“I heard a rumor you’re top of your class.”
Harper let out an internal sigh of relief. Good. Back to school. School was easy. School was a safe topic of conversation that didn’t make Harper want to rip Dan’s shirt from his body.
She gave a mock gasp and slapped a hand to her chest. “How scandalous. People and their gossip these days. I hope you don’t think less of me.”
“No, now it’s just confirmed that you’re a genius,” Dan responded, grabbing a packet of napkins and throwing them into his cart.
Harper turned to him, rolling her eyes. “I’m not a genius, I’m hardworking. There’s a difference,” she said, picking up some cheap paper towels. “And I’m not sure I’m top. I’m kind of battling it out right now.”
“Yeah?” he asked. “Who’s the poor soul?”
“Have you heard of the Giles family? I think there’s one in your class. But the oldest one, Jeffery—never Jeff—and I are pretty neck and neck. He’s gunning for oral surgery too.”
Dan came to a halt and whipped around to face her.
“Harper.” His eyes locked on hers as he gripped her by the shoulders. “I hate those guys,” he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze that traveled down her whole body.
Touch. Touch. Touch.
“Hate isn’t even a strong enough word,” Dan continued. “They’re the worst.”
Harper’s eyes almost rolled back in her head. Was anything hotter and more validating than hating the same people?
A quick glance at his forearms on either side of her pushed mutual hate to a close second. She considered warning him to rein in the sex appeal, because he was one dimple-flash away from Harper pushing him up against the paper towel stacks and climbing him like a tree.
“They suck,” Harper said. “They’re legacies too, which makes them even worse. They flaunt it like some badge of honor—I mean, at least have a little class and pretend to be humble. They act like it’s their right to be a doctor and not a privilege. I could write my entire dissertation on the corruption of that family. The dean even takes them all golfing. Does it get any more patriarchal dick-rubbing than that? All the legacies are privileged pieces of shit.”
“Yeah, that’s … wild,” Dan said, dropping his hands and looking away, a weird tension snaking across his shoulders.
“Do you think you’ll beat him?” he asked after a moment. His eyes returned to her and lingered on her mouth. She instinctively licked her lips.
“I hope so. It would bring him down a notch. At the end of the day, matching into residency is obviously more important than where I rank, but it would feel so good to beat him. And when I get in my uber-competitive mode, it kind of fuels that fire.”
“What does uber-competitive Harper look like?”
“Scary,” she said with a smile. She liked it when he teased her. “If competitiveness was a competition, I’d have a competitive advantage.”
He let out a gravelly laugh that pebbled her skin.
“Is it just with school?”
“Ha. No. It’s with everything. My friends banned me from watching the Olympics last year because I kept challenging them to different events. It’s a very real problem.”
Dan absentmindedly pushed and pulled his cart with his foot while he watched her, and the flex of his lean muscles beneath his jeans made her want to bite his thigh.
“So if I asked you to race, would you do it?”
Her head jerked back. “Like, around a track?” She looked again at his long legs and pictured them flexing and stretching in a run. She imagined them, toned and lean, in a pair of athletic shorts （maybe even a nice dusting of leg hair?）， the loose fabric of the shorts allowing everything to bounce and—
He asked you a question, pig.
Harper cleared her throat. “I have to take about eight steps to match one of yours. I’m competitive, not stupid.”
“No.” He shot her a challenging smile. “Here. With the carts.”
“What? In the grocery store?” She snorted out a laugh, and a boyish grin stretched across his face.
“Why not? The aisle is wide enough for both of us and completely empty. We haven’t seen anyone for at least five minutes.” He leaned in with a wolfish smile. “First one to the end?”
She stared at him, her smile falling when she realized he was serious. “We can’t. We’ll get in trouble.” Despite her words, the impulse to accept the challenge burned through her.