1 Chapter 1

Elijah

I left the library the moment I got a text from Logan. Technically, I was supposed to be studying for a test, not to mention all the assignments I still had to do, but I didn't care. Logan, supposedly, had something important for me. While he wasn't the most reliable guy out there because he liked to prank me a lot, he was still one of my best friends, and he knew when not to joke with me.

Because of course, I returned every prank twice as hard. He'd come to learn not to mess with me.

Fuck, I was invincible when it came to pranking!

I made my way toward the dorms. Our college was pretty relaxed when it came to student housing, more than most colleges I'd heard of. At least, that was the consensus, since they allowed coed dorms, and plenty of people took advantage of this fact. My friend Logan was one of them, because he loved bunking with the ladies for a night of fun.

So it wasn't a surprise when he'd texted me to come to the dorm house a block away from the one we lived in. Usually, he just told me he'd be busy nights, so I was curious what he'd called me out for.

Logan hooking me up was one of his worse pranks. He would set me up with the opposite of what I liked in women, and it had led to a few humiliating situations. So much so, that I hated myself for being the center of them all!

I walked into the dorm and found a few people lounging around the common room on the first floor. Logan was nowhere to be found, and I wasn't about to start knocking on doors to find him. I took my cell out and made a call.

"Seriously Logan, where you at? I was studying, you know."

He laughed. "Dude, who you trying to kid? Studying. Please. You're here, aren't you? That means you're interested! In fact, you should be thanking me."

I rolled my eyes, "Fine, whatever. But I swear if this is you trying to trick me again..."

Logan laughed again, though there was an edge of nervousness in it. I hadn't forgotten the last prank, and I'd yet to get him back, so he'd been wary of me lately and trying to get back in my good graces. It was part of the reason I even showed up, knowing he could still try something stupid.

"I'm up in Dana's dorm, on the third floor."

Dana was a girl Logan fooled around with, at least one of the latest. Lately, she was all he'd been talking about, so I didn't think he was seeing anyone else. For now, but knowing him it wouldn't take long for him to get bored and start seeing another girl.

Sometimes, I envied how carefree he could be. When it all backfired on him, though, I was the first person to point a finger and laugh my ass off.

I headed up the stairs and started the jog up. I got to the room and held my hand up to knock because I didn't want to walk into anything. When I remembered something that made me pause.

Shit.

I called Logan back. When he answered, I spoke before he had the chance to.

"Is Sophia in there? I almost forgot that they're roommates."

Sophia was studying the same major, and we'd even had a few classes together. There wasn't anything wrong with Sophia. I could even admit that she was pretty, but we just didn't get along, which was why I tended to avoid her like the plague.

"Don't worry," he said dismissively.

"Of course she's not here. Why on earth would I call you if she was? Would you hurry and get in already? I left the door unlocked."

He hung up, and I glared at the cell, before sighing and putting it back in my pocket. I could curse him later for hanging up on me. I reached for the doorknob and opened. The room wasn't so different from mine, fairly spacious with a couple of desks, dressers, and beds pushed to opposite sides of the room. Logan was on one of the beds, with Dana lying on her back and Logan propping himself up on his elbow above her as they kissed.

"Dude," I complained, closing the door behind me. "I didn't come here to watch you get it on."

He gave me the finger, and I had to wait for them to pull out of the kiss. He'd talked to me a second before I walked in on the cell, so I was sure the show was for my benefit. I sighed and looked around the room. I could have gone over there to pull the two of them apart because it was just Logan being Logan and trying to piss me off. I didn't have anything against Dana.

Since they were on the other side of the room, I focused on the other. I glanced over at the desk, to the laptop. I frowned at it, then moved closer. I thought, at first, it was off because the screen was black. But then I noticed the words bouncing around, and realized the screen saver was on. Out of curiosity, I swiped my finger over the touchpad, and the screen came on.

Just how careless was this chick, to leave her things lying around?

Logan and Dana's kiss ended with a moan and a smacking sound from behind me, and I turned around with a glare to find my so-called friend grinning up at me.

"Finally done?" I asked, tone heavy with sarcasm.

"Sure, sure," he said, waving lazily at me. "But, I didn't call you here to be a peeping Tom."

I glared. "Is it even peeping, if I'm in the room with the two of you and you invited me? Without locking the door?"

Logan just chuckled. "Anyway, I called you over here for that."

He waved his hand, and I followed the gesture, my eyes returning to the computer behind me. My eyebrows shot up. I turned back to the two on the bed.

"Isn't that Sophia's computer?"

Dana hummed, shifting, so she was sitting up with her pillows behind her. Logan pouted then moved to sit up himself, raising one of his knees up and leaning back on his arms.

"It's hers," Dana confirmed. "I told her I had someone coming over and she said she'd find somewhere else to be for the time being. She forgot to turn off her laptop."

Logan laughed. "She practically ran off when I walked into the room. Dude, you should have seen it, you would have gotten a kick out of it."

"Yeah, I doubt that," I said dryly.

Sophia, for some reason, hated my guts. She acted like a bitch to me every time our paths crossed. I'd had people openly hate me before, and I didn't give a fuck about them. But some reason I hated it whenever Sophia cut her eyes at me. I hadn't even done anything to her, that was the reason it bugged me the most.

"So," I said, and sighed. "You called me here...because Sophia left her computer on." I shrugged. "So what?"

Logan grinned. "Well, I was calling you here for a dare."

I arched an eyebrow. "Oh?"

He nodded solemnly. "I know you haven't forgotten the last time I pranked you?"

I scowled. "Of course I haven't forgotten," I growled.

Logan gave me a piece of paper at the end of class, telling me it was the class assignment, and he'd forgotten to hand it in. Being the nice guy I was, I took the paper without even glancing at it. The professor was female, in her thirties, and hot for someone her age. If I went for older women, she would definitely be my type.

I should have figured it out, but I was distracted at the time. Because it was Logan, and he always had others that did that type of shit for him. Women were always running around him. Never could figure out why? Sure, he was charming, but man did he love to cheat!

"Do you know how much trouble I got into? The whole assignment was about behavioral research in dating and sexual activity among teens and youths!"

I narrowed my eyes, "And then to include information about lusting after older figures of authority like, say, teachers and professors. And all the fucking details about seduction and all that bullshit. Can you even call that a fucking assignment?"

Logan broke out laughing, feeling no shame or guilt. He didn't understand how humiliating it was at the time. The professor had glanced through the paper, and I thought it was my cue to walk away. Only, she'd stopped me, and I saw her frowning as she read the paper in more detail. When she blushed, I knew that was something wrong.

She'd proceeded to ask me to follow her to her office, and explained that while it was a good paper, very well researched, a lot of the details were unnecessary. She couldn't look me in the eye, and I was sure that she'd been keeping her eye on me ever since and avoided me like crazy, because he wrote my name and not his own as being the writer of the paper. He did set me up for the fall, but I still hated him for it. Crap! Who was I kidding, Logan was like the brother I never had, he was crazy and kept me on my toes.

"Don't sweat it," Logan was saying through his chuckles. "You should see her. I swear she has a thing for you, with how much she keeps eyeing you."

I rolled my eyes. "More like she's worried someone else would read the paper, and she would get into trouble for inappropriate relations with her students that led to a paper like that. It was like fucking porn, only on paper. I didn't know you were that skilled."

He shrugged. "I asked some girl to write it for me. She thought she was writing the summary of a steamy romance novel or something. It was good."

I folded my arms across my chest, feeling impatience building up in my chest.

"What does any of that have with me being here?" I asked.

"Oh, right! The dare. You're good with computers, right? So, the dare is you get on there and dig around. Maybe, you can find out the secret about why she's so stuck up all the time."

His expression soured a little, and I remembered I wasn't the only one Sophia had shown disdain for.

I frowned, glancing at the computer. A part of me was seriously tempted. This girl had been a thorn in my side for months. She'd humiliated me publically almost every time we were in the vicinity because I didn't know how to keep my mouth shut and she had some good comebacks. I'd realized early on I probably wouldn't win a verbal war with her, but I'd tried it plenty of times, anyway.

Still, I couldn't just go through her things...

"Go ahead and do it," Dana said before I could open my mouth to refuse.

"It's probably the only chance you're ever going to get if you want to get back at her. She's always on that thing... She was careless today because she was caught off guard. It doesn't happen often."

I'm glad that Dana's not my roommate. Damn, I thought girls were supposed to be tight. Or maybe Dana's a lot more into Logan than he realizes and she'd do anything for him.

"See?" Logan added his own two cents. "This is your chance. How many times has she said something to your face, around a bunch of people, that's left you a laughing stock, huh? I'll tell you; it's way more than me."

I pursed my lips, remembering. The last time, we'd been with a bunch of other guys, and I'd been getting shit from them ever since. They weren't guys I would ignore, and I'd locked myself in my room, or hidden in the library, for the past couple weeks while I waited for the hype to die down.

"You must be curious," Dana said, her eyes drifting to the computer. "Even I want to know what she's been up to, especially recently, because she's been acting so weird. I could swear there's something big going on and she's keeping it a secret from me."

Something big...

Big enough that I could use it against her?

Fuck, this was too damn tempting. In a moment of impulse, because my curiosity had gotten the better of me, I grabbed the chair and pulled it out from under the desk, taking a seat.

"You know what? You guys are right, so why not? It could be nothing, but if there's something useful..."

There was a cheer from Logan behind me, but I ignored him. Now that I'd decided to do this, I focused on the task.

Her computer was password protected, so she wasn't too careless. It would take more than a password to stop me, though. I rifled through my backpack and pulled out my cell and a cable to connect it to the computer. I had a program in it that was good at cracking passwords, and I ran it. Soon I had it unlocked. Next, I opened a different program and ran it, and copied whatever was on it.

I looked through what I was copying as I waited. A lot of it wasn't anything useful. There were plenty of assignments and practice tests, as well as some document that had nothing to do with school. There was a folder that held pictures; another one held music.

I sighed, already thinking it was a bust. There was absolutely nothing of interest; even her music choices seemed mediocre.

Then, I came across something that made my eyebrows shoot up. A moment later, my jaw dropped, and my eyes blew wide. I grinned, because I had found just the thing I needed.

I fucking got you, Sophia!

Now, let's see who's the last man laughing.

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