Baited by Love novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sixty-Four Degrees
Preston knocks over the water Betsy measured when his ex walks into Ethics, then tells the whole dining hall it was never serious. Betsy quits, and a free-delivery bakery box shows her ninety-nine days of effort were pointless.
The day the transfer student walked in, the glass of water I had measured at sixty-four degrees went over in the middle of Ethics.
My boyfriend had knocked it with his elbow, in front of forty people, while he looked at the front of the room.
"Sorry, Bets, you're a lifesaver," he said, and he smiled at me, quick and easy.
I had the napkin out before the glass stopped rolling.
That was my job, and I was very good at it.
My life motto was simple: never let a handsome man be disappointed.
It started with my father, the best-looking man in our town and the saddest one.
I began with sandwiches.
By junior year I had a notebook with one page for every handsome man on campus, and what he drank and how he liked his lunch cut.
My boyfriend, Preston Aldane, had a page and his own laminated card, revision nine.
The back of that notebook held the other list, the one I was proudest of.
Every insult Preston had ever given me, dated and scored out of ten.
Yesterday he told me my handwriting looked like it was apologizing.
I gave it a six.
My cortado had been waiting on my desk in Hall B that morning, oat milk, no lid, the same as every morning.
I had decided the cafe was running a promotion and had never asked.
At the front of the room, Lorelei Kincaid shook the professor's hand.
She had auburn hair down to her waist and a laugh you could hear from the back row.
Preston stared at her and did not blink.
I wiped the water off his sleeve.
"Thanks," he said, still looking at the front of the room.
After class, Otto Fenn caught me in the hallway.
Otto was Preston's friend since freshman year, and he had once lent me his phone charger for an entire winter.
"Hey," he said. "Don't read anything into that. Nobody's replacing you. Honest."
"I wasn't reading anything into it," I said.
"Good. Great. Because you shouldn't."
He said it three more times on the walk to the dining hall.
I noticed that and decided not to think about it, the same as the cortado.
The dining hall was full.
Preston had the long table by the window, and Lorelei was in my seat.
I had saved that seat every day since October.
I came up with his tray, the sandwich cut on the diagonal, the thermos, the little thermometer clipped to the lid.
"Betsy," Preston said. He didn't stand. "The window's Lorelei's now. You can eat at the end."
Lorelei smiled up at me.
"I'm so sorry, I didn't know it was taken," she said. "He said you were the sweetest person on campus."
Preston turned to Otto and spoke at full volume, so the whole table could hear.
"Relax. It was never serious. She just wouldn't stop showing up."
Everyone at the table heard it, and so did the tables around it.
Otto put his face in his hand.
For ninety-nine days I had brought that man water, lunch, flowers and his favorite chair.
I had done his reading, and I had loved every insult, because the harder he pushed, the better the win felt.
It turned out the win had been mine alone.
So I quit.
I set the tray down in front of him.
I took the laminated card out of my bag and laid it on top of his sandwich.
"That's everything," I said. "Water is sixty-four degrees. The sandwich goes on the diagonal. Pasta is a hundred and forty when it reaches you. Good luck."
Preston looked at the card and then at me.
"You're being dramatic," he said.
"I was born for it," I said.
Lorelei put a hand on his arm.
"I'm sure he didn't mean it like that, Betsy," she said, and her voice was so gentle I almost thanked her.
"He meant it," I said. "It's the only thing he's ever said that I didn't have to check."
Then I walked toward the door with my chin up.
Lars Ashdown, the quiet chemistry major who sat in the row behind mine in every class, was alone at the last table.
He turned a page of his textbook and did not look up.
It hurt more than I expected.
Preston's face had gone sulky and put out, the face of a handsome man who was disappointed, and every part of me wanted to turn around and cut something.
I kept walking.
At the exit I nearly collided with a delivery driver carrying a white box tied with red string.
"Kincaid?" he called. "Order for Lorelei Kincaid. Tiramisu, Hartwell Bakery."
"Here!" Lorelei sang from the window.
Preston said, "Perfect," and did not look surprised.
I looked at the lid.
There was a green sticker on top that said FREE CAMPUS DELIVERY.
"Hartwell is forty miles away," I said to the driver.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "We've delivered to Ellsworth free since 2019."
On day ninety-nine I had pedaled to that bakery and back through a thunderstorm, and Preston had called it the most devoted thing he'd ever seen.
He had known the whole time.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend