My Fake Boyfriend Is the School Bad Boy novel Chapter 12

Chapter 12 We Signed Something We Can’t Undo

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I stared at his mouth. The split in his bottom lip was a harsh slash of red against his pale skin.

I jerked my hand back, pulling it off the table and dropping it into my lap. My fingers curled into a tight fist, the blunt edges of my nails

biting into my palm. I needed the sting to ground me. I needed to remember where I was because the sheer force of Ryder Steinmann’s

presence was threatening to pull me entirely under.

“You can’t just say things like that, I breathed. My voice was incredibly thin, scraping against the back of my dry throat.

Ryder didn’t retreat. He kept his forearms resting on the table, his broad shoulders encroaching on my carefully maintained space. The

worn black leather of his jacket creaked as he tilted his head.

“Like what?” he asked. The gravel in his voice was low, scraping against my nerves.

“Like I belong to you.” I swallowed hard, forcing my eyes up from his mouth to meet his gaze. The shards of green and gold in his irises

were sharp, catching the harsh overhead light. “This is a transaction, Ryder. A mutual agreement to survive the semester. It’s not… it’s not

real.

“It’s not real to us,” he corrected slowly. He picked up the black pen again, flipping it end over end between his long, calloused fingers.

The plastic clicked rhythmically. “But it has to be real to them. You came to me because you wanted a spectacle. You wanted Harper Vance

to choke on her own rumor. You think she’s going to do that if we stand two feet apart in the hallway and ask each other about the

weather?”

I opened my mouth to argue, but the words died on my tongue.

“Harper is a predator, Petrova,” Ryder continued, his voice dropping another fraction. It lacked any sort of teenage awkwardness. He spoke with the cold, hard certainty of someone who understood how vicious people could be. “She smells blood in the water. If you flinch when I touch you, if you look at a clock while I’m talking to you, she’ll know. She’ll tear the whole act apart in ten seconds. And your perfect

little scholarship goes up in smoke.”

A cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck. The collar of my grey sweater suddenly felt suffocatingly tight.

He was right. I hated it, the burning resentment settling deep in my chest, but he was entirely right. I had built a clinical, safe plan at

three in the morning because I was terrified of the chaos he represented. But Crestview Prep didn’t run on safe plans. It ran on vicious,

undeniable proof.

“No schedules,” I whispered, conceding the battle. The words tasted bitter. “No timed interactions.”

“No schedules, Ryder agreed. He stopped flipping the pen. He leaned back in his metal chair, the tension bleeding out of his shoulders

just a fraction. He looked down at the ruined contract between us. “If we do this, I set the pace in the hallways. You follow my lead. You

don’t pull away.”

I stared at the thick, jagged black lines destroying my careful paragraphs. I was handing over the steering wheel of my own life to a boy

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12:37 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 12 We Signed Something We Can’t Undo

who routinely drove his into brick walls.

Fine, I said, my voice tight. But the academic terms stand. I set the pace there.”

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I grabbed the zipper of my heavy backpack and yanked it open. The harsh sound ripped through the quiet corner of the library. I dug inside, pulling out a thick, plastic-bound folder packed with perfectly organized papers. I dropped it onto the table. It hit the wood with a heavy thud.

Ryder looked at the folder, the muscle in his jaw jumping.

“That’s the master syllabus for every junior-level core class,” I told him, tapping the plastic cover. My confidence returned slightly. This was my territory. “I know exactly what essays you owe, what chapters you haven’t read, and what tests are coming up. Every Sunday, I will hand you a packet. It will contain detailed outlines for your assignments and the completed worksheets. You will copy them into your own handwriting.”

He looked from the massive folder to my face. The intense, predatory look in his eyes was replaced by a flicker of genuine disbelief.

“You did all that?” he asked. “Since yesterday?”

“I don’t fail, Ryder.” I sat up straighter, squaring my shoulders. “And if you are associated with me, you aren’t going to fail either. I won’t let your father pull you out of school, and you won’t let the board expel me. That is the trade.”

He stared at me for a long time. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, punctuated only by the distant hum of the radiator. He studied

my face, mapping the dark circles under my eyes, the rigid set of my jaw, the absolute, unyielding desperation radiating off me.

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