The Tutor of Two Rivals

The bell above the door jingled for the eleventh time that hour, and for the eleventh time, Mira Delgado didn't look up fast enough to beat Mr. Halloway to it. "Table six, Delgado. Move it." "Moving." She was already moving, tray balanced flat on one palm, the way she'd learned after dropping exactly one tray in her first week and swearing never again. The diner smelled like burnt coffee and fryer grease, a smell she used to hate and now just called Tuesday. Table six held two boys in Ashcombe Prep blazers, jackets tossed over the booth like they cost more than her mother's rent. Because they probably did. "Can we get this to go? We're kind of in a rush." "Sure thing." Flat voice. Professional voice. The one she used for exact change and the one she used for twenty dollar tips, same mask, different day. She had the mask down cold after two years of double shifts. Weekdays at the diner. Weekends tutoring whichever kid needed algebra explained slower than their private tutor had patience for. Every dollar folded into an envelope in her sock drawer labeled COLLEGE, more hope scrawled into that word than sense. By the time her shift ended, past ten, her feet ached in that specific way that lived in the arch, not the heel. She counted her tips walking to the bus stop. Fourteen dollars. Eleven dollars closer to a number that never seemed to move as fast as she needed it to. Her phone buzzed. Mom: Don't forget bread. Also a man called for you about tutoring. Wants you to call back tonight, no matter how late. Mira frowned at the screen. She hadn't posted a new listing in weeks. Her roster was already stretched thin around diner hours as it was. But no matter how late had a weight to it. People who said things like that were used to being obeyed. She told herself she'd call in the morning. She called that night instead. Curiosity had always been her weakness, running a close second to pride, and pride lost this particular fight in under five minutes. The voice on the other end was clipped and businesslike, entirely unbothered by the hour. "Miss Delgado. I understand you tutor physics." "I do." "I'd like to discuss a position. The pay will be significant. More than significant, if you're the caliber of tutor I've been told you are." A pause, like he was deciding how much to give her. "My son is underperforming. In a subject that cannot afford to be underperformed. I need someone who won't be intimidated by him." Mira almost laughed. "Sir, I'm not really in the business of being intimidated by anyone." "Good." Something like satisfaction colored his voice for the first time. "Then we'll see you Thursday. Seven o'clock. I'll send the address." He hung up before she could ask either question that actually mattered. How much. And who. The address landed ten minutes later. She sat up straight on her secondhand mattress when she saw the street name, because everyone in this town knew that street. Cole Manor. She stared at her phone doing quiet math on what significant might mean for a family like that, and what it might cost her, beyond money, to walk through a door like that every week. She thought about the envelope. She thought about her mother's hands, cracked from dish soap, still reaching for extra shifts she pretended not to need. She typed back three words. I'll be there. Thursday came fast. Mira spent her lunch period the same way she spent most of them, alone at the far end of the library with a physics textbook and a granola bar she was rationing until dinner, when Priya dropped into the seat across from her like she owned it. "You look like someone who's about to do something insane." "I have a tutoring job tonight." "You always have a tutoring job. That's not insane, that's Tuesday." Priya narrowed her eyes. "Wait. This face is a different face. This is your I'm about to walk into a trap face." "It's a house, Priya. Not a trap." "Which house?" Mira hesitated half a second too long, and Priya's eyebrows shot up before she even said it. "Cole Manor." Priya's mouth fell open. "Shut up." "I'm not lying." "Mira. That's Ezra Cole's house. Do you know who Ezra Cole is?" "I know he goes here. I've maybe spoken four words to him in three years." "He's going to be worth more than this entire town by the time he's thirty, and he acts like it already. He's gorgeous and he is genuinely the coldest human being I have ever witnessed with my own eyes. Last year he told Tessa Marlow her top three colleges were, quote, cute goals, and just walked away." "Great. Sounds like a real joy to tutor." "You're actually doing this." "I'm actually doing this. Significant pay, Priya. You know what that word does to me." Priya sighed the sigh of someone who had lost this argument before it started. "Text me the second you leave. If I don't hear from you by nine I'm calling the police and telling them to check for a body in the east wing." "There's no east wing." "There's always an east wing in a house like that." By the time the bus dropped her three blocks from the address, since she wasn't about to let it be seen pulling up to a gate that size, Mira's nerves had organized themselves into something almost like calm. She'd learned to do that. Whatever fear tried to climb up her throat, she folded it down flat and small, the way she folded the twenties into the envelope. The gate alone looked like it cost more than her mother made in a year. She gave her name into a speaker, and it swung open without a sound, like it was embarrassed to make one. The house at the end of the driveway wasn't a house. It was a statement. Glass and pale stone, lit from below so it looked like it was floating, sharp angles instead of the kind of warmth that made a place feel lived in. Mira climbed the front steps with her backpack strap gripped tight in one fist and knocked, because ringing a doorbell felt like an act of aggression against a building like this. A housekeeper let her in, murmured something about the study being this way, and left her at a set of double doors that were already cracked open. Mira pushed one open the rest of the way, rehearsing the first thing she'd say to Ezra Cole, something professional, something that established immediately that she wasn't here to be impressed by any of this. She stepped inside and the words died in her throat. There were two boys in the study, not one. One stood near the window, dark haired, arms crossed, already watching the door like he'd been waiting specifically to be unimpressed by whoever walked through it. That had to be Ezra. The other was sprawled sideways across an armchair that probably cost more than her car would if she ever had one, tie loose, blazer half off, grinning at his phone like the world hadn't given him a single hard day in his life. Mira knew that face. Everyone at Ashcombe knew that face. Julian Voss looked up first, and his grin widened when he clocked her standing frozen in the doorway. "Oh no," he said, delighted. "Please tell me you're the physics tutor. Please tell me my dad and his dad hired the exact same girl without telling each other." Mira's stomach dropped straight through the floor. Ezra's arms uncrossed slowly. His eyes moved from Julian to her, and whatever careful control he'd been holding onto cracked wide open into something furious. "You're joking," he said, low and flat, not to her. To the room. To the universe that had apparently decided to humiliate him tonight. "Tell me you're joking." "I'm really not," Julian said, delighted, standing up like Christmas had come early. "This is either the best night of my life or the worst night of yours, and honestly, brother, I haven't decided which." Mira found her voice. Barely. "I was told I'd be tutoring one student tonight." "You were told wrong," Ezra said, and the words came out sharp enough to cut skin, aimed somewhere between her and Julian and their fathers, all of them, everywhere at once. "Because apparently my father didn't think it was worth mentioning that he invited the son of the one man he can't stand within a hundred feet of this house." Julian's grin didn't waver, but something under it flickered, just for a second, gone as fast as it came. "Careful. That's my dad you're talking about." "I'm aware." The air in the room went sharp enough that Mira could have cut her own hand on it just standing there. She had exactly three seconds to decide what to do. Walk out, and lose the money that could finally put a real dent in that envelope. Or stay, and figure out how to survive two hours alone with two boys who apparently hated each other on a level she hadn't even known existed until ninety seconds ago. She set her backpack down on the nearest chair, because leaving had never actually been an option, not really, not with what was in that envelope and what wasn't. "Sit down," she said, and both boys turned to look at her like she'd grown a second head. "Both of you. Now." Neither of them moved. That was when the study doors swung open behind her, and a man Mira recognized instantly from the crisp, unbothered voice on the phone stepped inside, took one look at Julian Voss standing in his study, and went utterly, dangerously still. "What," Adrian Cole said quietly, "is he doing in my house."