The Understudy

From the back cover

Chloe Reed hires someone to sit in her lecture for her, but the class-sitter turns out to be a man. When the professor calls her name, a stranger answers and claims to be her boyfriend. Then Dylan Sterling, the golden boy of the Computer Science department, stands up and says he is the real boyfriend. Chloe has been secretly painting instead of coding, and Dylan, who once pushed her to get into Blackwood University with him, cannot accept her plan to transfer to Fine Arts. After a month of silence, she ends the relationship, and her fake boyfriend's identity becomes campus gossip.

Chloe and Dylan grew up across the street from each other, and he always pushed her to work hard. But she hates coding and secretly teaches herself to paint in the campus art studio. When Dylan finds out she is skipping class for art, he calls it a waste of time, and their fight over her major transfer leaves them barely speaking.

Now Chloe is failing while Dylan collects awards, and the gap between them keeps growing. She finally calls him, but a notification interrupts before she can speak.