Page 23 of Bad Men's Good Girl

"You moved toward the light you needed," she says. "That doesn't mean you're lost."

Her touch creates a dangerous gravity. For a second, the urge to tell her everything—how lonely the road actually gets, howmuch I hate the silence of hotel rooms—is a physical weight in my chest.

The warmth of her thumb on my skin is a live wire. I feel the current of her empathy, a pull so strong it threatens to drag me out of my carefully curated shadows. My pulse hammers against my collarbone. It’s the feeling of a shutter staying open too long—too much light, too much exposure. The image is going to wash out.

I pull my hand away to pick up my camera, the metal cold and familiar in my grip.

"Check the light on the Duomo," I say, voice clipping the air, staccato and professional. "If we don’t get to the bridge in five minutes, the shadows will lose their depth. The perfect, light-filled hour doesn't wait for us to get poetic."

The softness in Baleigh’s eyes doesn't vanish; it curdles. She pulls her hand back to her lap, her fingers curling into her palm as if she’s catching the heat I just rejected.

"Right," she says. The word is flat, a lead weight dropped into the river. "Back to the work."

"It’s not just work. It’s the craft." I stand up, tossing a few coins onto the table. The clatter is too loud. "You can’t get distracted by the narrative or you'll miss the shot. People come and go, Baleigh. The architecture is the only thing that stays still long enough to rely on."

I start walking toward the Ponte Vecchio, my stride intentional and hurried. I don't look back to see if she's following. I know she is. I can hear the soft scuff of her sandals. I talk about aperture settings and the history of the Medici bank, filling the silence with a lecture she didn't ask for. I’m a tour guide now. A professional.

Anything but the man who just admitted his life is a progression of ghosts.

We reach the stone railing overlooking the Arno. The sun has finally cleared the rooftops, turning the water into a sheet of hammered copper. We stand side-by-side, our cameras raised. The silence between us isn't comfortable anymore; it’s thick with the things I just choked off.

After a few minutes of mechanical clicking, Baleigh lowers her Fuji. She doesn't look at the view. She studies me.

"You’re very good at that," she says quietly.

"The composition?"

"The disappearing act." She gestures to the city around us. "You tell me to look at the light and the lines, but you’re just building a wall out of them. It’s easier to tell their stories, isn't it? If you're busy documenting everyone else's life, no one notices yours is empty of people who actually stay."

The truth hits like a painful physical blow to the solar plexus. I try to find a witty retort, a bit of travel-worn wisdom to deflect her, but the words die in my throat. She sees the lens, but she also sees the eye behind it—and the man trying to hide behind that eye. At last, I feel completely, terrifyingly visible.

The sunlight hits the vendor’s stall, igniting the buckets of peonies into a riot of impossible pinks. I lift my Leica, my thumb hovering over the dial, but my hands don't move. I’m watching Baleigh instead.

She’s found a grandmother and child arranging small bundles of lavender. Baleigh isn't just taking a picture; she’s leaning into their space, mimicking the old woman’s toothless grin with a bright, genuine radiance of her own. She captures the light catching the dust motes around their heads, turning a mundane morning transaction into something sacred.

A sharp, cold realization pierces the fog of my detachment. I’ve spent a long time convincing myself that my life is full because my passport is thick, but standing here, I feel just like a ghost rattling a chain. I’m the man on the periphery,the chronicler of other people’s joy, always leaving before the film can be developed. Looking at Baleigh, I feel the sudden, terrifying itch to drop the camera and step into the frame.

I imagine what it would be like. To wake up and not have to calculate the distance to the next train station. To tell her about the night I spent in a rain-slicked doorway in Prague, not as a colorful anecdote for an article, but as a confession of how truly alone I was.

But if I let her in, the curated version of Atticus Belmont—the effortless traveler, the man with the easy smile and the perfect shot—dies. She’d see the cracks. She’d see the profound selfishness of someone who ran away from his responsibilities because he was too cowardly to be bored. She’d see that my freedom isn't a choice anymore; it’s a cage I built to keep from being found out.

The vendor laughs, a loud, raspy sound that startles a flock of pigeons into the air. Baleigh laughs with her, the sound rich and grounded. She turns toward me, her face flushed with the success of the shot, her eyes searching for my approval.

My chest tightens. Every survival instinct I own screams at me to turn away, to go find a different angle, to keep the distance exactly where it is. But as she starts walking toward me, her floral dress catching the golden Italian light, I don't move. I just stand there, paralyzed by the lure of a life I’m not sure I’m brave enough to lead.

15

BALEIGH

The air in the courtyard tastes of damp stone and the faint, sweet decay of climbing jasmine. I shouldn't be out here. The heavy wooden doors of the residence hall usually click shut at midnight, but the lock is temperamental, and my brain is louder than the curfew. Italy has a way of making sleep feel like a waste of a limited resource. Each time I close my eyes, I see the blur of the Tuscan countryside or the flash of Atticus’s guarded eyes, and the restlessness drives me back onto my feet.

I round the corner of the loggia, my footsteps echoing against the gravel, and stop short.

Max is sitting on a stone bench tucked beneath a shadow-drenched archway. A pool of yellow light from a wrought-iron lantern spills over his shoulders, catching the grey at his temples. He has a thick stack of student essays in his lap, the top page fluttering in the breeze, but his gaze is fixed on the darkened fountain in the square. He looks less like the formidable Professor Brown, taking the shape of a man trying to solve a puzzle that has little to do with cultural history.

"The grading never actually ends, does it?" I ask, my voice sounding unnaturally loud in the stillness.

Max doesn't jump. He looks up slowly, a small, tired smile playing at the corner of his mouth as he adjusts his glasses.