Page 7 of Faking It with the Bad Boy

The question hung between us. He picked up his copy of Wuthering Heights, thumbing through pages that were filled with careful annotations in surprisingly elegant handwriting.

"Right now, I want to pass this class without having the entire campus know that the hockey team captain spends his Friday nights analyzing Victorian literature."

Oh, I thought. OH.

"The reputation isn't just about parties," I realized aloud. "It's protection."

"Rule 335," he reminded me without his usual smirk. "Though I have to say, watching you try to figure me out is pretty entertaining. Your face does this thing when your worldview gets challenged – like someone just reorganized your entire library system."

"It does not," I protested, even as I felt my nose scrunch in exactly the way he was describing. "And you're deflecting."

"Maybe." He leaned forward again; this time, I didn't lean back. "But so are you. Want to talk about why the rigid rule-maker spends so much time tracking the campus bad boy's movements?"

"I do not—" I started, but he held up his phone, showing my browser history from the library computers. My entire catalog of Jack Morrison-related research stared back at me.

"The library logs were very enlightening," he said, and that dangerous smile was back but different somehow. Less practiced, more genuine. "Especially your recent searches about literary tattoos and their psychological implications."

"That was for a paper," I lied. "A very academic paper about... modern expressions of classic literature?"

"Really? And I suppose 'do hockey players actually read' was also for academic purposes?"

My face was on fire. "How did you even get access to—"

"I'm good with computers." He shrugged. "Another thing that doesn't fit your narrative about the dumb jock, right?"

I stared at him, really looking this time. Beyond the carefully curated bad boy image, I could see something else – intelligence in how his eyes assessed me, sensitivity in how he handled his books, complexity in the literary quotes he'd chosen for his tattoos.

"Show me," I said suddenly.

"Show you what?"

"The Paradise Lost tattoo. The full quote."

He studied me for a moment, then slowly rolled up his sleeve. The tattoo was beautiful – intricate black ink forming angel wings around words I'd quote myself a hundred times: "Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light."

"Most people," he said quietly, "assume I got the rebellious quotes. Satan's speeches about ruling in Hell."

"But you chose the line about redemption," I finished. "About the difficult path to something better."

Something shifted in his expression – surprise, maybe, or respect. "Look at that. The uptight tutor can see past her own assumptions."

"And the bad boy has depth beneath his carefully constructed facade," I countered. "How terribly inconvenient for both our reputations."

He laughed then – a real laugh, not his usual calculated chuckle. It transformed his entire face, making him look younger and more genuine. More like someone I could actually...

"This doesn't change anything," I said quickly, even as my heart disagreed. "You still miss assignments, break rules—"

"And you still judge people before knowing their whole story," he finished. "Guess we've both got work to do."

He stood, gathering his things, but paused at the door. "For what it's worth," he said, not looking at me, "your article about Victorian literature's influence on modern storytelling was actually brilliant. Even if you did use it as an excuse to criticize sports funding."

My heart definitely didn't skip at that. "You read my articles?"

"Rule 335," he said with a ghost of his usual smirk. "Though I have to say, your comparison of hockey players to barbarians was a bit heavy-handed. Some of us barbarians appreciate good literature."

He left before I could respond, the scent of his cologne lingering in the air like an unfinished argument. I stared at my rulebook, suddenly aware of how many assumptions I'd written into its pages.

Maybe, a treacherous voice whispered in my head, some rules need to be rewritten.

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