She came to St. Jude's Academy with one goal .. the #1 ranking and the scholarship that came with it. No friends. No distractions. No exceptions.
But April Mendoza didn't account for Jaden Sterling.
The Golden Boy. The untouchable heir. The boy whose name sat above hers on every rankings board like a personal insult.
When she finds his secret  the one that could destroy everything he's built  she doesn't run. She makes a deal. A contract. Fake dating in exchange for the rank she's bled for.
Simple. Clean. No real feelings. No exceptions.
Except nothing about Jaden Sterling is simple.
By the time the contract ends, the feelings are real, the secrets are buried, and April Mendoza is standing at #1 with the boy she was supposed to hate holding her hand in the hallway.
She survived the fake relationship. She survived the rivals, the rich girls, the fathers with power and ice in their eyes.
She thought the hardest part was over.
Then Seo Jun-Ho walks through the door.
Quiet. Precise. Dangerous in a way she doesn't have a word for yet.
He doesn't announce himself. He doesn't chase attention. He simply sits down, opens a book, scores a perfect 100, and looks at April Mendoza like she's the only variable in the room worth solving.
She came for grades.
They came for her.
And now she doesn't know which one of them is going to cost her everything.

Rehearsed people got walked around. She had watched it happen all week: the dropped pens, the wrong classrooms, the junior girl at lunch with a casual smile that had clearly been practiced in a mirror. Seo Jun-Ho had a reply ready for every one of them. Every reply was polite. Every reply ended with him still walking.


She had watched from the sidelines, the way she watched most things at St. Jude's, with a pen in her hand and part of her brain keeping count. On Monday the librarian had asked whether she was staying until close, and April, already zipping her bag, had said she had somewhere to be, loudly enough for the nearest table to hear. The nearest table had been his. He hadn't looked up. She had written three words in her notebook anyway.


So she gave herself the rest of sixth period to decide what she wanted to know, and zero minutes to decide how to say it.


Chapter 45 - Chapter 45: Prior Commitments