The Heiress's Reverse Filter

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The whole school had me filed under one word. Simp.

Three years trailing the worst guy in our class like a stray nobody claimed. Three years of them watching me get turned down in public, then texting me after to feel better about it.

Here's what not one of them ever worked out. I never wanted Hunter Song. I was using him. He was the filter. The worst person I could find, and everyone he couldn't stand turned out to be exactly who I was looking for.

I wasn't pining. I was screening. For a husband.

"Honestly, I was always gonna take Quinn overseas with me. Got bored of the chase, figured I'd settle down."

Hunter said it loose and easy, right after the scholarship girl shut down his confession in front of everyone. Again.

The room lit up. People actually turned to congratulate me. The simp finally landed her man. They figured I should be crying happy tears.

I was close to crying. Just not for the reason they thought.

My phone buzzed in my hand. A text. From the one man in that room none of them had clocked yet.

Him: [So last night you got drunk and used my whole body as your personal jungle gym, and today you're skipping the country with him? Playing me?]

Him: [Sounds like it's time I sat down with your parents. We should really discuss this love-them-and-leave-them habit of yours.]

Chapter 1

My mother has one rule about men, and it's the reason our family has more money than God.

Don't shop for who he is. Shop for who he's going to be.

She married my father when he was nobody. Saw the ambition before the bank account caught up, decided he was a sure thing, and locked it down before anyone else ran the numbers. Twenty years later he's a self-made empire, she got the kind of wedding tabloids still bring up, and she's lost count of the properties in her own name.

She told me all this with a pink diamond the size of a grape throwing light across the kitchen.

"Date whoever you want," she said. "But bring home a man who aims lower than your father, and I'll disown you on principle."

Fair.

Here's the problem with my world. It's all trust-fund boys I've known since diapers, and not one of them has a brain worth marrying. You poke one, he doesn't even flinch.

So I had an idea. A good one.

Infiltrate. Reverse-screen.

I picked the worst boy in the whole pack, Hunter Song, and I trailed him like a shadow he couldn't shake. Elementary school through senior year. He said jump, I asked how high. Sweet. Obedient. A perfect little simp.

Everyone assumed I'd locked him in as my future husband.

Hunter loved it and hated it in equal measure.

"Quinn, you're too easy. Not my type."

Every time, I'd nod, do my sad little face, and back away alone.

And every time, the same boys who mocked me as a simp behind my back would slide into my texts to comfort me.

Them: [You're such a great girl. Why hang yourself on one tree?]

Because here's the thing none of them did the math on. If Hunter Song is garbage, the people who orbit him aren't treasure. He was my compass. Everyone he liked, I steered clear of. The ones he couldn't stand were my people. The ones worth knowing.

Then, by some incredible stroke of luck, Hunter found the one person he hated more than anyone in seventeen years.

Adrian Cole.

Top of the entire school. A face that belonged out of everyone's league. Ordinary family, but he pulled in competition scholarships like it was a part-time job. And the part that really got under Hunter's skin: Adrian had grown up next door to Reese Doyle, the scholarship girl Hunter wanted and couldn't have.

So Hunter started chasing Reese loud enough for the whole school to hear. Didn't spare one thought for my feelings. Even joked I should go chase Adrian instead.

My eyes lit up.

Yes. Exactly that.

I'd been watching Adrian for a while.

Six-foot-one. Lean build, the kind you only clock when his shirt rides up in gym. I'd clocked it. Most of the time he just sat there working problems, spine straight, long pale fingers around a pen, the knuckles still faintly pink, like he hadn't finished growing into his own hands.

Character was the part I actually cared about, and I couldn't read it yet. So I went to the source.

Reese assumed I was a jealous girlfriend coming to start something. Her hands shot up.

"I have nothing going on with Hunter. Nothing."

I smiled. "I want to chase Adrian. I'm here to buy information."

She blinked at me with those clean doe eyes.

"That feels kind of wrong"

I slid a thick envelope across the table.

"Consideration."

Her whole posture corrected itself.

"I will tell you everything I know. His coffee order, his schedule, every girl who's asked him out and crashed and burned. You want it, I dig it up."

I didn't have a comeback for that.

Case closed. The girl loves money, and a childhood friend is just inventory she hasn't sold yet.

What she told me: Adrian runs cold with people. But he's soft on small things. Most afternoons he's up on the hill behind Crestmont, feeding the strays nobody else bothers with.

I filed it away.

The boy with no patience for a single living person, crouching in the dirt for a cat that can't do a thing for him.

Noted, Cole.

Found the soft spot. Now I just have to become it.

Chapter 2

Adrian Cole's scouting report came back so far ahead of the field it wasn't even close. I was thrilled.

Next day I showed up on the hill with a bag of cat food and a coincidence.

He was crouched in the grass, running a slow hand down a fat calico purring itself stupid. Sunlight came through the trees and cut clean lines down the side of his face. Clean soap, cold and faint. That was what he smelled like.

"What are the odds," I said, beaming. "Hey, Cole."

He didn't look up.

"Long odds, since I watched you go pay Reese off," he said, flat. "Do me a favor. Leave her out of whatever game you and Hunter are running."

"You like her too?" I blinked.

He lifted his lashes. Cold.

"If that's your definition of like, it's a shallow one."

I should have been insulted. Instead I was delighted.

The harder someone is to reach, the more seriously they take the things they let in.

I crouched too, reached for the cat, and my fingers grazed the back of his hand. He pulled it back like I'd burned him.

His brows drew together. Something close to displeasure in those deep, unfairly good eyes.

I looked up and smiled.

"I went to Reese because I want to chase you."

He went colder, because he's smart, and he'd already followed the whole thing to its ugly little conclusion.

"No thanks. I have even less time for your games than I do for Hunter's."

He didn't believe a word of it.

The thing is, I wasn't playing.

After that, every time Adrian looked up, I was there. Smiling.

There's an old line about how you can't hit a smiling face.

Right as his patience was about to run dry, I moved to phase two.

The stumble.

I engineered one more accidental run-in, pretended a cat fat enough to knock over a linebacker had tripped me, and threw myself at him with a little yelp.

Reflexes kicked in. He stepped aside.

I watched myself go down into the grass. Scraped my elbow raw.

We stared at each other. My mouth wobbled.

"You let me fall?"

Adrian said nothing.

I've had a low pain tolerance my whole life, so the tears came up embarrassingly real.

His lashes flickered. Something helpless crossed his face for half a second.

Probably terrified someone would think he'd hurt me. He pressed his lips flat and pulled me up.

"Stop crying. I'll take you to the nurse."

"Carry me."

"...Quinn."

"My leg's hurt too." I made it pitiful.

He looked at my knee, already swelling red, and stopped arguing. Turned around. Crouched.

I lit up, threw my arms around his neck, and whispered into his skin.

"You're a really good guy, Cole."

My breath landed on the shell of his ear. His step stalled.

"Shut up."

It came out rough, pressed down. The tips of his ears had gone red.

I told him my name would walk toward him one step at a time, just like I was.

He said he didn't believe me.

I was pleased enough with how it was going that I sent Reese another transfer. She called it too much, then nobly decided to part with something precious. Her spot co-hosting the spring showcase with Adrian, signed straight over to me. They always got the big events. Top grades, good faces, neighbors who could rehearse together easy. Now it would be me. Onstage. A week of rehearsals with him.

But that wasn't the part that made my night.

Reese leaned in like it was gossip too good to sit on.

The boy who never once looked at the class rankings had stopped that week. First time anyone had seen it. Ran his eyes down the list, top to bottom, and held there. A long time. On two words.

Quinn Ashford.

The corner of his mouth doing something he never gave it permission to do.

Chapter 3

Adrian froze when he walked into Reese Doyle's apartment and found me sitting there.

"Why are you here?"

I put on my offended face. "You don't want to see me? Fine. I'll go."

My foot slipped on the next step. The yelp didn't even make it out of my mouth before his hand closed hard around my waist and held me up.

He looked tired about it. "How many times are you going to fall on flat ground?"

Catching me had become a reflex.

He probably hadn't clocked it himself, but somewhere between that first stiff grab and this clean, automatic one, he'd gotten used to my hands on him.

Reese poked her head out and cheerfully laid out the whole story.

Adrian went quiet for a long moment. "You paid her."

"How'd you know?" I was almost impressed.

"You're asking me?" He looked deeply unimpressed. "You think she'd host anything that didn't come with a stipend?"

I shot him a sour look. "Wow. You really know her."

I turned to leave. He caught my hand and pressed something into my palm.

A chocolate. My favorite brand. The one I'd never told him about.

Like he was trying to settle me down.

My mouth curved before I could stop it, and my whole mood flipped over.

Once the hosting script was marked up, Grandma Doyle flat-out refused to let me leave without dinner. Reese got flustered about it, but the old woman wouldn't hear a word. "First time a good friend visits, you can't send her home hungry."

I grinned and started setting the table. Reese watched my back for a long time and said nothing.

Dinner was loud and warm. Grandma Doyle decided she loved me and kept loading my plate.

Reese walked me down after, still sheepish. "That probably wasn't your kind of food."

"It was good. I'd eat it again."

I caught the stunned look on her face and smiled. "I actually want to be your friend. I mean it."

"My dad was broke when he was young too. So what? He built himself into the boss of his own company anyway."

"I read people well. Trust me. You and my dad are the same kind. You're going to be somebody."

At the car, something occurred to me. I turned back.

"If Hunter gives you trouble, you tell me."

Reese rubbed at the corner of one reddening eye and laughed.

"Okay."

The second Hunter saw Adrian and me onstage together, hosting, it finally clicked that something was off.

Why had I stopped turning up at his side?

What had I been so busy with?

Why was I getting more and more distant?

All of it landed on him at once.

The whole event, his stare burned into the side of my head. He didn't blink. His jaw stayed tight the entire show.

After, I'd barely started wiping off the stage makeup when he yanked me into a corner.

"Quinn. What is going on between you and Adrian?"

My temper spiked. I almost cursed him out. Caught it.

Hunter's family was shipping him abroad after graduation. Set him off now and there was no telling what he'd pull. Stir him up and he'd just cling harder, out of spite.

So I'd keep him calm a little longer.

I lifted my chin and slid back into the soft, sweet voice.

"You're the one who told me to go chase Adrian. Did you forget?"

A small sound came from the doorway.

The door had blown open. Just a crack.

Chapter 4

"When did I tell you to"

He stopped. Remembered. He had, in fact, joked exactly that.

The anger jammed back down his throat. Couldn't let it out, couldn't swallow it.

All he got out, through his teeth: "You really do listen, don't you."

"I do." I smiled.

He couldn't make himself take it back, so he just slammed the door on his way out, face like a storm front.

After that he chased Reese louder than ever.

Little confessions every three days, a big public one every five, until the whole school was watching it like a serial drama. Performance art, honestly.

Every cold rejection only wound him up more.

"I like a girl with self-respect," he announced to no one in particular. "Not like some people. So easy."

He said it breezy. His eyes stayed nailed to me the whole time.

I didn't have the attention to spare.

Because Adrian had gone silent.

Texts unanswered. Ducking me between classes. Two solid weeks of it. A man drawing a line and making sure I saw it.

I got so worked up I caught an actual cold and spent a week flat in bed.

Reese: [You okay?? Adrian's "casually" asked me about you like four times. Plays it ice cold. He's losing his mind.]

Oh. Right. I'd blocked him.

I typed back, stone-faced.

Me: [Tell him I'm dying. He'll never have to see me again. He can relax.]

That night, a knock at my door.

Adrian stood there, soaked through with sweat, chest still heaving.

He didn't waste a second on his own breath. He grabbed my wrist and checked me over, grim. Found rosy cheeks. Not a trace of sick anywhere on me.

"What's wrong with you?"

His voice came out cracked, scraped down to nothing.

"Lovesick," I said, and let my mouth wobble