Page 72 of Faking It with the Bad Boy

"Good." He sat beside me, picking up one of his early papers on Victorian medical practices. "Because I'm done pretending I don't care about this stuff. Done acting like I can't be both a hockey player and someone who gets excited about medical history."

"Even if it costs you?"

"Even if it costs me everything." He turned to face me fully. "Look, they're going to make us defend ourselves tomorrow. Try to make us doubt everything we've built. Try to make it seem impossible that someone like me could genuinely careabout academics or that someone like you could see past my reputation."

"Jack—"

"But they're wrong." His hand found mine across the papers. "Because you didn't just teach me about medical history, proper book handling, or color-coding systems that actually make sense. You taught me it's okay to be everything I am. The hockey player who loves literature. The bad boy who handles rare books with care. The guy who falls in love with the museum girl and doesn't care who knows it."

"Even if they try to take it all away?"

"Let them try." His smile held that same confidence he showed on the ice. "We've got documentation of every assignment, every grade, every legitimate achievement. We've got Dr. Pierce's reluctant support. We've got the whole hockey team ready to testify about how much better I play when I'm allowed to be myself."

"And we've got inappropriate museum behavior on our record."

"Worth it." He lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to my knuckles. "Every scandal. Every review board. Every raised eyebrow at the hockey player quoting Victorian medical texts."

Tomorrow would bring more questions, more doubt, more attempts to separate our worlds back into their proper boxes. But sitting there, surrounded by evidence of everything we'd built together, I made my choice.

Some things were worth fighting for. Some loves were worth any risk. Some truths had to be defended, even if they didn't fit neatly into anyone's categories.

"Okay," I said, squeezing his hand. "Let's show them exactly who we are."

His smile was worth every whisper, every doubt, every carefully constructed wall we'd have to break down.

Together. For real. No more hiding.

Chapter twenty-one

Taking a Stand

The thing about academic hearings is that they're remarkably similar to Victorian medical procedures - everyone gathers in an imposing room to observe your potential demise, the people in charge maintain expressions of grave concern, and no matter how much you prepare, there's a good chance you'll end up bleeding anyway. At least metaphorically.

I'd spent the night before our Academic Standards Board hearing, organizing evidence like a particularly obsessive Victorian surgeon preparing for a complicated operation. Every paper, every grade, and every tutoring log was meticulously cataloged and color-coded. By 3 AM, my disaster preparation system had evolved into something that would have impressed even the most compulsive nineteenth-century medical archivists.

"You made a flowchart of possible expulsion scenarios?" Jack asked, finding me in the library at dawn. He wore his reading glasses and a Preston Hockey sweatshirt that definitely violatedseveral of my rules about maintaining professional distance. "Complete with probability statistics and color-coding?"

"The pink tabs are for professional misconduct," I muttered, trying not to notice how unfairly attractive he looked for someone facing potential academic ruin. "Yellow for academic integrity violations. Purple for-"

"Let me guess - improper handling of historical artifacts?"

"Moral turpitude," I corrected, though, given our history with the rare books section, the categories weren't mutually exclusive.

He picked up my careful documentation, lips twitching as he read. "'Scenario 47: Board questions sudden interest in Victorian medical practices and proper preservation techniques.' Sophie, I don't think they can expel us for my genuine fascination with nineteenth-century bone saws."

"No, but they can question everything. Every grade since we started working together. Every paper about medical history. Every time we were caught 'discussing preservation protocols' in questionably appropriate locations."

"You mean like that time in the museum when Dr. Pierce-"

"We don't talk about that," I interrupted, though my face heated at the memory. "We need to focus on our defense."

"Our defense is the truth." He moved closer, making it harder to concentrate on potential academic disaster scenarios. "That I actually love learning about medical history. I can quote Victorian literature and score winning goals. That somewhere between dental tool assaults and late-night study sessions, I fell in love with the girl who color-codes everything, including ways we might get expelled."

"The board meets in two hours," I said instead of all the things I wanted to say. "We need to be prepared."

"We are prepared." He lifted a particularly detailed timeline of our relationship. "Though I notice you left out some of our more... thorough study sessions in the rare books section."

"Those fall under multiple categories of misconduct."

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