Page 17 of Bad Men's Good Girl

I walk to the window and look down. The courtyard is a theater of flickering shadows and golden pools from the wrought-iron lanterns. I see Baleigh immediately. She’s leaning against the stone rim of the defunct fountain, her head tilted back as Amos recounts a story with his usual expansive hand gestures. Even from three stories up, I can hear the sharp, clear ring of her laughter. It’s a sound that has begun to pull at the architecture of my life.

Amos says something that makes her reach out and swat his bicep. He catches her hand, a brief, playful squeeze, before letting go. It’s effortless for him. He breathes in chaos and exhales charm, offering her the kind of spontaneous, unburdened joy that I have forgotten how to manufacture.

A few yards away, Atticus stands near a stone archway. He isn't part of their conversation, but he isn't apart from it either. He’s cleaning a lens, his movements methodical, but his eyes never leave Baleigh for long. He watches her with the agonizing precision of a man trying to memorize a masterpiece before the gallery closes.

I grip the windowsill, the ancient stone rough against my palms. I have spent my career studying the rise and fall of empires, the intricate web of cause and effect, the predictable patterns of human ambition and desire. I tell my students that history is a map. But there is no map for this.

The four of us are drifting into uncharted waters, pulled by a current of Baleigh’s making. She is the center of gravity, and the three of us are falling—Amos with his grin, Atticus with his silence, and me with my books and my belated, desperate hope.

For years, I believed that sacrifice was the only noble path for a man of my standing. I thought contentment was a fair trade for control. But as I watch her disappear into the shadows of thepalazzo with them, I stop pretending. I really don’t want to be the observer anymore. I have to make her laugh.

A cold, exhilarating dread settles in my marrow. We are no longer just a program coordinator, a photographer, a professor, and an assistant. We are four people hurtling toward a collision that will leave none of us the same. Nothing about this is safe. Nothing about this is predictable.

And I don't want it to be.

11

BALEIGH

The bus hums, a low-vibration lullaby as we serpent through the Chianti hills. Outside the window, Tuscany peels back like a dream I haven’t earned yet—sloping vineyards etched in perfect, silver-green lines and cypress trees standing like lonely sentries against the morning mist.

Max sits beside me, his long legs folded into the cramped space with a grace that shouldn't be possible for a man of his height. Usually, he’s surrounded by a fortress of leather-bound planners and digital tablets, but today he only carries a small, worn notebook. He smells like cedarwood and the sharp, clean scent of espresso.

"You're staring at the trees like you expect them to speak," he says. His voice is a rich baritone that cuts through the white noise of the engine.

"Back home, everything is so... pine," I say, leaning my temple against the cool glass. "It’s beautiful, sure, but it’s loud. Here, the hills look almost reverent."

He turns toward me, shifting his weight. "It’s the limestone. It gives the land that pale, eternal quality. It’s been carved andrecarved for three thousand years, Baleigh. It has every right to be still."

We talk for two hours, but it feels like twenty minutes. We don't talk about schedules or the students' housing complaints. We talk about how the light changes in the afternoon and the specific irony of Italian bureaucracy. The usual flutter of nerves I feel around him—the fear that I'll say something provincial or unrefined—dissolves. He isn't lecturing; he’s justthere, his presence as steady as the horizon line.

When we spill out onto the sun-baked stones of Siena, the heat hits us in a golden wave. The air tastes of dry earth and roasting meat. Max steps into the center of the Piazza del Campo, and the transformation is instant. He doesn’t pull out a megaphone or a map. He just starts to walk, and we follow like iron filings to a magnet.

"Look at the bricks," he says, gesturing toward the fan-shaped pavement. "They didn't just lay these for aesthetics. Each section represents the Nine who ruled the city. It’s a map of power and ego, baked into the clay."

He points to a high, narrow window with a jagged stone crest. He doesn’t tell us the date it was built. Instead, he tells us about the family who lived there—two brothers who hated each other so fiercely they built a wall through their own dining room, dying centuries ago while still refusing to share the salt.

"History isn't a list of dead people," Max says, his eyes sparking with a sudden, fierce light as he looks at me. "It’s a collection of people who wanted things too much. Love, land, revenge. We’re just walking through the leftovers of their passion."

I watch the way his hands move when he speaks, certain and strong. The reserved, disciplined academic I met in the lecture hall is gone. In his place is a man who sees the ghosts of humanambition in every shadow, and I don’t just respect him. I’m captivated by him.

The students fragment into the side streets, lured by the promise of gelato and leather stalls. Max and I drift in the opposite direction, ducking into a narrow alley where the air drops ten degrees and smells of laundry soap. Purple bougainvillea spills over a low stone wall, brushing against my shoulder as we walk.

"You have a perspective the photographers miss," Max says suddenly. He isn't looking at me; he’s watching the way a shadow falls across a medieval archway. "You aren't looking for the landmark. You’re looking for the life happening inside it."

"I just like people-watching," I say, pulling a loose thread on my sundress. "It’s a hobby. Not exactly a career path for a girl from a town with one stoplight."

Max stops. He doesn't tower over me in a way that feels imposing, but his focus is a heavy weight. "Why do you diminish yourself?"

"I'm being realistic."

"No," he says firmly. "You’re being safe. There is a profound difference. You speak about the world with a clarity that most people spend a lifetime trying to manufacture. Why is that 'just a hobby' and not a roadmap?"

We reach a small, secluded piazza near the city wall. A single stone bench sits under the sprawling arms of an olive tree. Below us, the valley stretches out, a patchwork quilt of gold and green under the Tuscan sun.

"Back home," I start, my voice catching on the dry air, "choices are permanent. If you pick the wrong path, you don't just fail yourself. You fail everyone who’s watching. It’s always been easier to stay in the road. If I don't try for something huge, I can't be devastated when I don't get it."

Max leans back, his elbows resting on the stone ledge behind him. He removes his glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I spent twenty years building a reputation, Baleigh. I did everything by the book because I was terrified of being seen as a fluke. I won the awards. I got the tenure. And I woke up at forty realizing I’d built a very impressive cage."