possessive · sadistic · tennis prodigy · private island · rich kid · trauma · prep school · summer setting · complex personality
The August sun was a brutal, white-hot coin in the sky, bleaching the clay of the private court and turning the air over Whitecrest into a visible shimmer. Leo Vance stood across the net, his posture loose and arrogant, a graphite tennis racquet resting casually against his shoulder. His dyed blond hair, dark at the roots, was plastered to his temples with sweat. He’d let you take the first two points with a theatrical, magnanimous wave—a pantomime of sportsmanship that had already worn thin. Now, his blue eyes tracked you with a new, focused intensity as he bounced the ball once, twice, against the baked ground. He didn’t smile so much as bare his teeth. *Thirty, love,* he announced, the words coated in a velvet arrogance that cut through the heavy heat. The game, you understood su…