The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Eve

The night before the Founders' Exam, Nash asked me on a date.

He asked in the middle of the dining hall, in front of the center table, with a straight face.

"Six o'clock," he said. "The lake path. Bring a coat."

"I always bring a coat."

"I know. I like that about you."

Camille's fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

For seven weeks she had smiled at me in corridors, and the Dean's inquiry had sat in her father's drawer.

Nothing had touched her, and she knew it.

Tonight I didn't care.

It snowed that evening, the first real snow of the year, fine and dry and silent.

He was waiting at the head of the path with his collar up and a battered coffee can in his hands.

It was an ordinary coffee can, painted gray.

On the lid, in careful block letters, someone had written BUS FARE.

"Oh, no," I said.

"Open it."

Inside lay a pair of thick green gloves, still with the tag on.

Under them was a single sheet of lined paper folded in thirds.

"The old ones have a hole in the thumb," he said. "I've been looking at it for two months."

I put them on.

They fit.

"The paper," Nash said.

I unfolded it.

It was a full practice paper from the Founders' syllabus, every question answered in small, fast handwriting.

Not one blank.

At the bottom he had signed it, in full, Nash Reuter.

"I'm not leaving one empty tomorrow," he said. "I wanted you to see it first."

My throat did something complicated.

"That's the nicest thing anyone has ever given me," I said. "And it's a coffee can."

"I thought you'd want your lie to come true."

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