Page 31 of The Beautiful Collision
The bet mainlines through my system. Maine Hamilton thinks he knows the game—all testosterone and obvious need—but the game has changed. There are stakes now, and he hasn’t yet registered that every move has been charted, diagnosed, and prescribed for.
That Maya Hayes doesn’t get played.
She plays.
And she never loses.
ten
MAINE
So my brilliantplan is to seduce my roommate for a bet I can’t afford to lose.
This might be the best, or the worst, episode of the Maine Show ever.
The shower water still drips from my hair as I check my reflection one final time, going through my mental checklist. Showered. Check. Fresh shave. Check. Body spray applied with all the subtlety of a desperate man trying to mask the scent of failure. Check.
Now to see if I can charm Maya, when she looks at me like I’m daytime television she forgot to turn off.
I’ve hooked up with plenty of girls who actually wanted the full Maine Hamilton experience. All surface charm, no assembly required. But Maya sees straight through my bullshit and finds it mildly entertaining, at best, like watching someone else’s dog chase its tail.
After I dress, I head out of the bathroom and into the living room, where Maya has colonized the couch. She’s got medical textbooks stacked around her like she’s preparing for siege warfare against ignorance, and she’s so encapsulated by one of them that she doesn’t even look up at me.
But I look at her.
God, do I look at her.
Afternoon sun slants through our mostly clean window—her doing, obviously—turning her black hair amber at the edges. She’s got this habit of tucking one leg under herself when she studies, her free foot tapping out rhythms to music only she hears.
Like always, the tiny movement draws my eye to her bare ankle peeking beneath cuffed jeans, the delicate bones there seeming impossibly fragile for someone who regularly tells grown men where to shove their opinions. And as she?—
Fuck!My mind shouts at me.When did you develop an ankle fetish?
I saunter over and fold myself onto the couch with the calculated grace of someone who’s practiced this move in the mirror (twice), letting my thigh settle against hers. Not aggressive, just… geographically inevitable. She doesn’t shift away, but her foot stutters mid-tap like a record skip, highlighter hovering.
“What do you want, Maine?” She sighs, not even looking up from her textbook, although she puts the cap on the highlighter.
“Studying hard or hardly—“ The words tumble out before my brain can stage an intervention. “Fuck, just pretend I didn’t say that…”
Her mouth twitches, fighting a smile. “Too late. That joke is terminal; it says so right here on page thirty-three…”
I laugh, for real, not because she intimidates me or because I’m trying to win a bet. “Damn, how long do I have?”
“Seconds.” She still hasn’t looked up, but I catch the way her eyes narrow with suppressed laughter. “The only cure is immediate cessation of awful wordplay.”
“But then how would I communicate?” I grin. “It’s like asking me to play hockey without a stick.”
A smirk. “Even better…”
I lean in, close enough that she’ll definitely catch the full twelve-dollar cologne experience. Desperate times, desperate measures. “Besides, I’m just establishing a baseline of terrible. Everything after this will seem like Shakespeare, just you wait.”
That earns me the full Maya Hayes Diagnostic Stare—the one that makes you feel like she’s cataloging your vital signs and finding them wanting. Her dark eyes track from the damp spot where my hair drips onto my collar, down to where my hand rests on my thigh, fingers drumming nervous energy inches from her knee.
“I’m just trying to figure out your angle here, Maine.” Her voice carries that particular tone I’ve learned means danger, the vocal equivalent of a scalpel, ready to dissect whatever bullshit comes next. “We’ve been circling each other for weeks. Pranks, tit-for-tat, even a bit of flirting, so…”
“We could call it a lot of things…” I execute the classic arm-along-the-back-of-the-couch maneuver, and my fingertips find the ends of her hair, testing. “Study buddy bonding? Maine getting Maya to let her guard down before he strikes? Who knows?”
“How about ‘Maine is having a neurological episode and I’m trying to memorize cardiac conduction pathways’?”
