My First Love Is Now My Grumpy Professor

Tagline

She’s a superstar. He’s the genius who once called her the dumbest girl he ever tutored.

Blurb

Once a hopeless science flunk, Sophia Lane is now the nation’s favorite scandal-magnet superstar.
On a viral variety show, she jokes that the only person she ever admired was “the top student who once confessed to me.”

Internet detectives do their thing… and find him.

He’s not just some ex-crush. He’s Professor Evan Price—the youngest physics professor at elite Kingston University, icy, untouchable, and very much the man who once snarled,

“I’ve never met a girl as dumb as you. My chest hurt so much I thought it was love.”

When Sophia takes a secret role in a campus drama filming at Kingston, she stumbles right back into Evan’s classroom—this time as “Student Sophia,” sitting in the front row, cameras rolling, the whole world shipping their “real-life CP.”

Too bad he’s rumored to be engaged to the elegant Professor Veronica Hughes, the heiress his family actually approves of.
Too bad his powerful family is teaming up with the Hughes to crush Sophia’s career.
And way too bad that every time he drags her to office hours to “fix her brain,” the chemistry between them gets dangerously real.

When a leaked photo of them in a locked office explodes online, the university, the corporations and two powerful families all demand one thing:

Pick a side—
the perfect fiancée and a spotless future,
or the chaotic superstar who was never supposed to set foot in his world again.

Chapter 1

They asked this on a variety show.

The host looked at me and said, “What’s the one thing you remember most from your school days?”

I answered as if I were at a press conference, not on a game show.
“I bombed math, I tanked physics, and I barely scraped by in chemistry. I refused to accept any of that. But when the guy with the highest exam score in the entire state asked me out, that I accepted.”

Later on, when Evan Price had already become a famous professor at a top university, someone brought up his first love in an interview.

Evan didn’t even blink.
“I’ve never tutored a girl that clueless,” he said. “She stressed me out so much my chest hurt. I figured that had to be love.”

Back then, I was one of the hottest actresses in the business.

To hype a newly announced campus drama, my team shoved me onto a live reality show.

On the show, the host smiled at the camera.
“We all know Sophia Lane is heading off in a few days to film her new series, another coming-of-age campus romance. Sophia, what’s the most unforgettable thing from your own time in school?”

I looked straight into the lens and said, just as seriously as before,
“I flunked math, I tanked physics, and I barely passed chemistry.”

“The only thing I ever really accepted was when the guy with the highest score in the entire state asked me out.”

The chat exploded.

[Say yes, are you crazy? Do you know how expensive private tutoring is now]

[Help, my sapiosexual heart is dying over here]

[First thought, top of the school. Second thought, top of the whole state]

Everyone already knew I had zero dating scandals since the day I debuted. I shut down rumors faster than they could trend.

This was the first time I had ever volunteered a story about my love life.

The host asked the question everyone wanted to ask.
“So did you say yes?”

I nodded. “Of course. My family didn’t have money back then. One-on-one tutoring delivered to my door for free, I’d have to be an idiot to turn that down.”

“And then what happened?” the host asked.

I lifted a shoulder. “Then it turned out I kind of was an idiot. No matter how he tutored me, nothing stuck. I stayed stuck in the middle of the class, and he still tried to aim me at Cambridge.”

“Honestly, I might as well have gone to work at a food truck.”

I had barely finished when the young singer standing next to me frowned.
“Then why did he like you?” he asked.

I froze. “Um… yeah. I’d actually like to know that too.”

Someone with a brain like Evan’s falling for a disaster in science like me was something I still couldn’t explain.

If you count the years, Evan and I broke up halfway through senior year and never spoke again.

I’d heard he was now a physics professor at a university, still teaching the subject that had once given me nightmares.

So there was a reason we hadn’t crossed paths once in all these years.

Evan and I were just born to clash.

What I never expected was that our first meeting in eight years would hit me as suddenly as a jump cut.

The campus drama I had mentioned on the show was scheduled to start filming over summer break.

The shooting location was Kingston University.

We had already been filming for more than two weeks, and I still hadn’t run into Evan.

The first time I saw him again was right in the middle of a romantic scene with the male lead.

Ryan Cole, who played the male lead, and I were walking hand in hand toward the campus cafeteria.

On the main path to the cafeteria, Evan walked straight toward us, a thick stack of papers tucked under one arm.

My reaction was pure reflex. I dropped Ryan’s hand.

“Cut,” the director called.

Evan stopped and looked straight at me.

For a moment I felt pinned in place by his gaze. My mind went blank.

“Sophia, what’s wrong?” Ryan asked.

I snapped back to myself and stared at Evan, still a little dazed. “Nothing.”

Evan held my eyes for a few seconds, then turned and walked away, leaving me with nothing but his retreating back.

I forced myself to look away, apologized to the director, and went back to work.

During the break, Ryan found me sitting in the shade of a tree.
He handed me a bottle of water and said casually, “I thought that whole story you told on the show the other day was scripted, you know, to promote the drama.”

“Didn’t think it was real.”

My fingers tightened for a second around the cold plastic. “You’ve known me for years. You know I don’t lie.”

Except for that one time.

Chapter 2

When Evan and I finally blew up at each other, I told him, “I don’t even want to go to the same college as you. You drag me to study every day. You might not be tired, but I am.”

None of that was true.
I wanted to go to the same college as him more than anything.

When he sat beside me and walked me through problems, I was happy. I never once felt tired.

What I had to face was something else.
I was not exhausted, I was dead weight.

I still could not forget the day his mother came to see me and said things that went straight for the jugular.

“Evan is still young, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He cannot control himself, so I have to step in as his mother.”

“I will keep it simple, you are not good enough for my son.”

She picked apart my grades, my background, my so called character.
She ground me down to nothing.

She made me see what she called reality.

She made me see that when Evan smiled at me and said, “Let’s get into Barton University together,” it was just a dream, something a girl like me was never going to make happen.

If I really liked him, I ought to let him go.

So I did exactly what his mother wanted.
After our senior year exams, I never showed up in front of Evan again.

“Was that guy just now the same straight A genius you were talking about,” Ryan asked.

I nodded and forced a light smile. “Yeah. He is pretty easy on the eyes, right.”

Ryan ignored that. “Do you still like him.”

My breath caught, my lashes trembled. “I never stopped.”

After that day, I did not run into Evan again at Kingston University.

The two months of summer break flew by.

When the new semester started at Kingston, it was the perfect time to shoot all the classroom scenes for the show.

There was only one problem.
The very first class my character shared with Ryan’s character was physics taught by Evan.

Ryan and I ran through our lines, all those little touches and lingering looks the script asked for.

From the outside it probably did not look like acting at all, more like a real couple fooling around in the back row.

Evan’s eyes went cold. “Lynn, you answer this one.”

Lynn was the name of the girl I played in the drama.

The script I had memorized backwards and forwards did not have that line anywhere.

So Evan was doing it on purpose. He knew I would not know the answer and he still called on me.

The director did not yell cut, so I had no choice but to play along.

I stood up, stiff and awkward, kept my gaze off Evan and stared at my desk like a kid who had been caught cheating. “Sorry, Professor, I do not know.”

His expression stayed calm, his tone flat. “Then listen carefully and stop fooling around in my class.”

My face burned. I nodded, embarrassed.

So we behaved ourselves and sat through the rest of the period without another whisper, for the sake of the real students.

When the bell rang, I collapsed back into my chair.

Next to me, Ryan chuckled. “Your Professor Price really holds a grudge. What was that, calling you out in front of everyone.”

I rolled my eyes. “Ask him. I am not a mind reader.”

“I am not going,” Ryan said. “I do not even know your Professor Price. You ask him.”

I pressed my lips together. “I am not going either.”

As if.

At lunch, Evan did not have any classes.

I found out where his office was and went upstairs.

I knocked on the door. His cool, low voice came from inside. “Come in.”

I pushed the door open, walked up to his desk and let a small smile curl my lips. “Professor Price, want to grab lunch.”

The pen in his hand paused. He did not even look up. “I am not close enough to superstar Sophia to be having lunch with her.”

“So ruthless,” I said, my brows arching, my voice lazy.

He finally lifted his head and looked at me. “I do not make a habit of eating with my ex.”

“Oh. Then why did you call me by my character’s name in class,” I asked. “And you still claim you do not follow my work.”

“Professor Price, do you know what you sound like right now,” I tilted my head, smiling. “You say one thing and feel another.”

I drew the words out slowly.

His face darkened, a flash of anger in his eyes. “Sophia, I only called on you because I did not want you and Ryan distracting my students. Do not flatter yourself.”

“And if you are not my student, do not just walk into my office whenever you like.”

He might as well have slapped me.

Coming here to make peace with him turned out to be a joke. He really did not care.

It felt like I was the only one still stuck in those high school years, the only one who could not move on.

The other lead in that story had already wiped the past clean.

I let the smile slide off my face and narrowed my eyes a little. “All right, Professor Price. Next time you call on your ex who is not even your student in class, I will report you for harassment.”

I turned and walked out, never seeing how pale his face went a second later.

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