My Fake Boyfriend Is the School Bad Boy novel Chapter 163

Chapter 163 The Photo From Freshman Year

I kept my head down. I pressed the tip of my blue pen deep into the center of my white block eraser. I carved a crude star to keep my

hands from shaking. I felt a heavy, intense stare on the back of my neck. Ryder Steinmann sat two rows behind me. I dropped the eraser

in the B-wing hallway later that afternoon. I searched the tile floors. I asked a passing senior if they saw it.

“Move out of the way, the senior snapped. I never found it.

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My hands began to shake. The tremor started in my fingertips and traveled up my arms.

I placed the eraser next to the yellow pencil. I reached for a small, frayed loop of black fabric. A standard hair tie. The elastic felt stretched and thin. A single dark hair tangled in the threads. I lose hair ties every single week. I leave them on library tables. I drop them

in the cafeteria.

I reached for a white index card resting near the baseboard.

I picked the thick paper up. The blue ink handwriting covered the lined surface. The letters looked small, cramped, and distinct.

My handwriting. My exact study notes.

Junior year. A windy Tuesday afternoon in the center courtyard.

“Watch where you are walking, charity case,” Trent Lawson sneered. He bumped his shoulder hard against mine.

The stack of white index cards flew from my hands. The wind caught the thick paper, scattering my biology notes across the wet concrete.

“Please, I begged. I dropped to my knees. “Please, do not step on them.”

Trent laughed. He walked right over the scattered cards, leaving dirty footprints on my hard work. I scrambled across the ground, desperate to gather the pieces of my future. I counted them in the library an hour later. I missed one.

The pressure in my chest expanded. A massive, roaring sound filled my ears, drowning out the noise of the shower in the next room.

I stared at the items resting inside the cheap cardboard box.

A chewed yellow pencil. A block eraser with a blue ink star. A frayed black hair tie. A lost biology flashcard.

He kept them.

Ryder Steinmann, the notorious Crestview delinquent. The boy who shattered metal lockers. The heir to a massive corporate empire. He walked down the same hallways. He watched me drop a pencil under the bleachers. He watched me lose an eraser in the B-wing. He watched Trent Lawson scatter my notes in the courtyard. He waited for me to leave. He picked the discarded pieces of my life off the

floor

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Chapter 163 The Photo From Freshman Year

He brought them home. He placed them in a box. He hid the box on the highest shelf of his pristine closet, protecting the items like

sacred relics.

A hot, stinging tear broke past my eyelashes. It slid down my cold cheek and fell onto the wood floor.

“You liar,” I whispered to the empty room. My voice broke, fracturing under the immense weight of the truth. “You massive liar.”

I did not understand the magnitude of his devotion. I thought the intense magnetic pull started a month ago. I thought the fake dating contract sparked the fire. I thought the tutoring sessions in the library broke his defensive walls. I assumed we collided by accident.

There was no accident.

My chest caved in. The raw, unfiltered pain ripped through my remaining composure.

I just threw my future away to save his freedom.

I sat in Mr. Harrison’s classroom this morning and wrote the wrong chemical equations. I sat in the calculus room and butchered the formulas. I handed Chloe the Valedictorian rank on a silver platter. I destroyed the prestigious medical scholarship. I condemned my mother to years of financial struggle. I sacrificed my entire identity to prevent his expulsion.

I did it because I loved the boy who bought the midnight silk gown. I did it because I loved the boy who kissed me in the freezing wind

on the senior terrace.

The boy with the monster reputation possessed the most fragile, devoted heart in the entire school. He carried my discarded trash like

treasure.

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