My Roommate Rented Out My Bed,So I Revoked Her Scholarship

I'd been away from the dorm for one month. That was all it took for my roommate to start renting out my bed to strangers at thirty dollars a night.

My toiletries, my sheets, my comforter, even candid photos of me taken without my knowledge, all of it bundled up and listed on eBay at bargain prices.

I was famous now, apparently. The whole campus knew me by a single label: “the thirty-dollar-a-night gold-digger.”

I came back furious, ready for a fight, and the only thing I got was a question tossed at me like I was the one who owed an explanation.

“You spend every night out there hooking up with men and selling yourself, and you still have the nerve to sleep here? We don't want to catch whatever you've got.”

I stared at them, baffled, and my roommate shoved a photo into my face. Taken yesterday, right after class.

In it, I was stepping out of a luxury car with a smile on my face. Behind me, still seated in the back, was the blurred figure of a middle-aged man.

“You really will do anything for money, won't you? Latching onto some greasy sugar daddy like that.”

And with that, she upended an entire bucket of kitchen slop onto my bed.

I was so angry I laughed.

My gaze dropped to the name badge pinned to her chest, and I went still.

I pulled out my phone and sent a message to the “greasy” middle-aged man in the photo.

“Dad, cancel the scholarship our family's been funding for the past ten years.”

——

I gripped my phone tight, my eyes sharp as I looked back at them.

Tamara Cooley's mockery didn't let up.

“Who would've guessed? You look so innocent, but behind closed doors you're a total slut.”

“Someone as talented as you? This dorm's way too small for a big shot like you.”

Tamara stroked the Van Cleef & Arpels bracelet on her wrist, sneering down at me.

That was when I actually looked at her. Head to toe, she was dripping in designer labels. A Chanel dress. An Hermès bag.

My brow furrowed.

I knew my father had devoted himself to philanthropy for years. He'd even established a dedicated charitable foundation through the school, pouring serious money into scholarships for kids who couldn't afford an education.

Tamara Cooley was one of those kids. A girl pulled out of poverty on a scholarship from the mountains.

I hadn't remembered her name before. It was only when I saw the scholarship badge on her chest that I realized she was the student my father had been sponsoring all along.

Our family had funded her for a full decade. Even after she'd gotten into college, we kept her scholarship active.

Every month, a generous stipend hit her account.

But she'd only been enrolled for half a year. Where was all the luxury coming from?

She must have noticed the way I was looking at her, because Tamara arched a brow, preening.

“I'm nothing like you. Sure, I'm on a scholarship now, but my boyfriend happens to be the richest man in the city. He's the one who's been paying for everything.”

“We actually have a real relationship. He told me he'll marry me after I graduate. Not like you, playing mistress on the side.”

The words hit me and I froze where I stood.

My mind went blank.

Then something sharp clawed its way out of my throat.

“You're saying the man who sponsors you is going to marry you?”

That was impossible. My mother had been gone for years, but I had seen with my own eyes how deep my father's love for her ran.

Every year on the anniversary of her death, he would spend an entire month at the temple, praying for her, hoping she was at peace wherever she was.

Relatives had urged him to remarry. He'd refused every time, swearing he would never take another wife.

Doubt crept in anyway, cold and unwelcome, and I fought it.

But the next second Tamara held her phone right up to my face, chat logs open, and everything I believed cracked apart.

Every illusion, shattered.

The screen was full of it. “Baby” and “love you” and all the nauseating pet names in between.

The location pin pointed straight to my family's gated community. The living room in the photos, the climbing roses by the front door, they were identical to mine.