My Fake Boyfriend Is the School Bad Boy novel Chapter 41

Chapter 41 A Queen Bee’s Silent Declaration of War

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The bored, indifferent posture vanished. He pulled his hands out of his hoodie pocket, his back coming off the lockers. The air between us grew incredibly thick, charged with that familiar, chaotic static electricity.

He didn’t care about the hundreds of students watching us. He didn’t care about the whispers echoing off the vaulted ceilings.

He took a slow step toward me, closing the distance until the toes of his heavy combat boots bumped gently against my loafers.

“You wore it,” he murmured. His voice was a dark, rough scrape that vibrated straight through my chest.

“It was cold,” I whispered, the lie tasting completely flimsy on my tongue. I looked up at him, my pulse roaring in my ears.

Ryder’s eyes darkened, the golden shards in his irises burning with a sudden, intense heat. He knew it wasn’t just about the temperature. He knew exactly what it meant for me to walk through the front doors of Crestview wearing his colors.

He raised his right hand. His bruised knuckles grazed the lapel of the jacket, his long fingers curling into the thick leather just below my collarbone. He didn’t pull me closer, but the grip was entirely possessive. The heat from his hand bled through the material, a grounding weight against my racing heart.

“It looks better on you,” he rasped quietly, his gaze dropping to my mouth for a fraction of a second before lifting back to my eyes.

I couldn’t breathe. I was completely paralyzed by the raw, heavy devotion in his stare. The distance between us was entirely gone. The fake dating arrangement felt like a ridiculous, distant memory. There was nothing fake about the way my stomach flipped, or the way my skin burned everywhere he touched me.

“Well, well. If it isn’t Crestview’s newest tragedy.”

The sharp, incredibly loud voice cut through the quiet bubble around us like a jagged piece of glass.

I jumped, my shoulders flinching instinctively.

Ryder didn’t pull away. He didn’t drop his hand from my lapel. He just slowly turned his head, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle ticked rapidly beneath his skin.

Harper Vance was standing ten feet away in the middle of the hallway.

Chloe and another girl were flanking her, acting like silent bodyguards, but they looked terrified. Harper didn’t look terrified. She looked

furious.

Her perfect, glossy blonde hair was pushed back over her shoulders. She was wearing a designer blazer that cost more than my mother made in a month. But her face was twisted into an ugly, bitter sneer that completely ruined her curated image.

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Chapter 41 A Queen Bee’s Silent Declaration of War

The entire B-wing went dead silent. Nobody closed a locker. Nobody moved.

Harper’s eyes raked over me, landing hard on the oversized leather jacket. Her perfectly manicured fingernails dug into the strap of her

expensive tote bag.

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“I have to admit, Raisa, I’m actually impressed, Harper said, her voice dripping with pure, unadulterated venom. The sound echoed loudly in the silent corridor. “I didn’t think you had it in you. Going from trading favors with middle-aged math teachers to slumming it with the school’s biggest criminal. It’s a massive step down, but I guess desperate times call for desperate measures.”

A cold, heavy rock dropped into my stomach.

She was trying to revive the rumor. She was throwing the lie out into the open air, desperate to remind the school that I was supposed to

be a scandal.

I opened my mouth to defend myself, to tell her she was a liar, but my throat was completely dry.

Ryder shifted.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t step aggressively toward her. He moved with a slow, deliberate grace, stepping slightly in front of me, placing his large body completely between me and Harper’s vicious stare. He kept his hand firmly gripped on the lapel of my jacket, anchoring me to

his side.

“Say that again.”

His voice didn’t rise above a low, gravelly drawl. But the absolute, lethal menace in those three words made the temperature in the

hallway plummet.

Harper’s sneer faltered. She took a tiny, almost imperceptible step backward. The bravado she had walked up with cracked under the weight of his dark, unyielding stare.

“I’m just calling it like I see it, Steinmann,” she managed to say, though her voice lacked its previous confident bite. “Everyone knows why she’s suddenly hanging around you. She’s just using you to cover up her-

“I won’t warn you twice,” Ryder interrupted smoothly, his tone flat and deadly.

He let go of my jacket and took one slow step toward her. The heavy thud of his combat boot echoed in the dead quiet.

Chloe actually whimpered, grabbing the back of Harper’s blazer and tugging.

‘You open your mouth about her again, Ryder murmured, the rough gravel in his voice carrying clearly down the silent hallway. “You spread another lie, you look at her wrong, or you even breathe in her direction… and I will make sure the board finds out exactly who paid for your chemistry midterms last semester. Do we have an understanding, Vance?”

The color completely drained from Harper’s face. She went from furious to pasty white in two seconds.

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Chapter 41 A Queen Bee’s Silent Declaration of War

My eyes went wide. She paid for her midterms?

Harper swallowed hard, her throat working convulsively. She didn’t have a comeback. She didn’t have a witty remark. Ryder had just openly threatened her entire academic standing in front of fifty witnesses, and she knew he wasn’t bluffing. He held the match, and he was fully prepared to burn her perfect life to the ground.

She shot one last, deeply venomous glare in my direction-a glare filled with absolute, terrified hatred-before spinning on the heels of

her expensive shoes.

“Let’s go, she hissed at Chloe.

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