.
Careful to be exactly what everyone expects, charming, cold, untouchable.
