Page 25 of Bad Men's Good Girl

The most terrifying part isn't that I want him. It’s the absolute certainty I saw in his eyes that he wants me, too. He’s tired of being the anchor, and I’m tired of being the girl who never leaves the harbor. We are standing on a precipice, and as I look out over the tiled roofs of Florence, I realize we’ve already stopped pretending the ground is solid.

16

MAX

The red ink on my grading pen looks like a trail of blood. I keep circling the same grammatical error in a sophomore’s essay, my mind miles away from the syntax of the Renaissance. The courtyard conversation echoes in the quiet of my office—the scent of damp stone, the vulnerability in Baleigh’s voice, the way the moonlight caught the gold in her hair. I should be preparing for next week's seminar on the Medici. Instead, I am staring at the door, waiting for the click of her heels in the hallway.

When I finally see her near the administrative desk, my heart does something unprofessional. It stutters. I smooth the front of my linen shirt, feeling the uncharacteristic dampness of my palms. I have led archaeological digs in hostile territory and debated scholars in three languages, yet a twenty-eight-year-old from North Carolina has me losing my breath.

"Baleigh," I say, stepping into the hall.

She looks up, a quick, expectant smile brightening her face. "Professor? Everything okay with the schedules?"

I let out a shaky breath. "Forget the schedules for a moment. This isn't about the program." I pause, watching her expressionshift from professional to curious. "I’m going to dinner tonight. At a small place near Santa Croce. I’d like it if you came with me. Not as my assistant. Just… with me." The silence lingers. I expect a polite refusal or a joke to break the tension. Instead, she nods, her eyes softening. "I’d like that, Max. Just us."

Evening descends on Florence like a velvet curtain. We walk through the Oltrarno, the golden lanterns casting long, cinematic shadows across the cobblestones. The city feels different tonight—less like a classroom, more like a playground. We find a table at a trattoria tucked so deep into an alley that the tourists haven't found it yet.

Over a bottle of Chianti and plates of carbonara, the pretense of our roles vanishes completely. She tells me about her family’s expectations back home, the suffocating safety of a life she nearly resigned herself to. I find myself telling her things I haven't whispered in a decade—the burnout I hide behind my lectures, the way academia started as a passion and became a cage.

"I spent so long trying to be the man everyone expected," I say, watching her swirl the wine in her glass. "I forgot to check if he was actually happy."

"I think I’m just now learning how to check," she says, voice low.

I reach across the table, my hand covering hers. The contact is electric. There are no students here, no colleagues, no expectations. Just the hum of the city and the realization that for the very first time in twenty years, I don't want to be anywhere else.

The bridge beneath our feet hums with the distant vibration of a passing scooter, but the space between us feels silent and charged. Usually, I walk with a purpose—shoulders back, chin level, calculating the most efficient route. Tonight, my gait matches hers. I don't correct her pronunciation of the statueswe pass. I don't offer a historical footnote. The title of Professor feels like a heavy coat I’ve finally left on a hook by the door.

"I used to think being indispensable meant being successful," I say, leaning against the cold stone of the overlook. Below us, Florence is a sea of amber lights and bright rooftops. "I collected accolades like they were armor. But armor is heavy, Baleigh. It doesn't let much light in."

She rests her elbows on the railing, her shoulder brushing mine. "I spent my life trying to be invisible so I wouldn't disappoint anyone. I wanted to open a small gallery, a place for local artists who don't fit the 'safe' mold. But in North Carolina, people want you to get the college degree and marry the boy next door." She looks up at me, her eyes searching. "I think I’m done being invisible."

"You were never invisible to me," I admit. The honesty feels raw, scraping against the back of my throat. "I’ve spent years looking at maps of where I've been and never at where I'm going."

The night air turns sharp, a mountain breeze rolling off the Apennines. Neither of us moves to leave.

"My apartment is just around the corner," I say, the invitation hanging in the air with a weight that has absolutely nothing to do with coffee. "I have a moka pot and a View that rivals this one. We don't have to end the night just yet."

She offers that warm, signature smile. "I’d love to see where you hide all those books, Max."

My living room is a graveyard of half-finished research papers and fossils I’ve picked up from the Levant to the Andes. It’s a space designed for a man who works until he sleeps. But as Baleigh walks through the door, the clinical coldness of the room evaporates. She lingers at a shelf, touches a cracked Roman coin, then a photo of me in my thirties, covered in dust at a dig site.

"It's a lot of history for one person to carry," she whispers, turning to face me.

I set the coffee cups on the low table, ignoring the steam rising from them. The professional distance—the miles of 'assistant' and 'coordinator'—is gone. I see the pulse at the base of her throat.

"I’m tired of carrying it alone," I say.

The silence isn't a wall anymore; it's a bridge. I take a step toward her, seeing my own vulnerability mirrored in the way she doesn't look away. The summer is fleeting, the program is temporary, but the way she studies me makes the rest of my life feel like it hasn't even started.

The moment my fingers skim her jawline, hesitation evaporates. Her breath catches—warm against my lips—and then I kiss her like the maps I’ve studied all my life have led me directly to this. She tastes like wine and summer and something indefinable, something mine to discover.

Her hands clutch at my shirt, pulling me closer. The way she arches into me ignites a hunger I thought academia had buried decades ago. "Max," she gasps when I trail kisses down her throat, lingering where her pulse thrums wild. "So this is what you do when you're not lecturing?"

"Only with you." My voice is rougher than I’ve ever heard it. My hands cradle her waist, thumbs brushing under the hem of her sundress where the fabric bunches.

Her answering laugh shivers into a moan when I twist us, pressing her back against the weathered oak bookshelf. The impact sends a few forgotten volumes tumbling to the floor with muted thuds, their yellowed pages fanning open like startled birds. Dust swirls in the lamplight, golden and weightless, as ancient as the artifacts lining my office walls—all of them forgotten now beneath the heat of her body against mine.

Her fingers tangle in my hair with surprising urgency, nails scraping deliciously against my scalp as she arches into me. I can sense the warmth of her skin bleeding through the thin linen of my shirt, relentless and intoxicating. Every ragged breath she takes presses her closer, until I'm drunk on her scent—sun-warmed skin, citrus shampoo, and something that makes my pulse stutter.