Chapter 16 The Claim

Chapter 16 The Claim
A sharp whistle blew across the court, snapping Ruth out of her thoughts. She looked up from her phone just in time to see Matthew pocketing his device and casually jogging onto the court, instantly swarmed by his teammates.
Ruth didn't have the mental capacity to dwell on the terrifyingly intimate implications of Matthew's last text message. She locked her screen and forced herself to focus entirely on the game.
The roar of the crowd in the gymnasium was already deafening, but Helen's voice pierced right through it. She was vibrating with pure adrenaline, bouncing in her bleacher seat like a broken soundboard.
"Ahhhhh Mat is so hot!"
"Wait, why does the sports rep actually look kind of good today?!"
"Ahhhhh we have to win!"
Luckily, Helen's voice was naturally sweet, otherwise sitting next to her for an entire game would have been absolute torture.
Ruth nodded along, giving half-hearted replies to Helen's endless, hyperactive chatter. Unlike her friend, Ruth wasn't the slightest bit worried about the outcome of the match.
Ten minutes later, her confidence was entirely validated.
The sports rep had called the opposing Business Administration team "garbage," and they were, in fact, absolute garbage.
Ruth didn't know much about basketball, but the difference in energy was obvious. Unlike the Finance team, the Business Admin players looked sluggish and completely unmotivated. Normally, even in a mismatched game, the weaker team would at least get a chance to shoot. But today, the enemy team was barely making it past half-court.
Whether the opposing point guard was genuinely terrified of Matthew's reputation or just completely lacked the will to fight, he fumbled the ball twice. Both times, Matthew effortlessly intercepted the dribble, broke away down the court, and sank a flawless layup before the enemy team could even turn around.
Actually, it probably wasn't the enemy's fault.
The Finance team's Number 7 was just playing with absolute, predatory arrogance.
Ruth couldn't take her eyes off Matthew. The longer she watched him play, the more she realized that his looks and his talent were a lethal combination. He was an absolute menace.
By the end of the second quarter, the game was basically decided.
The only player on the Business Admin team putting up any sort of fight was their Number 10. He was clearly their captain, trying desperately to control the pace of the game. He belonged to the "flashy" school of basketball—constantly doing unnecessary crossovers, fake-outs, and aggressive body feints to get past defenders.
His tricks worked perfectly on the other four guys on the Finance team. But whenever he tried them against Number 7, his movements were completely transparent. Matthew read him like an open book.
It was all completely useless.
Watching the Number 10 try to juke Matthew was like watching a flashy League of Legends TikTok montage where a guy does a million rapid-fire dash combos, only to get absolutely obliterated by a single, perfectly timed ultimate attack.
In the face of absolute, overwhelming power, cheap tricks were completely useless.
As Ruth was silently enjoying the absolute massacre, a slightly surprised female voice drifted over from her right.
"Helen?"
The voice was actually quite pretty. Out of pure reflex, Ruth turned her head to look.
The girl was sitting on the other side of Helen, having apparently just traded seats with someone else to get closer to the court. The second their eyes met, Ruth violently regretted turning her head.
Even though it had been years and she had completely forgotten the girl's name... Ruth vividly remembered her face. This was one of Jenna Keen's core "Iron Four" best friends.
Don't ask why they called themselves the Iron Four. Jenna Keen was an absolute idiot who treated her social life like a bad teen movie.
"Oh! Cher Boyd! You're here too, I didn't even see you!" Helen greeted her warmly.
Right. Cher Boyd.
After saying hello, Helen realized that Cher wasn't looking at her. Cher was staring directly at Ruth.
Helen looked back and forth between them, suddenly confused. "Wait... do you guys know each other?"
"No," Ruth and Cher answered at the exact same time.
Helen still looked slightly baffled by the sudden, icy tension between them, but she didn't push it. After introducing them by name and major, Helen immediately went back to screaming at the basketball game.
Ruth honestly hadn't expected Cher Boyd to be attending Cal U, let alone in the Economics department. It seemed Jenna Keen actually had one friend with decent grades.
But since Jenna and the other two "legs" of the Iron Four had all enrolled at Farnsworth University across town, that meant Cher was basically stranded here alone.
Ruth sneered internally.
Right now, in Matthew's eyes, Ruth was just a pure, innocent, completely normal college girl. She absolutely could not let him find out about the toxic, melodramatic dumpster fire that was the Keen family.
Not that Ruth was actually worried about Cher exposing her. Even if Jenna Keen herself was standing right here, Ruth knew they would never say a word.
Because for the last twenty years, the Keen family had fiercely refused to acknowledge Ruth's existence in public. Why would Jenna or her friends be the ones to leak the secret now?
Jenna and her two-faced mother were the absolute worst people on the planet. From the time Ruth was a little girl, her stepmother had viewed her as a massive threat, constantly whispering in Ruth's father's ear, threatening divorce if he ever officially introduced Ruth to The Socialite Circle.
What did Ruth know back then? She was just a kid. She didn't know what a "corporate family" was, or what it meant to have a "public identity."
All she knew was that every time her father and her stepmother got dressed up to go to a fancy dinner party, the only girl they took with them was her stepsister.
All she knew was that she had an entire closet full of beautiful princess dresses, but she was only allowed to wear them inside the house, alone.
She used to beg her father to take her with them.
Looking back now, it wasn't that she actually wanted to go to some stuffy corporate banquet. She had just been a desperate little girl trying to prove that her father loved her.
The elite Socialite Circle looked glamorous and flawless on the outside, but underneath, it was entirely rotten. Once Ruth grew up and realized what that world actually was, she completely lost any desire to be part of it.
She wasn't a little kid anymore. She didn't need to beg for her toxic family's affection.
Besides—if they refused to give it to her when she desperately needed it, she absolutely wasn't going to accept it now.
Pushing the Cher Boyd incident out of her mind, Ruth looked back at the game. As halftime approached, the score gap was massive. It was a guaranteed victory for Finance 101.
Remembering Matthew's text message about needing water, Ruth immediately scanned the court. Sure enough, Matthew was already walking toward the sidelines, his eyes sweeping across the bleachers.
Instantly, the girls sitting around Ruth completely lost their minds.
"Holy shit! That gorgeous guy with the Lynes surname is looking this way!"
"Ahhhhh the way he tilts his head up, he's so hot I can't breathe!"
"Number 7 is a literal god! He scored like thirty of their forty points by himself! Ugh, who is he looking for?!"
"My roommate went to watch the Engineering game because she didn't believe me when I said there was a literal supermodel playing here... I'm taking a picture to make her regret her life choices!"
Matthew had already locked eyes with her.
His gaze was heavy, direct, and incredibly obvious. He might as well have used a megaphone to call her down.
Ruth leaned over to Helen. "I'm going to give Matthew some water. Save my seat."
Helen: "?"
Why do you need to give him water? The sports rep literally carried half a case to the bench! Is Matthew planning to take a shower with it?
Before Helen could say a single word, Ruth was already walking down the bleacher stairs, gripping her half-empty water bottle.
In her entire life, Ruth had only ever experienced boys publicly confessing their love to her. She had never been the girl braving a massive crowd to hand a boy a bottle of water.
Her heart hammered violently against her ribs with every step she took down the stairs. Thankfully, because it was halftime, people were getting up to go to the bathroom, so she managed to slip down to the front row without drawing too much attention.
A waist-high metal railing separated the audience from the court. Ruth walked right up to the railing, stopping directly in front of Matthew.
She held the plastic bottle out to him. "Here. The water you wanted."
Matthew smiled at her, reaching out to take it. "Thanks."
"Um, just so you know, I already drank from it, so don't put your mouth—"
Before Ruth could finish the sentence, the word 'mouth' got completely stuck in her throat.
She stood there, entirely paralyzed, as Matthew unscrewed the cap, tilted his head back, and pressed his lips directlyagainst the rim of the bottle. He took a massive, deep swallow.
Ahhhhhhh did we just literally indirectly kiss?!
Her brain completely short-circuited. It went totally blank. And yet, her eyes were completely glued to him, entirely unable to look away.
The indoor gym wasn't particularly warm, but Matthew had just played twenty minutes of high-intensity basketball. Several strands of his dark hair were plastered to his forehead with sweat. Standing in profile, the sharp, elegant lines of his jaw and nose were thrown into perfect relief.
The way he drank water was completely, aggressively sensual. He tilted his head back, exposing the long, pale line of his throat. A single drop of water—or maybe sweat—slipped from the corner of his lips, sliding slowly down his neck, trailing over his sharp Adam's apple before disappearing beneath the collar of his jersey.
Ruth was standing so close she could actually hear the soft sound of him swallowing.
Listening to it, Ruth suddenly felt incredibly thirsty herself. She unconsciously swallowed hard.
Matthew drained half the bottle in under ten seconds. He lowered it and smiled down at her. "What were you saying?"
"..." Ruth felt like she was dying. "Nothing."
Nothing. Except that you just indirectly kissed me.
She desperately hoped that was the end of the conversation.
But Matthew immediately leaned into the railing, his voice dropping an octave as he fully exposed the elephant in the room. "I just drank the water you already drank from. Does that bother you?"
Ruth froze.
Her survival instincts kicked in, and she immediately went on the defensive. "No! Not at all."
She had only warned him because she didn't want him to think she was giving him a brand-new bottle.
"...Why would it bother me?" Ruth forced a casual, perfectly composed smile, meeting Matthew's deeply amused gaze. "It's not like either of us has a contagious disease. If there's an emergency or you're just really thirsty, sharing water with someone else isn't a big deal, right?"
She didn't know why, but the exact second the words left her mouth, the atmosphere between them instantly shifted. It became incredibly, dangerously heavy.
A few agonizing seconds passed.
"Oh..." Matthew nodded slowly, acting like he completely understood her logic.
Ruth thought she had successfully dodged the trap.
And then he asked: "So you'd drink the sports rep's water too?"
"..." Hell no.
"You'd drink Jerry's water?"
"..." Why would I ever put my mouth where that idiot put his.
"You'd drink Tom's water?"
"..." I absolutely refuse.
"Why aren't you answering?" Matthew tapped the plastic bottle lightly against the metal railing. "Hmm?"
Ruth: "............"
Matthew wasn't in a rush. He just stood there, leaning against the railing, staring at her with that terrifying, half-smiling expression. The slight curve of his lips made the shape of his amber eyes look incredibly sharp and predatory.
A bizarre, overwhelming emotion flared in the center of Ruth's chest.
It was the exact same feeling that had been driving her crazy ever since she met him.
It was mostly a deep, desperate itch—like a kitten gently, continuously scratching at her heart. But underneath that, there was a tiny, vicious spark of pure, teeth-gritting frustration.
You think you're so good at flirting, don't you?!
"The guys you just mentioned," Ruth said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "...I wouldn't drink any of theirs."
Matthew looked down at the girl standing in front of him. She had tied her hair up in a ponytail today, exposing the delicate, porcelain-white skin of her neck. But right now, the tips of her small ears were burning a bright, furious red.
Matthew had always found it fascinating. To everyone else—both in the past and right now—Ruth Keen was an untouchable, breathtakingly beautiful goddess. But to him, his most visceral, overwhelming impression of her was always just how incredibly, vibrantly alive and cute she was.
But in the very next second, this cute little girl shot her hand directly through the metal railing.
She grabbed him by the ear.
She didn't pinch hard, but her soft, warm fingers gripped the cartilage firmly enough to take complete control. Caught totally off guard by the pull, Matthew was forced to lean heavily forward over the railing.
He froze, completely stunned.
And then, directly next to his ear, her voice trembled with absolute, undeniable defiance.
"I only drink yours. Understood?"