Ficorpio
Chapter 1
I calculated the return on a boyfriend before I learned his favorite drink.
This was not romantic, but neither was eating instant noodles for thirty-one consecutive days.
On day thirty-one, I sat cross-legged on Megan Brooks’s bed at Westbridge University, stared into a paper cup of chicken-flavored broth, and admitted the truth.
“I need a rich boyfriend.”
Megan stopped applying mascara. In the mirror above her desk, her eyes found mine. “You need vitamin C.”
“Both can be true.”
Our dorm room had the dimensions of a respectable closet and the ventilation of a sealed tomb. The air smelled like makeup powder, synthetic chicken, and the cinnamon candle we were forbidden to light. Outside the window, September sunlight glazed the limestone buildings of Westbridge gold, making the university look exactly like the brochures: venerable, selective, and untouched by overdraft fees.
Westbridge contained two kinds of students. Some compared internships. Others compared private islands. I belonged to the first category only because there wasn’t a third category labeled people who checked their bank balance before adding cheese to a sandwich.
My scholarship covered tuition. It did not cover the administrative fees that multiplied whenever nobody was looking, the economics textbook that cost more than my winter coat, or the fact that my campus job had cut my hours. The Sterling Opportunity Grant might have solved part of the problem, but applications had closed weeks ago, and wishing did not qualify as a financial plan.
I set the noodles aside and opened my laptop. A spreadsheet waited on the screen.
Megan leaned over. “You made a boyfriend budget?”
“A feasibility analysis.”
“There are names.”
“Candidates.”
“There are weighted scores. Avery, you ranked human men by liquidity.”
“Liquidity is only twenty percent. Emotional volatility is thirty.”
She gave me the long, silent look generally reserved for people who confessed to tax fraud.
I scrolled to the first row. Adrian Sterling. Twenty-two. Business major. Old money substantial enough to have buildings named after relatives and a grant named after the family. Campus reputation: arrogant, expensive, and socially omnivorous. Photographic evidence suggested he owned several watches, any one of which could pay my rent for a year.
More important, he had never been publicly serious about anyone. Low attachment history meant low exit friction.
“Adrian Sterling,” Megan read. “Absolutely not.”
“His composite score is ninety-two.”
“His danger score should be two hundred.”
“The scale stops at ten.”
“Then fix the scale.”
I turned the laptop toward myself. “I don’t need to marry him. I need him to fall in love with me.”
Megan blinked once. “That’s much less alarming.”
Chapter 2
“Two months, maximum. Long enough to establish a relationship. Short enough to avoid academic damage.”
“And then what? He pays your bills because your cheekbones inspire philanthropy?”
Heat crept up my neck, because the sentence sounded ugly when spoken aloud. It had looked cleaner in twelve-point Calibri.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Gifts. Introductions. Maybe access to paid opportunities. Rich people spend money by accident, Megan. I could stand nearby and catch some.”
My joke landed between us and died.
Megan capped her mascara. Her voice softened, which was worse than mockery. “Babe, being broke is frightening. I know. But this isn’t you.”
It was precisely me, or at least the version of me created by thirty-one dinners from plastic packets and an email warning that one late residence payment could place a hold on my account. Generosity was easy when you had something to give. Ethics became theoretical when hunger sharpened your ribs.
I closed the spreadsheet. “I’m not stealing from him. I’m giving him a delightful romantic experience in exchange for economic spillover.”
“You sound like a morally compromised economist.”
“Thank you.”
She pointed at my closet. “What does a morally compromised economist wear to seduce a Sterling?”
That was the useful question.
We chose the white dress because it looked innocent without being childish. It had cost eighteen dollars at a thrift store and fit as though some better-funded woman had donated it specifically to advance my criminal career. I left my hair loose and spent forty minutes constructing makeup that suggested I had awakened with clear skin, dark lashes, and no awareness of concealer.
Megan watched me apply a second kind of blush over the first. “Natural makeup seems labor-intensive.”
“So does inherited wealth, apparently.”
At noon, Adrian was expected outside Harcourt Hall after the student investment society meeting. I had studied his schedule through public club posts, which was research, not stalking, because the information came with hashtags. I would cross his path carrying too many books. One would fall. I would refuse help. He would notice me.
Simple.
Megan walked me to the center of campus, where old oaks shaded brick paths and students lounged on lawns in outfits worth more than my semester’s groceries. Harcourt’s glass doors flashed in the sun.
“Last chance to develop standards,” she said.
“Standards are expensive.”
She caught my wrist before I stepped away. The humor had left her face. “Adrian isn’t just some rich idiot with a sports car. People orbit him. They fight over his attention, and he knows exactly what it does to them. He’s more dangerous than your spreadsheet allows.”
I looked toward the doors. “Then it’s fortunate I’m not interested in his attention.”
Megan’s grip loosened. “That’s the first lie of the day, and you haven’t even met him.”
The doors opened.
Adrian Sterling walked out, and my projected risk increased immediately.
Chapter 3
He was taller than photographs had indicated, broad-shouldered beneath a charcoal jacket he wore over an open-collared white shirt. Nothing displayed a logo. Nothing needed to. His dark hair looked disciplined except for one piece near his forehead, and his expression carried the calm impatience of a man accustomed to rooms adjusting around him.
Two students followed him, still talking. Adrian answered one without slowing, shook the other’s hand, and glanced across the courtyard.
His gaze landed on me.
It did not slide away.
For one strange second, he looked less surprised than satisfied. Then the expression vanished beneath a slight, arrogant curve of his mouth.
Fine. Arrogance was in the model.
I moved.
My collision plan lasted six steps. On the seventh, a cyclist cut across the path. I pivoted, genuinely lost my balance, and sent three books crashing onto the bricks. One opened facedown. My water bottle rolled directly toward Adrian’s polished shoe.
He stopped it with the sole.
So much for subtlety.
I crouched. “Please keep walking. If nobody witnesses this, I can still claim dignity.”
A shadow fell across the page. Adrian bent and picked up my econometrics textbook.
“You staged an ambush with nine hundred pages of regression analysis?” he asked.
His voice was lower than I expected, smooth but not lazy.
I looked up. At close range, he was offensively well assembled. Gray eyes, straight nose, a mouth made for either issuing orders or breaking them. His attention held mine with enough force to feel physical.
Tactical data, I reminded myself.
“Eight hundred and seventy-six,” I said. “The appendix isn’t dangerous.”
He glanced at the title. “Advanced econometrics.”
“Excellent reading comprehension. Westbridge admissions made the right call.”
One of his companions choked on a laugh. Adrian handed him a look, and both men found urgent reasons to leave. Then Adrian turned back to me.
“Do you insult everyone who helps you?”
“Only people who accuse me of ambush before introducing themselves.”
His smile deepened. “Adrian Sterling.”
He offered his hand. The watch at his wrist was understated, silver, probably devastating to my credit score.
I stood without taking it, gathering the remaining books against my chest. “I know. There’s a library wing.”
“My grandfather.”
“Then I apologize for blaming you personally for the lighting.”
He laughed. Not the polite exhale wealthy men used when they wanted an audience to know they were amused, but a brief, startled sound. It transformed his face, warming something in it that I had budgeted as cold.
Unexpected. Potentially useful.
Also unexpectedly pleasant. Less useful.
He picked up my water bottle and held it out. “And you are?”
I let my fingers close around the bottle. His did not release it immediately. For half a heartbeat, our hands hovered an inch apart, close enough that I noticed a pale scar across one knuckle.
“Avery Bennett.”
“Avery,” he repeated, as if testing how the name felt. “Do you always carry your entire education across campus?”