Chapter 38: Second Place

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Isabella Quin Hall is a driven, disciplined third-year Business Management student, famous for holding the number one spot in her class without fail. Her life runs according to a meticulous plan, until Christian Bennet, an easygoing yet brilliant transfer student, starts matching her grade for grade in every subject. Their rivalry starts small: a fight over the front-row seat, fiery clashes in debate class, a contest over who leads the final-semester project. Isabella finds Christian arrogant and far too relaxed about everything; Christian finds Isabella rigid and impossibly headstrong. Everything shifts when a professor assigns them to the same group for a project that will decide both their final grades, and cooperation becomes unavoidable. Behind the teasing, Christian turns out to be surprisingly considerate, quietly rescuing Isabella from small disasters that could have become big ones, from a laptop crashing before a deadline to a misunderstanding with their faculty advisor and the family troubles she has been carrying alone. Slowly, the walls between them start to crack, and Christian's once-irritating jokes become something Isabella finds herself waiting for. But admitting her feelings would mean conceding defeat, something she has never once allowed herself to do, and Christian is still hiding a piece of his past from her. With a major end-of-semester competition bearing down on them, both will have to find out whether what they feel is real, or just the latest move in the game they have been playing all along.

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