My Fake Boyfriend Is the School Bad Boy novel Chapter 36

Chapter 36 Intelligence Hidden Behind a Bad Reputation

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He hadn’t spoken since he snapped at me in the living room. He sat slouched in the high-backed chair, his heavy combat boots resting on

the lower rung. A blank sheet of loose-leaf paper sat in front of him. He was twirling a black pen between his long, bruised fingers, the

plastic barrel clicking softly against his knuckles in a rhythmic, restless beat.

My mother’s cramped, grease-scented living room felt like a paradise compared to this echoing museum.

“The textbook gets it wrong, Ryder suddenly said.

His rough, gravelly voice shattered the quiet. I jumped slightly, my elbow bumping the edge of my heavy binder.

I looked up. He wasn’t glaring at me. He was staring down at the open textbook between us, his jaw relaxed, the dark, defensive anger

from earlier entirely gone.

‘Gets what wrong?” I asked, my voice dry and scratchy. I cleared my throat and pulled my hands into my lap.

“Robespierre, he murmured, tapping the tip of his pen against a specific paragraph on page three-hundred and fourteen. “The author frames him like a corrupted idealist. Like he started with pure intentions and just lost his mind along the way.”

I blinked, completely taken aback. I leaned forward, looking at the section he was pointing to. “He was the architect of the Reign of Terror. He executed tens of thousands of people. He was corrupted.

“No, he was consistent, Ryder countered, his hazel eyes lifting to meet mine. The shards of gold in his irises were sharp and entirely focused. “You don’t build a guillotine because you want equality, Petrova. You build it because you want to be the one holding the rope. He didn’t break the system; he just replaced the king with himself.”

I stared at him, my mouth slightly open.

I had spent the last three years tutoring athletes who couldn’t comprehend basic reading comprehension questions. I was used to dragging guys across the finish line with flashcards and simplified outlines. I fully expected to spend this entire afternoon spoon-feeding Ryder basic dates and vocabulary words.

But he hadn’t just read the page. He had analyzed it. He had stripped away the academic fluff and extracted a sharp, cynical, incredibly accurate assessment of power dynamics.

“That s… I trailed off, searching for the right word. “That’s actually a really solid thesis for the presentation.”

Ryder dropped his pen. It clattered against the wood. He leaned back, crossing his arms over his broad chest. A ghost of his usual, mocking smirk tugged at the corner of his split lip.

Don 1 sound so shocked, honors. It’s insulting.

I’m not shocked. I lied quickly, feeling a hot flush creep up the back of my neck. I grabbed my blue pen and quickly jotted his exact

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12:49 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 36 Intelligence Hidden Behind a Bad Reputation

words onto my legal pad. “I just… you fail all your history exams. You got a twelve percent on the last midterm.”

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“Because I didn’t write anything down, he stated flatly.

‘Why not?” I asked, setting my pen down. The question slipped out before I could filter it. “If you know the material, why hand in a blank

test? Why let Mrs. Albright think you’re stupid when you’re clearly not?”

Ryder looked away, his gaze shifting to the massive, empty living room behind me. The smirk faded, replaced by the heavy, indifferent

mask he wore so well.

“Because playing their game validates their rules,” he rasped, his tone dropping an octave. “Albright doesn’t want independent thought. She wants you to regurgitate the exact bullet points she wrote on the whiteboard. I’m not a parrot. I don’t care about their grades.”

“You care about getting expelled,” I reminded him quietly. “You care about your father cutting you off.”

His jaw tightened. The muscle beneath the dark purple bruise ticked rapidly. He didn’t argue. He knew I was right, and the absolute trapped reality of his situation hung heavy in the air between us. He was a brilliant boy purposely drowning himself just to spite the

water.

“Let’s just build the outline, Ryder muttered, pulling the textbook closer to his side of the table.

We actually worked.

For the next hour, the suffocating tension that had gripped my chest since we walked through his front door slowly began to thaw. We fell into a strange, unexpected rhythm. I organized the structure, formatting the dates and the required academic sources, while Ryder provided the actual arguments. He possessed a dark, sharp intellect that cut right through the dry historical text. He understood human nature. He understood violence, rebellion, and the desperate things people did when they were backed into a corner.

He didn’t sound like a bad boy anymore. He sounded like an equal.

“We need a concluding slide on the lasting economic impacts,” I said, tapping the spacebar on my laptop to wake the screen. “I have a PDF of a secondary source saved on my hard drive. Let me pull it up.”

I clicked the folder icon on my desktop. The screen brightened for a fraction of a second, the cooling fan whirring loudly.

And then, the screen went completely black.

I groaned, dropping my forehead against my palms. “It died. I forgot to charge it in the library this morning.”

“There’s an outlet right behind you, Ryder said, his pen scratching across his loose-leaf paper.

‘I don’t have my cable,’ I sighed, sitting back and rubbing my tired eyes. The harsh chandelier light was giving me a massive headache. “I

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