My Fake Boyfriend Is the School Bad Boy novel Chapter 44

Chapter 44 Control Versus Something More Natural

It was 7:15 AM on Monday morning. The main hallways of Crestview Prep were still mostly empty, the heavy silence broken only by the occasional slam of a janitor’s closet door. I sat in the second row of the empty English classroom, staring down at the bright yellow legal

pad on my desk.

My blue pen hovered over the lined paper. My hand was cramping from gripping the plastic barrel too tight.

I needed control.

The entire weekend had been a chaotic, suffocating blur of anxiety. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt the heavy, calloused warmth of Ryder’s hand wrapping around mine beneath the leather jacket at the pep rally. I felt the steady, grounding rhythm of his thumb stroking my skin. It hadn’t been a performance for Harper Vance. It hadn’t been a tactical move. It had been entirely, terrifyingly real, and it had completely shattered the boundary lines I built to survive this arrangement.

If I let the lines stay blurred, I was going to ruin everything. I was going to lose my focus, my scholarship, and my mind over a boy who

operated entirely on impulse.

So, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I built a new equation.

I pressed the pen to the paper, writing out the days of the week in neat, rigid block letters. Underneath each day, I bulleted a specific list of interactions. Lunch at 12:15. A brief conversation by the B-wing lockers at 2:30. A unified story about what we supposedly did over the

weekend.

The heavy wooden door at the front of the classroom creaked open.

A rush of cold hallway air swept into the room, bringing the sharp scent of worn leather, exhaust fumes, and peppermint.

I looked up.

Ryder walked in. He was wearing his scuffed combat boots and a dark gray, long-sleeved thermal shirt that clung to the broad span of his shoulders. His dark hair was damp from the morning mist, falling messily across his forehead. The harsh yellow and purple bruising on his cheekbone had faded to a dull, sickly brown, but the sharp, imposing angle of his jaw remained exactly the same.

He was holding two cardboard coffee cups.

He didn’t say a word as he crossed the room. The heavy thud of his boots echoed off the cinderblock walls. He reached my row, bypassing the empty chair next to me, and instead sat directly on the surface of the desk adjoining mine.

He leaned forward, dropping one of the steaming cups onto my desk. It landed with a soft thump right next to my legal pad.

“Black,” he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly scrape in the quiet room. “Two sugars. No milk.”

I stared at the plastic lid. A tiny wisp of steam curled into the air, carrying the bitter, rich scent of dark roast. It was my exact, highly

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Chapter 44 Control Versus Something More Natural

specific coffee order. The same order he had somehow guessed weeks ago when he left a cup on my desk.

My chest tightened. The completely casual, thoughtful gesture was a direct threat to the rigid walls I was trying to rebuild.

“Thank you,” I said, my voice sounding thin and scraped raw.

I didn’t reach for the cup. Instead, I grabbed the edge of the yellow legal pad and turned it ninety degrees, sliding it across the smooth

laminate surface of the desk until it sat directly between us.

Ryder’s gaze dropped from my face to the bright yellow paper.

He took a slow sip from his own cup, the cardboard muffling the sound. His eyes tracked down the neat, organized lists. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. He read the bullet points, the times, the carefully constructed talking points.

The air in the classroom stopped moving.

The casual, relaxed slope of his shoulders vanished. The heavy leather of his jacket wasn’t there to hide the sudden, rigid tension pulling

across the muscles in his back and arms.

“What is this?” he asked. The rough gravel in his voice had flattened out into something dangerously quiet.

It’s the itinerary for the week, I explained, slipping into my crisp, debate-team cadence. I kept my eyes focused on the blue ink, refusing to look at his face. ‘Harper was completely thrown off on Friday, but she isn’t stupid. She’s going to spend this entire week looking for inconsistencies. If we aren’t perfectly synchronized, she will find a crack in the story.”

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