My Fake Boyfriend Is the School Bad Boy novel Chapter 53

Chapter 53 Disappointment Hidden Behind Morning Calm

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“I had time to kill this morning,” he replied, his tone perfectly bored. He uncrossed his arms, drumming his long, bruised fingers against

the scratched wood of the table. “You have the European History timeline?”

He was treating me exactly the way he had treated me a week ago. Like a tutor. Like a convenient business partner.

A cold, heavy stone dropped straight into my stomach.

I reached out, my fingers clumsy, and picked up his folded worksheet. I opened it. His handwriting was the same sharp, chaotic print, the

chemical equations balanced perfectly in the margins.

“Ryder, I breathed, setting the paper down. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t just talk about chemical compounds when my lips were still

bruised from his mouth. “About last night.”

His fingers stopped drumming against the table.

He shifted his weight, sitting up slightly. He finally looked me in the eye. The expression on his face was so guarded, so utterly devoid of any emotional weight, that it physically hurt to look at him.

“Last night did exactly what it needed to do,” Ryder stated, his voice a low, even scrape.

I blinked, the air leaving my lungs in a sharp, painful rush. “What?”

Montgomery bought it,” he continued smoothly, leaning forward and resting his forearms on the table. He wasn’t leaning into my space; he was just claiming the center of the table. “The whole room bought it. You saw Chloe’s face. Harper’s spies are going to report back that the rumor is completely dead. We secured the narrative, Petrova.”

My chest cracked open.

Secured the narrative,” I repeated, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.

“That was the goal, wasn’t it?” He tilted his head, the corner of his split lip curving into a small, arrogant smirk. The bad boy mask was glued firmly in place. “You wanted a spectacle. You wanted them to stop looking for cracks in the story. I’d say spinning the bottle handled the cracks pretty efficiently.”

He was reducing it to a tactic.

The heavy, starving desperation of his kiss. The way his hand had tangled in my hair. The way he had pulled me flush against his chest. To him, it wasn’t a confession. It was just a highly effective move on a chessboard to win the game against Chase Montgomery.

Right, I whispered. I dropped my gaze back down to the chemistry worksheet, my vision suddenly swimming.

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12:52 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 53 Disappointment Hidden Behind Morning Calm

I swallowed hard, fighting the thick, burning knot forming in the back of my throat. I dug my fingernails into my thighs beneath the table, welcoming the sharp sting of pain to ground me.

1 had been so stupid.

I had read into the deleted text message. I had looked at the obscure sci-fi book on his nightstand and convinced myself he harbored this deep, secret affection for me. I had projected all my own overwhelming, terrifying new feelings onto him, assuming the kiss meant the same thing to him that it meant to me.

But I had forgotten the fundamental rule of Ryder Steinmann. He was a liar. He had told me himself in the car. I’m a good liar, Petrova.

He had simply played the part I hired him to play. He saw the hesitation in the circle, he saw Chase backing us into a corner, and he executed the perfect performance to shut them down.

“Good call on playing along, by the way, Ryder added, his tone entirely conversational, as if we were discussing a group project presentation. “You didn’t freeze up. It made it look credible.”

Credible.

The word was a blow, punching the last bit of air right out of my chest.

“I’m an honor student,” I managed to say, my voice sounding hollow, mechanical, and completely devoid of the chaotic warmth I had felt yesterday. “I know how to execute an assignment.”

Ryder’s smirk faltered for a fraction of a second. A tiny, almost imperceptible twitch pulled at the corner of his eye.

He stared at my face, his gaze dropping to my slightly swollen lips. He didn’t linger. He dragged his eyes away almost immediately, looking down at his own bruised knuckles resting on the table.

“Yeah,” he muttered, the rough gravel in his voice thickening slightly. “You executed it perfectly.”

He reached across the table, pulling the green plastic folder holding the history timeline toward him. He opened it, completely shutting down the conversation.

I sat there in the quiet, dusty corner of the library, the hum of the fluorescent lights buzzing relentlessly above my head.

The adrenaline hangover was completely gone. The terrifying, dizzying thrill of the party had evaporated, leaving behind a cold, numbing ache that settled deep in my bones.

I had wanted the lie to be real.

I had sat in the dark of his leather jacket, held his hand at the pep rally, and kissed him on a plush gray rug, desperately hoping that the bad boy mask was just a shield protecting a heart that belonged to me.

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12:52 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 53 Disappointment Hidden Behind Morning Calm

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But looking at him now-slouched in the metal chair, bored, indifferent, completely unaffected by the fact that he had just rearranged my

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