THE HEIR AND HIS TUTOR

ALEJANDRO’S POVAs I passed the school's locker room, I felt a way of nostalgia hit me as the smell of chlorine hit me, and it wasn't the good nostalgia.It was the memories I wanted to bury forever but it kept popping up.---The middle school locker room had this mix of damp towels, body spray, and sweat. My hair was still dripping from swim practice, and my head buzzed with that post-practice lightness. The sound of boys laughing, lockers slamming, and sneakers squeaking on the wet floor echoed everywhere.I was in as many sports as possible because my father took pride in sports.And that was when it happened.It wasn’t planned. It wasn’t something I thought about. It just… happened.We were talking about baseball. Me and Luis Hernandez—the kid with the fastest throw on the team, the one who always chewed gum like he didn’t give a fuck in the world.Of course, chewing gum was prohibited, but Luiz's parents were on the school board so the principal couldn't do anything.He did a

Mateo's POVI wiped the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, exhausted from closing out my third shift of the day. My feet ached inside my worn sneakers, and the smell of fryer oil clung stubbornly to my clothes no matter how hard I scrubbed them at night. My stomach growled faintly—I hadn’t had more than a stale sandwich since dawn.“Mateo!” one of my coworkers nudged me with his elbow, jerking his chin toward the front. “There’s some fancy car outside… the guy’s been asking for you.”I frowned. “For me?”He nodded, smirking like it was some kind of joke. “Yeah. A black one. Look. Too sleek to be around here. Looks like it rolled straight out of a billionaire’s garage.”I wiped my hands nervously on my apron and glanced toward the glass doors of the small convenience diner we worked in. Sure enough, parked across the street was a shiny, jet-black car. Tinted windows. Polished so much it reflected the streetlamps like liquid.It didn’t belong here, not in this neighb

ALEJANDRO’S POVI couldn’t believe I was doing this.Like seriously—me, Alejandro Castillo, sitting in my own damn room, surrounded by textbooks, flashcards, and notes that looked like they belonged in a 1900 medical school horror movie. And right across from me sat he.Mateo.The same bartender nerd with the old cracked phone and glasses that slipped down his nose every five seconds.Two days ago, I’d sworn to myself I wasn’t going to go through with this. No way in hell. Tutors were for people who failed, not for people like me who just... didn’t care. But here I was, staring at a nerd in a white body shirt and black trousers, who looked like he’d been pulled out of one of those “hot nerd makeover” scenes in a rom-com.And damn, did he look good.His shirt clung to his torso just enough to show the faint lines of muscle. His sleeves were rolled halfway up, veins visible on his smooth skin. That body didn’t come from gym hours—that was from hard work. Labor. Grit. He had the kind of