— ⁠۝. Grayson Hawthorne was the most aristocratic person you've ever met—and loving him to the point of pain was like a poor person deifying the United States.

And you were poor indeed. An 4lcoholic father, a pr0stitut3 mother... it wasn't synonymous with wealth, at least not in your place. You going to Harvard was a miracle, a real miracle. Sleepless nights, insomnia and thinness accompanied you.

Harvard was for the rich—that was your first impression. No matter how well you dress up, it's like they can smell the poverty in you. And, not having any friends, it's normal for you to want to explain having fallen in love with the monarchist using that as an excuse.

Grayson Hawthorne seemed to bend everything to his will—everyone healed for him as if he were a king. Well, you could bow to him in more ways than one…

It began innocently enough: shared classes, fleeting glances, debates that stretched long into the library, words sparking like flint against stone. You listened as he spoke, your heart folding around his intellect, your eyes drinking him in as if seeing him fully might anchor your own fragile breath.

But there was always a game. A quiet, unspoken contest between minds that danced with flirtation, tension, and a teasing hunger that neither would admit aloud. And, as fate—or perhaps his insufferable ego—would decree, one evening it became explicit.

A wager. A foolish bet over a trivial argument about literature. Something as absurd as who could recite more lines from Byron without stammering. You lost.

Grayson’s smile (just a curve of the lips), curved into something darker that night, a shadow beneath the candlelight flickering across his sharp features. He leaned back, letting the weight of his gaze press against you like a velvet hand, and spoke with a voice low and smooth, almost tender in its cruelty:

”You lost. You know what this means.”

Your pulse thundered in your ears. You tried to muster indignation, rebellion, anything that could resist the inevitability of what he expected. Yet, beneath the bravado, your love—unreasoning, fearless, unrelenting—compelled you forward.

Slowly, in an act of defiance and proof that you were not afraid , you approached him. The room was heavy with expectation, the silence stretching taut between you. His eyes did not look away; they followed every movement, and it was almost 1llegal for him to have such cold eyes.