Page 21 of Faking It with the Bad Boy

The thing was, I was starting to understand how someone could fall for Jack Morrison. Not the campus bad boy with his bike and leather jacket, but the person who read Keats at 2 AM and treated rare volumes like treasures. The one who noticed details and remembered quotes and gave up his jacket in the rain.

The one who's making it harder and harder to remember why I'm supposed to be keeping my distance.

And that was infinitely more dangerous than any reputation.

As I fell asleep that night, still wrapped in his jacket, I couldn't help wondering what other surprises Jack Morrison had hidden behind that carefully maintained facade.

And why, despite every logical argument against it, I wanted to discover them all.

The next morning, I was still wearing his jacket when Dex burst into my room, brandishing her phone like it contained state secrets.

"Care to explain why my brother's Instagram story shows his motorcycle in front of our building at midnight?"

I pulled his jacket tighter, breathing in the lingering scent of cedar and old books. "He gave me a ride home from the bookstore. In the rain. That's all."

"Really?" She perched on my bed, eyes gleaming. "Because there's also a rather poetic Keats quote in his latest post. The one about love being a religion? Since when does Jack post poetry?"

"Maybe he's expanding his literary horizons."

"While giving late-night motorcycle rides to his tutor?"

I threw a pillow at her, but my aim was as bad as the night I'd first assaulted Jack with dental tools. "It's not like that. We... understand each other. Sort of."

"Sort of?" She picked up the Keats volume that had fallen from his jacket pocket. "Is that what we're calling midnight poetry exchanges now?"

What are we calling this? This thing that's more than tutoring but less than dating? This careful dance between what we're supposed to be and what we're becoming?

"It's complicated."

"Because of the mentoring thing? Or because you're both too stubborn to admit there's something here?"

I flopped back on my bed, staring at the ceiling. "He's not what I thought he was."

"No kidding. Last week, I caught him reorganizing his bookshelf according to the literary period. The guy who once turned the library fountain into a hockey rink was color-coding his classics collection."

"He does that at the bookstore, too. And he knows more about Victorian literature than most of my professors."

And he marks poetry passages that make my heart stop. And he looks at books the way most people look at art. And he's making it impossible to keep pretending this is just academic.

"You sound surprised."

"I am. He's supposed to be the campus bad boy. The guy who breaks rules and hearts. Not... not someone who reads Keats and remembers how I organize medical texts and gives up his jacket in the rain."

Dex's expression softened. "Maybe that's exactly who he is. Both things. The guy who races motorcycles through campus and the one who stays up late reading poetry. The hockey star who breaks into libraries to study in quiet."

"When did he get so complicated?"

"Pretty sure he always was. You just weren't looking."

No, I was too busy making rules. Too busy maintaining distance. Too busy pretending I wasn't noticing every little thing about him.

I sat up, pulling his jacket closer. "I think I'm looking now. And I don't know what to do about it."

"Do you want to do something about it?"

The question hung in the air like the last notes of a symphony. Did I? Did I want to risk everything – my academic reputation, our mentoring relationship, my carefully ordered world – for the guy who quoted Keats in the rain?

For the guy who remembers how I take my coffee during late study sessions. Who looks at me like I'm more interesting than any book he's ever read.

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