Page 27 of Faking It with the Bad Boy

I stayed until dawn, watching him sleep and trying to pretend this was still about academic responsibility. The team kept texting updates to each other, all of them referring to me as "Jack's girl" despite Dex's corrections.

His bookshelf revealed more about him than any campus rumor ever had. Medical texts nestled against poetry collections. Game strategy books shared space with first editions. A worn copy of "Paradise Lost" had more annotations than any of his hockey playbooks.

He was chaos and order together – leather jackets and careful book arrangements, reckless hits and gentle touches, bad boy reputation and secret bibliophile. He was contradiction embodied, and I was running out of reasons to pretend I wasn't falling for every complicated piece of him.

Around three AM, he stirred restlessly, muttering something about defensive formations that morphed into a quote from Keats. I found myself smoothing his hair back, a gesture that felt simultaneously too intimate and completely natural.

"Still here?" he murmured, eyes still closed.

"Someone has to make sure you don't die of heroics."

"Is that the clinical term?"

"Shut up and go back to sleep."

His thumb traced patterns on my wrist. "Thanks, Sophie."

"For what?"

"For seeing me."

Three words that undid months of carefully maintained distance. I was seeing him now – really seeing him. Not the campus bad boy or the team captain or the secret scholar, but all of it together. Every complicated, contradictory piece.

The first light of dawn crept through his windows, catching on his silver hockey medals and the gold leaf of his rare books. A half-finished essay about Victorian social mobility lay on his desk, next to play diagrams that looked more like poetry than sports strategy.

Dawn painted his sleeping face in soft gold, and I realized some things were worth the risk. Worth the complications. Worth the mess.

Jack Morrison was all of those things.

And I was finally ready to admit it.

Chapter ten

Museum After Hours

There's something uniquely unsettling about medical museums after dark. The glass displays catch moonlight in strange ways, making nineteenth-century surgical tools look even more ominous than usual. This is why, at 11:47 PM on a Friday night, I was definitely not thinking about how Jack Morrison made even the creepiest Victorian medical devices look somehow attractive by association. I was cataloging medical equipment when Kendra, Jack’s ex, appeared in the doorway, looking oddly out of place among the Victorian displays.

"Quite the collection," she said, running a manicured finger along a display case. "Almost as impressive as your collection of Jack's study sessions. Tell me, does the dean know how many late-night 'tutorials' you've been having?"

"We maintain strict academic focus."

"Of course you do." Her smile was sharp as a scalpel. "Just like I did when I tutored him in French last year. Until he got bored. Jack has a pattern, you see. The chase excites him. Theconquest... well." She shrugged delicately. "Let's just say I've never seen him stick around once he gets what he wants."

"Jack's not-"

"The same with me? That's what I thought. What Ashley thought last spring. And Emma, the semester before that." She picked up a dental tool, examining it in the light. "But by all means, convince yourself you're different. It makes the eventual crash so much more entertaining."

She placed the tool back with surgical precision, each click of her heels on the museum floor like a countdown as she left. The air felt colder in her wake, and the medical displays suddenly became more ominous than usual.

Don't let her get to you. Don't think about other girls in the library with Jack. Don't imagine him looking at them the way he looks at you when you're explaining Victorian medical practices. Don't wonder if they also noticed how his eyes light up when he's truly interested in something. Don't-

But the images came anyway: Jack studying French with Kendra, probably in this same museum. Jack discussing poetry with Emma, maybe even sitting in our usual spot in the library. Jack listening to Sarah's music, looking at her with that intense focus I thought was just for me.

How many other girls had he shown his reading glasses to? How many had discovered his secret intelligence? How many had thought they were special for seeing past the bad boy facade?

I turned back to my cataloging, but the dental tools offered no comfort. Each one seemed to reflect Kendra's words: temporary, entertaining, disposable. Just another phase in Jack Morrison's evolving reputation.

But he's different with me, a stubborn voice in my head insisted.He shows up at midnight to help organize exhibits. He remembers how I categorize medical texts. He...

---