* Columbia University, Fall 2014 *
The lecture hall smells like old wood and new ambitions. I'm in the third row, close enough to matter but not so close I look desperate. My notes spread across the desk in a configuration I've practiced.
Everything about this moment has been rehearsed until it's muscle memory. My first debate class, my first real chance to prove I belong here.
I've read seventeen articles, memorized statistics, anticipated counterarguments. The senior presenting—some guy named Marcus with his father's law firm already waiting for him—is sloppy.
I watch him stumble through his position on corporate tax incentives, and something predatory wakes up in my chest. When Professor Pierce asks for rebuttals, my hand shoots up.
He nods, eyebrows raised with interest. "Ms. Vale."
I stand. The room shifts its attention to me—thirty pairs of eyes, most of them belonging to people whose tuition doesn't require three jobs and a miracle.
I should be nervous. I'm not.
I'm starving.
"Marcus makes an interesting argument about trickle-down economics," I start, my voice steady, "if we ignore the last forty years of empirical data showing it doesn't work."
Someone laughs. Quickly stifled.
I dismantled his position piece by piece. Use his own sources against him. Point out the logical fallacies he's built his entire argument on.
By the time I'm done, Marcus looks like he wants to sink through the floor. The room has gone silent in that particular way that means I've just done something people will remember.
Adrenaline sings through my veins. This. This is why I clawed my way here. This feeling of winning against people who thought I'd lose.
I'm gathering my notes, riding the high, when someone raises their hand.
"Yes, Mr. Rothwell?" Professor Pierce sounds amused.
I glance up. There's a guy standing in the back row—tall, red head, wearing clothes that probably cost more than my monthly food budget.
He's not rushing. Just... taking his time getting to the front like he's got all day and knows everyone will wait. The room watches him move with something like fascination.
When he reaches the podium, he turns, and I see his face properly for the first time.
Unfairly handsome. Sharp jaw, grey eyes that catch the light strangely, a mouth that looks like it's always half a second from smiling. There's an ease to him, a confidence that doesn't announce itself because it doesn't have to.
And then he looks directly at me.
Something jolts through my sternum. Recognition without having met. A pull so immediate and physical it feels like standing too close to a fire.
Then he opens his mouth…
"Well, that was painful to watch." His voice carries through the hall, smooth and cutting. "Though I suppose we should applaud the enthusiasm. Very spirited."
The fire feeling evaporates. Replaced by ice.
A few people shift uncomfortably. Someone coughs.
He doesn't use notes. Just talks, his hands moving in dismissive gestures, building his counterargument with the kind of casual brilliance that makes it look effortless. But there's nothing polite about it. Nothing kind.
He uses examples I hadn't considered. Points out assumptions I didn't know I was making. Flips my entire framework until it's lying on its back like a beetle.
My face burns.
He dismantles every point I made with surgical precision, but it's not the logic that cuts. It's the contempt threaded through every word. The way he phrases things like my argument was so fundamentally flawed it barely warranted his time.
Professor Pierce shifts in his seat, clearly uncomfortable but not intervening. Because this is still technically academic discourse. Brutal, but not quite crossing the line.
The worst part is watching my own argument crumble and knowing with absolute, humiliating certainty that he's right.
That everything he's saying is technically correct in a way that makes me feel like I'm playing checkers while he's playing chess.
By the time he's done, the room is silent again. He returns to his seat with the same unhurried grace, and I realize my hands are clenched so tight my nails are cutting into my palms.
I can't feel my hands. Can't hear Professor's clearly strained attempt to redirect the conversation to "respectful academic exchange." Can't hear anything over the roaring in my ears and feeling of my carefully constructed victory turning to ash.
I've never failed at anything academic in my life. Never.
And he just made me look like a child playing dress-up in a freshmen seminar. Made it clear, to everyone watching, that I don't belong. That I'm exactly what they probably all suspected.
The scholarship kid who got lucky, stumbling around in a world where she'll never fit.
When class ends, I shove my notes into my bag with enough force that something rips. Around me, people are talking, laughing, the usual post-class chaos.
I need to get out of here before anyone sees how badly my hands are shaking.
"Hey."
I freeze. Know without looking that it's him.
He's standing beside my desk, hand extended like we're at some country club mixer. Up close, he's worse—or better. Depending on how you want to define things that make your pulse do complicated maneuvers.
There's a small scar through his left eyebrow. A birthmark at the corner of his eye. Details I shouldn't be cataloging.
"Caspian Rothwell." That easy smile. Like we're friends. Like he didn't just eviscerate me in front of thirty people. "That was a cute effort. You'll get better with practice."
The words land like a slap.
Effort. Not argument. Not position. Effort.
Practice. Like I'm a child learning to tie my shoes.
The condescension in it—the casual assumption that he's inherently better, that I'm struggling where he glides—ignites something in my chest that feels like swallowing glass.
I look at his hand. At his face.
At that infuriating smile that doesn't know it's infuriating.
Every instinct I have is screaming at me to be smart, be political. Shake his hand and move on. He's clearly someone who matters here. Someone with connections and money and never had to prove himself.
Smile. Network. Play the game.
Instead, I hear my own voice, cold and clear: "Go to hell, Caspian Rothwell."
I watch his expression shift. Surprise flickering through those grey eyes—genuine surprise, like he's not used to people rejecting him.
Then something else crosses his face. Something sharper.
His hand is still extended between us, and I realize I've just made this weirder by not taking it and not leaving. So I grab my bag and walk past him, my shoulder nearly brushing his arm.
Near enough to catch his cologne—something expensive and woodsy that I'll probably smell in my nightmares.
I don't look back. But I feel his gaze tracking me all the way to the door.
Feel it like a pressure against my spine.
In the hallway, my heart is hammering like I've just sprinted a mile. My face feels hot. My hands are still shaking.
I should have shaken his hand. Should have been gracious in defeat. That's what you're supposed to do. Especially when you're the scholarship girl and he's clearly someone whose last name has a building dedicated to it.
But the idea of touching him, of playing nice while he patronized me, felt impossible. Physically impossible, like asking me to swallow something rotten.
‘You'll get better with practice.’
Fuck him.
Fuck his easy smile and his casual brilliance and the way he looked at me like I was interesting, like demolishing my argument was just a fun intellectual exercise for him.
I’ll make him fucking eat those words. Watch me.