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“Is this the game you’re playing now?” Ari sneered while Sloane’s expression remained unchanged but for the color in her cheeks. “Maybe you can mess with Javon or whoever else, but that shit isn’t going to work on me. Throw your feminine wiles somewhere else, or better yet, stop playing this game all together. You’re not just a dick for screwing with people, you’re setting all women back about fifty years.”

Sloane furrowed her brow but said nothing as Ari threw her uneaten cookie in the garbage and walked away.

“Ari, I got you orange. It’s the only thing that’s cold,”

Javon said, crossing paths with her in the hallway. “What’s wrong?” His expression faded into concern.

Ari shook out her hands as if that could stop them from trembling. “What always happens to me apparently . . .

Sloane.” She tried to laugh, but the adrenaline was rushing around her body like a firehose out of control.

Javon o ered her the cold can and a smile. “You might be right about her. She’s like a hot, mean, terminator from the future.”

Ari liked hearing she was right, but somehow it wasn’t as satisfying as she hoped. She didn’t want to trash Sloane, she just wanted her gone.

Maybe she won’t pass the bar, she hoped, knowing Sloane had probably never failed at anything in her life.

Ari remembered her job in New York. Except maybe she failed at that. Instead of bringing her joy, the thought made her stomach churn. No! Don’t you dare feel bad for her. She sure as shit doesn’t feel bad for you!

As Javon talked, all Ari could do was keep from engaging her empathy. She absolutely refused to feel anything but contempt for a woman who had been a constant roadblock to her success and was now pretending to flirt with her just to take their competition to the next level. Well, Ari was drawing a line. She was going to pretend Sloane Medina didn’t exist.

CHAPTER 12

SQUISHED BETWEEN A CONSTRUCTION worker and a bike messenger, Ari held on to the Metro’s handrail with one hand and checked her phone with the other. It was probably too early for the bar results to be posted, but she read on a message board that one year they were accidentally released a few hours early.

Having barely gotten more than a couple hours of sleep, Ari’s eyes burned as she stared at the screen she continuously refreshed. Each time the page loaded, she prayed the results would appear just as hard as she wished they wouldn’t. It was exhausting.

Robinson the guard smiled at her as she entered the building. “Today’s the big day, huh?” he asked as she dropped her things on the x-ray machine’s conveyer belt.

Ari tried to swallow around the dry lump in her throat. It hadn’t moved in two days and still wasn’t budging. “It might be the last time you see me,” she half-joked.

?

??Don’t you dare bring that kind of negativity on yourself,” he scolded her, running his metal detector wand

over her ankles. She’d been so foggy that morning she’d forgotten to wear the heels that didn’t set o the machine.

“Almost forty percent of people don’t pass,” she replied, collecting her things.

Robinson smiled. “But you’re not that forty percent, are you? You’re going to pass because the world needs kind people like you to practice law too. Give everybody a fair shake.”

His words washed over her unprepared body and filled her eyes with emotion. “Thank you,” she managed despite a quivering voice.

Robinson squeezed her shoulder. “I’m rooting for you, kid. You got this.”

Standing an inch taller than before, Ari willed herself to go five minutes without checking the Florida Bar website.

She only made it as far as the elevator ride up four flights.

In the training room, usually empty so early in the morning, Ari found nearly every one of the sixty-two people in her class of incoming prosecutors.

G uess I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep.

Notably absent was Sloane. She probably doesn’t even care it’s results day. I bet she’s not even checking. She’ll wait for them to send her the notice in the mail.

The thought of her made Ari’s empty stomach tighten.

After having thought about it obsessively all weekend, she’d decided Sloane’s head games had reached a new pitiful low and she wasn’t going to let her live rent-free in her brain anymore.