Page 5 of Bad Men's Good Girl

"Most people come to Florence to see the skin of the city," he begins, his eyes scanning the rows, pausing for a fraction of a second on mine. "They see the marble, the bronze, the gold leaf. They see success. But this city wasn't built on success. It was built on the wreckage of ambition and the beautiful, bloody mess of human failure."

I forget to breathe. This isn't a history lesson; it's an invitation. He moves away from the podium, his presence filling the vaulted space. He talks about the Medici and the artists not as icons, but as desperate men trying to carve meaning out of a chaotic world.

I find myself leaning forward, gripped by the quiet, absolute authority in his stance. He makes the past feel like it's still breathing. I came here looking for a new version of myself, and as I watch him command the room, I realize I’ve spent years being afraid of the very failures he’s praising. He makes it look easy—being sure of yourself in a room full of ghosts.

Max paces the front of the hall, his movements deliberate. He doesn't point at the PowerPoint slides behind him; he gestures toward the windows, toward the city breathing just beyond the stone.

"The Duomo isn’t a miracle because it stands," he says, his gaze sweeping the room before settling on a decorative cornice. "It’s a miracle because for twenty-five years, it was an impossible hole in the sky. Filippo Brunelleschi didn't have the math to finish it when he started. He had the audacity to begin anyway."

I look at my blank page. Yesterday, I walked past the cathedral and saw a massive, pretty landmark. Now, I see a scar of ambition. To Max, the cobblestones aren't just rocks; they’re a graveyard for the safe choices of the past. He speaks of political exile and the artists who gambled their lives on a single fresco. The world outside my North Carolina bubble feels suddenly, terrifyingly vast. My hometown worries—who is dating whom, the gossip at the Sunday potluck—seem so insignificant against the weight of this history.

"We admire the result, but we ignore the risk," Max says. He stops dead in the aisle. The room holds its breath. "The Renaissance didn’t happen because people followed the rules. It happened because someone decided that the expectation of their birth was a cage they refused to live in."

He turns toward my row. Those dark, observant eyes lock onto mine.

"Baleigh," he says.

My name sounds different when he says it—sharper, more significant. My heart hammers against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"What do you think? Is it easier to live within the cage, or to face the uncertainty of tearing it down?"

The girl with the French scarf turns in her seat to stare. Every eye in the room follows. I feel the heat crawling up my neck, a blotchy red map of my panic.

"I... I think," I start, my voice thin and reedy. I clear my throat, twisting the hem of my dress under the desk. "I think the cage is comfortable. You know where the walls are. Tearing itdown means you might find out there’s nothing on the other side to catch you."

I want to sink into the floorboards, but Max doesn't look away. He doesn't look disappointed. He tilts his head, considering my words with a gravity that makes me sit up straighter.

"A fair fear," he says softly. "But if there's nothing to catch you, doesn't that just mean you've finally learned how to fly?"

"It means you have to build the floor while you're falling," I say, the words slipping out before I am able to censor them. "Like Brunelleschi. He didn't have the math, so he had to invent it on the way down."

A flicker of a smile touches his mouth—a brief, private shadow of approval.

"Precisely," he says, voice grounding me. "Tell us more about that invention, Baleigh. Why bother inventing a new floor when the old one was perfectly functional?"

After the lecture, the room empties in a rush of scraping chairs and the scent of rain-damp wool. I linger, fussing with my notebook, smoothing the pages until they’re perfectly flat. I can’t face the courtyard yet—the bright, noisy reality of students who already seem to know everything.

"The silence of the classroom after a lecture is a specific kind of hum, isn't it?"

Max stands by the lectern, gathering his notes. He doesn't look up, but his voice fills the sudden void of the hall. He moves with a quiet efficiency, sliding his glasses into a leather case.

"I think it’s just my ears ringing," I say, slinging my bag over my shoulder. "I wasn't expecting a pop quiz on the nature of existence."

He finally looks at me, leaning back against the heavy wood of the desk. He crosses his arms, the linen of his shirt pulling taut across his shoulders. "You handled it with more poise thanmost. You didn't give me the textbook answer. You gave me the honest one."

"Honesty is usually all I have when I’m cornered," I admit, stepping closer. The distance between us feels charged, like the air before a lightning strike. "I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about floors and cages lately."

Max studies me, his expression unreadable but intensely focused. "Why Florence, Baleigh? Most people in your position would have taken a promotion or a vacation. You chose a temporary job in a country where you don't speak the language."

"I think I was drowning," I say. The admission is sudden, sharp, and entirely too much. I should talk about the curriculum or the travel benefits, but his gaze acts as a solvent for my filters. "Back home... everything was decided. My life was a series of 'shoulds.' I should stay in this job, I should marry the guy my mother likes, I should buy the sensible car. I woke up and realized I was thirty years away from being a very comfortable, very bored ghost."

I bite my lip, waiting for the academic dismissal. Instead, Max nods, a slow, heavy movement.

"Existing is a very easy habit to fall into," he says. "It’s safe. It’s quiet. But it isn't living. You made an impulsive choice to come here. How does it feel?"

"Terrifying," I whisper. "Every second I’m here, I’m waiting for the floor to give out."

"Let it," Max says. He steps toward me, his presence grounding the entire room. "Courage isn't the absence of fear, Baleigh. It's refusing to let fear make every decision for you. You're already miles ahead of the people who stayed in their cages."