He laughs. “Impossible.”
He cannot go through with it.
She walks away.
Sebastian, meanwhile, has a choice. He can disappear—back to his old life of numbness and games. Or he can face Annette. cruel intentions -1999-
But something shifts. One night, Sebastian and Annette are caught in a rainstorm. They take shelter in an abandoned greenhouse. Annette, shivering, looks at him and says, “You’ve never let anyone see you cry, have you?”
He finds her on the Brooklyn Bridge, watching the East River. It is Christmas Eve. Snow falls.
“But I’m not Kathryn,” he says. “I don’t want to be.” He laughs
But as she undresses, trembling and earnest, Sebastian freezes. He sees not a conquest but a person. He sees the girl who cried at his fake story about his father. He sees the girl who brought soup to a homeless man outside the school gates. He sees the girl he has become—against all his designs—genuinely in love with.
The night of the winter formal. Sebastian has won. Annette has confessed her love and agreed to sleep with him—her first time. The bet is seconds from payout.
Sebastian begins his campaign. He does not flirt. He listens. He finds Annette in the library, where she is tutoring a struggling freshman. He sits down and asks for help with Voltaire. She is suspicious at first, but his act is flawless: humble, curious, wounded. He confesses that his reputation is a mask—his father abandoned him, his mother remarries every two years, and he has never known real intimacy. Sebastian, meanwhile, has a choice
Kathryn is exposed. Not just for the lie, but for years of manipulation, blackmail, and cruelty. She is expelled. Her trust fund is frozen. Her friends scatter like roaches in light.
Meanwhile, Kathryn runs her own parallel game. She seduces and discards a sweet-natured sophomore, Cecile, not for pleasure but to keep her claws sharp. She also toys with Annette’s ex-boyfriend, a decent but naive boy named Ronald, feeding him lies about Annette and Sebastian to create chaos.
They begin meeting secretly—walking through Central Park in the gray November drizzle, sharing hot chocolate, talking about God and art and fear. Sebastian is brilliant at this: he gives her just enough vulnerability to trust him, just enough mystery to chase him.
He kisses Annette. It is tender. It is also a lie.