Oh my god, I couldn’t breathe. Was this a panic attack? Was I having a panic attack?

I’d studied for fucking hours. Hours. There was a week where I didn’t wash my hair. I’d stopped shaving my legs. I’d basically subsisted on a diet of junk food and caffeine for a fucking week. I’d studied. I’d read over my notes, made outlines, never missed a class. I’d done everything you were supposed to do in order to get good grades.

I’d never gotten below a B in my life. And now this.

Straight C-pluses. A two-point-five GPA.

My chest clenched and I wondered if twenty-three was too young to have a heart attack.

Oh god, I couldn’t feel my arm.

It was so embarrassing. I’d even gotten a C-plus in torts. So freaking embarrassing. I wanted to crawl in a hole and disappear.

“Checking your grades?” Caitlin asked, sitting down in the seat across from me.

Word had spread like wildfire that 1L grades were posted on the school’s online system and the lobby was full of students checking their computers, tablets, cells. It was as though the entire law school had descended into a grade-induced coma.

By the relaxed look on Caitlin’s face, I could only assume she had not received straight C-pluses.

“Yeah,” I croaked.

“Are they okay?”

No, they were definitely not “okay.”

I shook my head, tears bubbling up to the surface. God, I absolutely couldn’t cry. Not in front of everyone. Not like this.

“Which class was your lowest?”

All of them.

I was seriously going to lose it.

I beat the tears back, reaching for whatever composure I had left. “I have to go. I’ll see you in property later.”

I grabbed my bag, and headed for the door, my heart pounding in my chest. Caitlin called out something behind me, but I was too far gone to hear anything over the sound of blood rushing through my head.

For the millionth time since I’d started law school, I thought about withdrawing. This wasn’t working. No matter how hard I tried, how much I attempted to force it, this wasn’t where I belonged. This wasn’t a case of just needing to work harder or stick it out. This was me making myself miserable, trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. This wasn’t me, and maybe it was time I realized it.

The withdrawal period lasted the first two weeks of the semester. At that point, if I dropped out, I could get most, if not all, of my semester’s tuition back. At least then I would have only thrown away a small fortune.

Fuck me.

I sat down on a bench under one of the shady trees, staring out at the grassy courtyard in front of the law school.

The only thing holding me back was the absence of a plan, the giant, gaping unknown staring me down. I’d never been without a plan. Now I was staring down the point in my life where I was supposed to know where I was going and I was utterly clueless. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I couldn’t make excuses, couldn’t blame my parents, couldn’t afford to take time to “figure myself out.”

But the truth was, I didn’t really know who I was anymore. I knew pieces, understood some of it, but not all. But maybe knowing what didn’t work for me was one of the first steps to figuring out what did work. Maybe I needed to fail in order to wake up and see that I was throwing my life away trying to be someone I wasn’t. Or maybe I was just totally and completely fucked.

My phone rang and I stared down at the display, not in the mood to talk to anyone right now. I needed the space to work through how I felt, needed some time to get my head on straight.

Jackie Calling.

I hit reject, feeling more than a little guilty. I’d call her back later after I’d fully processed the C-pluses. If I ever fully processed the C-pluses.

My phone beeped, letting me know I had a voice mail. I ignored it.

My phone rang again.

Jackie Calling.

I hit reject again.

A minute later—

Jackie Calling.

I frowned and hit accept.

“Hey. Is everything okay?”

“You’re in Capital Confessions,” Jackie answered by way of greeting, her voice sounding like she’d just run a race.

Confusion filled me.

“Yeah, I’ve been in it a lot lately. What does it say this time?”

“They know about Gray.”

My stomach dropped.

“What do you mean, they know about Gray?”

There was no way anyone could know about Gray. We’d spent winter break holed up in his home. We didn’t go out together. Not even to the freaking grocery store. Nowhere. And yeah, we’d had sex in his office, but unless there were cameras in there, I didn’t see how anyone could have found out. We’d been careful. Jackie and Kate were the only people I’d told about him, and I knew he never would have said anything.

“What do you mean, they know about Gray?” I repeated, panic clawing at my throat, ripping me open.

“They printed his name in Capital Confessions. It’s bad. Really bad. They know about his time in rehab, his divorce, all of it. It’s all in there. I’m so sorry, Blair.”

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. I closed my eyes, watching my dream die. I should have known this would happen, that it was impossible for me to keep my private life private. I should have known that eventually my notoriety would rub off on him.

“Do you still have any contacts at Capital Confessions?” I asked.

Jackie hesitated for a beat. “The editor, Sean, and I didn’t exactly end on good terms, but I can reach out to him. Do you want me to try to find out how they got the story?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on it.”

I hung up the phone after thanking her, my hands, voice, shaking.

I pulled up Capital Confessions on my phone, the tremor spreading throughout my limbs. This was the worst fucking thing that could have happened. How the hell had they found out about Gray and me?

My heart pounded as I waited for the site to load. And then it did and I died.

THE PRINCESS AND THE PROFESSOR!!

Fuck.

There were pictures of us—not together—but pictures just the same. I skimmed the article, my heart sinking with each word.

Oh my god.

Jackie hadn’t been kidding. It was bad. Really, really bad. Someone had clearly done their research, because they knew everything—his divorce, the implosion of his legal career in Chicago, rehab . . .

My heart shattered.

I escaped the whole thing pretty much scot-free. There were quite a few references to my father—my parents were going to be so fucking pissed—and the casual mention that I’d run out on my own wedding last year. But the brunt of it, the worst parts, were all about Gray.

Fuck.

My hands trembling, I called him, trying to remember what he’d said his schedule was like today. My brain lagged as white noise reigned supreme. I couldn’t think past those words on my screen.

Was he teaching? Fuck.

He didn’t answer.

I left a message begging him to call me and followed up with a text.

Just as I’d hit send, my phone erupted.

Texts. Calls. Numbers I recognized, others I didn’t.

This was the start of the media shitstorm that would descend around all of us. Students walked by, phones in hand, nudging each other as they looked at me.

Fuck.

I grabbed my bag, pulling out a pair of oversized dark sunglasses and shoving them on my face, and headed home to deal with this latest crisis.

Gray

I’d lost my 3L class sometime in the last fifteen minutes.

It had started in the back with a group of students who were definitely chatting on their computers, despite their attempts to pretend otherwise. Slowly I watched, lecturing from the front of the room, while their inattention spread throughout the class like a ripple.

Soon, attempts to disguise their chatting became less and less practiced, and before I knew it, the class was buzzing with a barely concealed whisper. And instead of hiding the fact that they were all clearly distracted, their gazes kept flickering to me.