Maxwell Vaughn. Of course it had to be Maxwell Vaughn.

As if my schedule wasn’t already packed to capacity, now I had to babysit Ridgeline’s golden boy. Son of a senator, quarterback of the football team, and apparently incapable of passing basic algebra without intervention

And of course he looked exactly like the kind of alpha I’d been hoping to avoid for the rest of my life: tall, broad-shouldered, and smug.

He had that whole alpha-jock aesthetic going for him—lean, muscular, and annoyingly well-proportioned, like he’d been carved out of marble and then handed a football instead of a personality. His dark brown hair was messy in the way that probably took a solid fifteen minutes in front of the mirror to achieve, and his matching brown eyes were warm but infuriatingly empty.

Oh, and there was a scar bisecting his left eyebrow, the kind that screamed rugged and dangerous in all caps. I wondered if he got it by doing something equally stupid, like skateboarding into a wall or trying to open a beer can with his face.

“Alright, Vaughn,” I said, pulling out my notepad. “Let’s start with an assessment.”

He leaned back in his chair, smirking like he thought this was a joke. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. “Sounds fun.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun,” I said flatly. “Now, let’s begin. What classes are you failing?”

“All of them.” His smirk got even bigger. “I’m on academic probation, remember?”

I closed my eyes briefly, willing myself to stay calm. This was fine. I could handle this. I’d tutored hopeless cases before—students on the verge of flunking out who were desperate to turn things around.

Except Vaughn wasn’t like them. I could already tell that he didn’t care, which didn’t surprise me. After all, why should he? When you’re born into privilege, failure isn’t a real consequence. It’s just a temporary inconvenience someone else will fix for you.

He didn’t even have a notebook. Just a pen he kept spinning between his fingers like this was a game instead of his academic career on the line. I wasn’t sure if he was arrogant or just stupid. Maybe both.

But of course, Ridgeline’s Tutor Council insisted on a zero-tolerance stance on making assumptions about a student’s abilities or character based on external factors, so I wasn’t actually allowed to think of him as either. In the Tutor Council’s eyes, there were no stupid people, only bad decision-making. And I was nothing if not professional.

Being a tutor meant something—it meant taking the messiest, most hopeless cases and trying, no matter how impossible, to make something of them. That's what I signed up for. That was why I cared, even if my latest hopeless case didn’t.

“Fine,” I said, opening my eyes and flipping calmly to the first section of my notes. “Let’s start with biology. What do you know about cells?”

“The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell,” he said confidently, like he thought it was the most groundbreaking discovery since penicillin.

I stared at him, waiting for something—anything—more. When it didn’t come, I sighed and said, “Yes, that’s true, but do you know why?”

“Why what?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Why it’s the powerhouse,” I clarified.

He frowned slightly, like the question was an insult. “I mean… it powers stuff, right?”

I blinked slowly, massaging my temple. “It creates ATP. Adenosine triphosphate. Energy for the cell to function. That’s why it’s called the powerhouse.”

“ATP,” he repeated, nodding. “Right. Is that, like… cell bacon?”

I paused mid-note, briefly pressing the pen to the paper before continuing. His nonsense wasn’t worth a full reaction. I blinked slowly at him, unamused. “Interesting analogy. But no.”

“I mean, I’m pretty sure,” he said, gesturing vaguely with his hands. “Like, energy. Fuel. Like bacon for cells.”

I stared at him for a long, painful moment, unsure if he was joking or if this was just my life now. “No, Vaughn,” I said finally. “It’s not bacon. It’s ATP.”

He shrugged. “You gotta admit, ‘cell bacon’ sounds cooler.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay. What about mitosis?”

“Cell copy-pasting,” he said with a straight face, like he’d just unlocked the mysteries of life itself.

I gave a thin smile. “Almost accurate. Try harder.”

I’d spent an hour crafting a study plan tailored to his classes, cross-referenced with his syllabi. And here he was, repeating cell bacon and cell copy-pasting as if they were perfectly valid terms.

He’s not real. He can’t be real.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Photosynthesis?”

“Plant breathing.”

My grip tightened around my pen and I refrained from commenting further, choosing instead to move on before the session devolved further. Even though that would’ve been more productive than this conversation. The confidence in his voice was astounding. And infuriating. Oh, for fuck’s sake.

“Am I wrong?” he asked, spreading his hands like he’d just delivered a lecture at a scientific conference.

“You’re not right,” I shot back. “And the fact that you’re so proud of these answers is… concerning.”

This was going to be a nightmare, I could already tell. I’d had difficult students before—students who struggled to keep up or just didn’t care about school. I’d once tutored a freshman who couldn’t spell to save his life, but even he had tried.

Vaughn, on the other hand, seemed to be allergic to effort. He was in a league of his own. He wasn’t just uninterested; he was actively mocking the entire concept of learning.

I glanced down at my notes, where I’d written Mitochondria = powerhouse = cell bacon? as a reminder of how far gone this guy was.

Objectively, I understood why he was failing. School wasn’t his priority. Football was. He probably spent more time throwing passes and lifting weights than he did attending lectures or cracking open a textbook. His academic probation was practically inevitable.

But understanding didn’t make him any less infuriating.

“What about your business classes?” I asked, trying to regain control of the session. “Surely you’re doing better there.”

“You’d think,” he said, frowning slightly. “But no. It’s all graphs and charts and, like, ‘supply chain management.’ Why can’t they just call it moving stuff from one place to another?”

I blinked at him. “Because it’s not just moving stuff, Vaughn. It’s logistics. Procurement. Distribution—”

“Exactly!” he interrupted. “Why not just call it moving stuff? It’s way simpler.”

I dropped my pen onto the table and leaned back in my chair, staring at him. “Do you even try to understand your coursework?”

“Sometimes,” he said casually. “But it’s all so boring.”

I resisted the urge to slam my head against the table. “Let me guess. You think macroeconomics is ‘big money things.’”

His grin widened. “See? You get it.”

“What about ethics?” I asked, because I clearly hated myself. He probably thought that was the one with the dinosaurs or something equally idiotic.

“Oh, that’s the worst one,” he said immediately. “It’s all trick questions. Like, is it okay to lie if it helps more people? I don’t know. It depends.”

I stared at him. “That was your answer?”

“Yeah!” he said, nodding like I’d just handed him a gold star. “It’s a good one, huh?”

“It’s a non-answer,” I snapped.

“No, it’s realistic,” he argued.

“It’s lazy,” I said evenly. “An answer that requires no thought will never be the right one.” But I couldn’t say I was surprised, given that I’d seen he had misspelled ethics on his midterm—with an x—despite the fact that it was literally in the title. And he’d misspelled it multiple times.

“It’s nuanced,” he said, smirking again.

“That's why you’re failing,” I retorted.

He was clearly a functioning idiot. He wasn’t truly stupid—that, I could have worked with. I had strategies for that. But this? This was willful ignorance. He wasn’t failing because he lacked intelligence; he was failing because he genuinely couldn’t be bothered to care.

“Okay, okay,” Vaughn said, leaning forward. “So here’s the deal. We just need to figure out how I can bring my grades up enough to play on Saturday.”

“Saturday,” I repeated flatly.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “The big game. Coach says if I don’t get my grades up, I’m benched. So, you know… help me out.”

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I stared at him, trying to process what I was hearing. “It’s Wednesday.”

“Yup.”

“You want to fix your grades… in three days?”

“Yeah, I mean, how hard can it be?”

I closed my notebook with a resounding snap and leaned forward, locking eyes with him. “Vaughn. Your GPA is 1.2. Do you know what that means?”

“It’s, like… bad?”

“It’s legendary,” I said, my voice dripping with disdain. “If academic failure were a sport, you’d be the MVP.”

He grinned. “Cool. Do I get a trophy?”

He’d probably been handed everything on a silver platter since birth—money, status, an annoyingly symmetrical face—and still couldn’t be bothered to put in the bare minimum effort in class. Meanwhile, I was pulling 3am study sessions to keep my GPA perfect. And he wanted a trophy?

The unfairness of it all made my eye twitch.

“No,” I snapped. “You get a tutor. And this tutor is telling you there’s no possible way to fix this in three days.”

Except… This isn’t tutoring. This is babysitting a dense Labrador retriever. And I think the Labrador might’ve done better in biology.

By the time the session finally ended, my patience was hanging on by a thread. Vaughn had managed to turn every single question into a joke, every single explanation into an argument, and every single moment of silence into an opportunity to test how far he could push me.

I bit back a sigh, snapping my notebook shut with a deliberate motion and leveling a hard stare at him. “Here’s how this is going to work, Vaughn,” I began, my tone firm and unyielding. “We’ll meet here six days a week, Monday through Saturday, at 7 PM sharp. Sundays are your only day off. If you’re late, I will dock that time from the session, but you will still be responsible for all assigned material.”

Max leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms behind his head with the same infuriating grin he’d had for the past two hours. “Six days?” he drawled, his tone somewhere between incredulous and amused. “What, no Saturdays off for good behavior?”

I fixed him with a flat look. “Not for someone in your position.”

“Harsh,” he said, dropping his arms and resting his forearms on the table, leaning in slightly. “You really don’t mess around, do you, Professor Kerrigan?”

“It’s just Kerrigan,” I corrected crisply, ignoring the way his lips twitched like he was trying not to laugh. “And your calculus test is Monday, so that will be our immediate priority. After that, we’ll rotate focus between your other subjects, depending on upcoming assignments and exams.”

He nodded slowly, his grin still annoyingly present. “Alright, Professor Kerrigan,” he said, deliberately ignoring my correction. “You’ve got my attention.”

“I’m flattered,” I said dryly. “I hope your actual professors can say the same.”

He chuckled, sitting back in his chair like this was some kind of game. “What if I have practice?” he asked, his tone laced with mock innocence, as if it was a question with no obvious answer.

I leveled a look at him, my tone leaving no room for negotiation. “Then you’ll plan accordingly. Academic probation isn’t flexible, Vaughn. Neither am I.”

“If you put in the work, this will be manageable,” I continued, shoving my notes and laptop into my bag. “If you don’t, I’m not a miracle worker, and no amount of tutoring will save your scholarship.”

Max watched me for a moment, his gaze warm and a little too intent. “Seven o’clock tomorrow,” I finished, standing and slinging my bag over my shoulder. “And try to be on time this time.”

His grin shifted, a little softer, a little sharper at the edges. “Looking forward to it, Kerrigan,” he said, leaning back in his chair again, his eyes glinting with something that almost felt like a challenge. “Don’t miss me too much.”

There was something in his tone—warm, teasing, infuriating—that sent a flicker of heat through my chest. Heartburn, certainly. Great. I rolled my eyes and turned on my heel, muttering under my breath about the futility of tutoring alpha jocks.

Maybe this was just his defense mechanism. Maybe if I dug deep enough, I would find a student who actually wanted to learn. Or maybe he was just an ass who didn’t care. Nevermind that the latter felt more likely—Vaughn wasn’t my first hopeless case, and he wouldn’t be my last.

But as I left the library, a sliver of doubt crept in. He wasn’t stupid—he was lazy, infuriatingly so. And maybe, under all that arrogance and apathy, there was something worth saving. Not that I cared. I wasn’t here to fix him. I was here to do my job.

If he wanted to waste my time, that was his problem. But if he didn’t? Well, he’d better prove it.

----------------------------------------

The crisp evening air nipped at my face as I stepped out of the library, adjusting my satchel strap on my shoulder. The faint glow of streetlights dotted the campus path ahead, casting long shadows across the neatly trimmed hedges and meticulously maintained sidewalks. It was quiet—mercifully so, after the mental chaos of my tutoring session.

I took a deep breath, letting the cool air fill my lungs. It was a welcome contrast to the stuffy, fluorescent-lit library. The scent of damp earth lingered from the rain earlier that afternoon, and my shoes made soft, rhythmic clicks against the pavement. If I focused hard enough, I could almost forget what I’d just endured with Maxwell Vaughn, self-proclaimed king of mediocrity.

Almost.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, alerting me to an incoming call. I resisted the urge to sigh, because I knew exactly who it was before I even glanced at the screen.

“Hello, Theo,” I answered flatly, already bracing myself.

Theo Ramos was a beta theater major I had met freshman year. He’d been shouting at the library printer and banging on it like it had owed him money. I’d helped, mostly to stop him from breaking it. Turns out it had just been unplugged. Then I’d skimmed the paper he’d been trying to print and had helped him rewrite it, because the lack of MLA citations and the direct quotes from The Terminator had made me physically ill.

He’d declared us best friends from that moment forward. Two years later and despite being opposites in almost every conceivable way, we actually somehow were best friends, though sometimes—mostly—I regretted it.

“Ainsley,” Theo said, his voice dripping with fake concern. “Are you okay? You sound dead inside. More than usual.”

“I just finished a very difficult tutoring session,” I replied, rubbing the bridge of my nose. “I’d like to go home and read a book in peace. What do you want?”

“What I want, darling, is for you to stop living like an eighty-year-old shut-in and come to this party.”

I rolled my eyes, already exasperated. Theo insisted parties were “theater of the human experience,” whatever that meant. According to him, every party was a chance to “network, perform, and connect with the masses”. Who wanted to stand around in a sweaty, overcrowded room with loud music, questionable drinks, and people shouting over each other? It was chaos. Germ-filled, obnoxious chaos.

Not my idea of a good time, ever.

“Theo,” I said slowly, as if I were speaking to a child. “It’s Wednesday night.”

“Exactly! A perfect night for a mid-week party! Loosen up, live a little!”

“I have an essay due tomorrow,” I lied.

“No, you don’t,” Theo shot back immediately. “You live five steps ahead of everyone else. You probably have all your assignments done for the next month, just so you can obsessively check them for typos that don’t even exist. Nice try.”

Okay, that was only slightly true. Maybe 80% true.

Fine, 100% true. But still. People always said I was “too prepared.” As if being ahead of the curve was a flaw instead of the most efficient way to live. Why should I wait until the last minute to complete an assignment when I could finish it now, have time to revise it, and avoid unnecessary stress?

It’s not neurotic; it’s logical. Responsible, even. But Theo and I had argued it multiple times, so I bit back a response and instead picked up my pace towards my dorm.

The campus was largely deserted at this hour—most students were holed up in their dorms or off at Theo’s mid-week party, doing whatever it is normal college students do. Normally, I liked the solitude. It gave me time to think. But I was glad for the way Theo was rambling in my ear now, preventing my brain from circling back to Vaughn’s smug grin, his complete disregard for academia, and the way he’d smirked when he called me mean.

And also, cell copy-pasting. Who describes mitosis like that? And who says it with so much confidence? My eye twitched and I forced myself to focus on Theo’s rambling.

“—you’re the villain of procrastinators everywhere. The Joker to our chaos. The Thanos to our snap-deadlines.”

“Maybe I just don’t want to go to a party,” I grumbled.

“That’s exactly why you should go,” Theo argued. “You’re always saying no to everything. Parties. Spontaneous fun. Life.”

“I’m not saying no to life,” I said, rolling my eyes for the second time. “I just have priorities that don’t include getting drunk on a Wednesday night.”

“Lame priorities,” Theo said dismissively. “What’s stopping you? Let me guess—you’ve got a riveting evening of alphabetizing your bookshelf planned?”

“Actually, yes,” I said. “And it’s not riveting. It’s soothing.”

I didn’t tell him that I also had tea and a book on postmodern philosophy waiting.

There was a beat of silence, followed by Theo’s signature sigh of exaggerated disappointment. “I can’t believe this is my life. My best friend, ladies and gentlemen. A human spreadsheet.”

“Flattered,” I deadpanned.

“Okay, but hear me out,” Theo said, his voice taking on that conspiratorial tone that meant he was about to try to sell me something ridiculous. “What if this party is actually good for you? It could be a chance to de-stress. To unwind. To—dare I say—fl—”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

The glow of my dorm came into view, and I almost sighed in relief. My hand was already halfway into my pocket, fumbling for my keys, when Theo’s voice crackled through my phone again.

“You were going to say something about how I need to meet people and ‘put myself out there,’ and then you’d make some sweeping statement about how parties are the gateway to personal growth. Did I miss anything?”

Theo sighed dramatically, as if my refusal to attend his latest social experiment was a personal attack. “You’re impossible. What happened to you, Ainsley? You used to be fun.”

“When?” I asked, raising an eyebrow even though he couldn’t see it. “When was I fun?”

“There was that one time freshman year when you accidentally drank a RedBull and wrote an entire term paper in two hours. That was fun.”

“Me having a caffeine-induced mental breakdown was not fun, Theo.”

“For you, maybe,” he snickered.

I unlocked the door to my dorm, pushing it open with my shoulder, and let the comforting silence wash over me. “Look,” I said, juggling the phone as I slipped off my shoes and hung up my jacket. “I really just want to relax tonight. Alone. This tutoring session drained every ounce of patience I had.”

“Ooooh, spill,” Theo said immediately, his voice practically vibrating with intrigue. “What happened? Did you have to tutor a frat bro who thinks calculus is a type of dinosaur?”

Accurate, actually. But I bit my lip, refusing to give him anything. “You know I can’t tell you. Tutor confidentiality.”

“Oh, come on,” Theo whined. “At least tell me if they were hot.”

“I didn’t notice,” I said smoothly, setting my bag on the desk and casting a longing glance at the neatly stacked books that awaited me.

“You always notice,” he shot back.

“I do not.”

“Yes, you do. Remember that time you said the TA in our philosophy class had ‘objectively excellent cheekbones’? You wrote it in the margins of your notebook.”

“That was an observation,” I snapped, heading toward my electric kettle. “An objective one. To be objective literally means to have no personal feelings—”

“And you’re deflecting,” Theo interrupted smugly. “So, were they hot or not?”

I flicked the kettle on and stared at it like it was going to save me. “I’m hanging up,” I said, already pulling the phone away from my ear.

“Don’t you dare!” Theo yelped. “Fine, fine, go alphabetize your books or whatever. But just know that while you’re sitting alone in your dorm being boring, I’ll be living it up. At this awesome party. With hot people.”

“Enjoy,” I said, deadpan, grabbing my favorite mug from the cabinet.

“You’re the worst,” he grumbled.

“And yet you keep calling.”

“Because I care, you nerd.”

By the time Theo finally hung up, I was pouring boiling water over my tea leaves, savoring the steam and the stillness of my dorm. The mug warmed my hands as I carried it to my desk, eyeing the stack of books I’d been meaning to get to all day.

There it was: my copy of Postmodernism and the End of Meaning, practically begging me to open it. My bookshelves, which didn’t need alphabetizing, still tempted me to rearrange them, just for the satisfaction of putting things in their rightful place.

I sighed, sinking into my chair. “Hot,” Theo had said. As if that mattered. Vaughn’s appearance was a footnote, irrelevant to the glaring reality: he was failing every single class and wasting everyone’s time, including mine.

There were plenty of other omega tutors who would be too happy to tutor him. But I was the one who’d been chosen—unfortunately—and I wasn’t like other omegas. I saw alphas for what they were: Predictable. Entitled. Arrogant. Stomping through life like bulls in a china shop, breaking things and expecting someone else to clean up after them.

Most of them can’t even spell “consequences,” let alone face them, and rich boy alphas like Vaughn are the worst of the worst. All ego, no accountability. They float through life like they’re the main character in everyone else’s story. I’d graduated top of my class in high school, but all anyone cared about was whether I’d found a nice alpha yet. As if my achievements didn’t matter without someone to ‘take care of me’.

I grimaced and sipped my tea, focusing instead on the promise of philosophical exploration. Theo could have his parties and chaos. I had my books, my tea, and my sanity.

And maybe—just maybe—a little while of peace before my latest hopeless tutee inevitably shattered it.