The Paid Villainess Fell First

My best friend paid me to play the villainess in every love story she tried to live out.

When she fell for the class genius, I led a pack of jealous girls after him. When she chose the campus heartthrob, I became the rich-girl nuisance who would not leave him alone. This time, she had picked a campus bad boy.

We were in an alley, pretending I was about to slap her so he could sweep in and save her, when two men appeared at the other end.

“Well, well,” Ethan Cole said coldly, “if it isn’t the two women who once loved me to death.”

Nolan Pierce looked straight at me. His gaze was sharp enough to cut, and so was his voice.

“You’ve got it wrong. That’s the gorgeous woman who swore she’d marry me”—his eyes stayed on me—“and that’s the innocent sweetheart who called me the love of her life.”

The gorgeous woman and the innocent sweetheart were, unfortunately, me and my best friend.

Sophie Bennett and I had been best friends since we were kids on the same working-class block, but we had grown in opposite directions. Her father’s contracting company took off; every business my dad touched folded. By junior year, I was five foot seven, while Sophie had stopped at about five foot three. I grew into long legs, bold features, and the sort of face people noticed. Sophie stayed soft and pale, all wide eyes and delicate lashes.

Our personalities were even further apart. I spent my summers lying about my age and picking up every shift I could find. Sophie spent hers in her dad’s new mansion, crying over romance novels.

I loved money. Sophie loved love—or, more accurately, love as imagined by people who churned out fantasy-academy romances at three in the morning.

Her new-money father gave her anything she asked for, except permission to date. Then, during our junior year, he left the country to expand the business.

Sophie clasped both hands beneath her chin. “This is my moment.”

It was also, though I did not know it yet, the beginning of my career as a paid villainess.

Sophie did not want an ordinary high-school romance. A proper story needed a hero, a devoted second lead, and a vicious female rival.

The second lead sounded difficult to arrange.

The vicious rival was sitting across from her.

She narrowed her eyes and studied me. Goose bumps rose on my arms.

“No,” I said.

Sophie calmly pulled a black credit card from her wallet and waved it once.

I caught her hand in both of mine. “Best friend, partner, visionary. Tell me everything.”

Her first pick for leading man was Ethan Cole, the top student in the honors track. He wore thin gold-rimmed glasses, spoke only when necessary, and looked like the aloof prodigy in a fantasy-academy novel who had sworn off human emotion.

Sophie saw a romantic lead.

I saw someone who would report us to the librarian.

We peeked through the library door while he studied. Sophie shoved a bright dress into my hands.

“You go in after me,” she whispered. “Make him protect me.”

“How much?”

She named a figure.

It was more than I made in two weeks of weekend shifts. I did the math, then did it again to be sure.

I changed clothes.

Sophie carried a stack of books to Ethan’s table. Late sunlight moved across the windows while he explained a problem and she listened with such serious attention that, for one foolish second, I forgot this was a performance.

Then Sophie made a face at me, a signal so desperate she looked like she might throw up.

My cue.

I strutted over, folded my arms, and tapped the table.

Ethan looked up.

“Did you read my letter?” I asked, pretending to chew gum.

“Who are you?”

“Jordan Hale. I wrote you a three-thousand-word confession.”

Most of it had come from the internet, but his blank stare still offended me.

“Too long,” he said. “I threw it away.”

The library had mostly emptied by then, so I raised my voice. “So you like girls like her?” I pointed at Sophie. “Hey, you. What’s your name?”

Sophie edged closer to Ethan and answered in a trembling voice that carried across the empty floor.

“Sophie Bennett. Please remember it—”

“Fine. Sophie Bend-it, Sophie Break-it, whatever. You’d better watch yourself.”

The corner of Ethan’s mouth twitched.

I rolled my eyes and stormed out. From around the corner, I texted Sophie: He didn’t know your name before. He definitely knows it now.

After that, Ethan always answered Sophie’s questions. I privately suspected he thought she was too hopeless to give up on.

For $5 each, I recruited Kayla and Brianna, both five-seven or taller, to serve as my sidekicks. We blocked Sophie’s path to the library. Kayla cracked her knuckles. Brianna jiggled one leg like a street thug. Sophie squeezed eyedrops into her eyes for instant tears.

Ethan arrived exactly on schedule.

He surveyed the three of us and said, “Move.”

One word. One look from thirty thousand feet up.

Then he took Sophie by the wrist and led her away.

She was supposed to follow like a frightened rabbit. Instead, she skipped behind him.

Kayla watched them go. “You think he knows we’re acting?”

Brianna shook out her numb leg. “I think I earned dinner.”

We went to a loaded-fries place by the school. Sophie paid.

Kayla ordered extra cheese. Brianna ordered a second basket to go. I didn’t stop either of them. Hired muscle deserved benefits.

Six months later, Sophie confessed to Ethan. He told her to focus on school and get into a good college.

Sophie refused to give up—until Ethan started showing up every day to walk her through the hardest problems he could find.

“Jo, save me,” she wailed. “I can’t understand a word he says. His face isn’t handsome enough to make calculus worth this.”

From then on, whenever we saw Ethan, we ducked and zigzagged around him like he was radioactive.

High school ended. Sophie and I both enrolled at Westbridge State University. Ethan had gone off to some other university—I’d made a point of not remembering which—and we were certain the Ethan episode was over.

Then Sophie saw Nolan Pierce at an outdoor basketball court.