After Class

She stayed after class on purpose. He knows it. The bolt slides home, and the game they’ve played for a semester—her defiance, his disdain—shatters with a single, brutal truth: "I didn’t want them to think you earned your degree on your back." The confession hangs between them, thick with irony, because now she’s the one pressed against his desk, her skirt hiked up, his fingers proving just how little she hates him.