Fake Dating The Bad Boy-Chapter 75: Pocking The Lion

Rico – POV

I was already walking on thin ice with Justin—and June sure as hell wasn’t helping my case.

It was my job to keep tabs on her. Watch, not interfere. Record, not question. Easy in theory, until she pulled a move like this.

How the hell was I supposed to tell him that she hadn’t come back last night? That she’d spent the night somewhere else—someone else’s place? That some random guy might have had his hands on her, while Justin was still spiraling from her escape?

My palms were sweating. My thoughts raced.

This wasn’t going to go well.

Justin had been different lately. Restless. His control over his personalities slipping in all the worst ways. One minute, he was calm—cold, calculating, even productive. The next, I’d see a flicker in his eye and know something darker had taken the wheel.

I’d seen what happened to people who gave him bad news at the wrong moment.

Taking a long breath, I made my way through the hallway and up the stairs, every step heavier than the last. I paused at the door to his room—his "study," though it always felt more like a lair. Steeling myself, I knocked twice and pushed it open.

He was there.

Sitting at the desk, shoulders hunched, papers spread in front of him. He hadn’t shaved. A dark bruise marred his jaw from sparring earlier. He looked up slowly when he heard me.

His eyes weren’t wild—not yet—but they were cold. Too calm.

Yep. Brooding and working. Just like the old days after the lab rescue. Before the monster fully came out of its cage.

I was definitely screwed.

"Justin," I said carefully, voice low. "I’ve got an update on June."

He didn’t respond. Just stared.

"She’s okay," I added quickly. "Safe. In the city. She went out last night, and... she didn’t come back to the motel."

His stare didn’t waver. "Where did she go?"

I swallowed. "She met someone. A guy. Therapist, apparently. They... talked. She stayed at his place."

There it was.

The flicker.

Like someone lit a match inside his skull.

I tensed.

His jaw clenched. Fingers curled into a fist on the desk. Not smashing things—yet. But the quiet kind of rage. The kind that simmers before it explodes.

"She slept at his place?" he repeated.

"She was drunk," I said, trying to shield her. "And she left in the morning. Alone."

Silence.

Then a sharp inhale through his nose. He stood slowly, chair scraping behind him. He walked to the window, hands behind his back, like he was trying to stay composed. Like some war was happening behind his eyes.

And I knew what he was thinking.

The voices. They were already screaming at him. And I can guess what they are telling him,

She’s replacing you.

You weren’t enough.

She’ll forget you.

She’s safer with him.

I hated seeing him like this. Torn between the part of him that loved her and the part that wanted to own her. He had saved us all. He had kept us alive. But that came at a cost. And June? She’d become his reason for everything.

Now she was slipping away.

"Do you want me to bring her back?" I asked, gently. "We could do it clean. No force."

He didn’t answer.

Then, quietly, with that same haunted tone he used when we were still kids in the lab, he said, "If she wanted to be here... she would’ve come back."

That hit deep.

He wasn’t angry.

Not yet.

He was hurt.

Which, in Justin’s case, was always worse.

Because when the pain settled, the other voices always rose to fill the void.

I chose to slip away while he was calm.

Because that calm never lasted.

Justin was like the sky right before a hurricane—too quiet, too still, as if the universe itself held its breath. And I knew better than to linger when his voice got that low, that even. It wasn’t peace. It was pressure building beneath the surface, and I didn’t want to be standing too close when it finally cracked.

I backed out of the room one step at a time, slow, measured, like a guy trying not to startle a sleeping lion.

Once I was in the hallway, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. My spine was damp with sweat under my shirt, and my stomach twisted like I’d just outrun death.

Because maybe I had.

I knew the signs. I’d seen them a hundred times. He wasn’t going to chase after her—not right now. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t about to do something. The silence in that room wasn’t surrender. It was strategy. Recalculation. Retaliation disguised as acceptance.

He was breaking apart from the inside out, and the only thing keeping him stitched together was his obsession with June.

And she had just made a move that shattered his axis.

Goddamn it, June.

I should’ve kept a tighter watch. I should’ve followed her to that bar. I should’ve intercepted her before she got pulled into someone else’s orbit. Someone who didn’t know what kind of storm was trailing behind her like a shadow.

She stayed at his place.

The words echoed in my mind like a warning bell.

That was what would eat Justin alive. Not just that she left. Not even that she drank and tried to disappear. It was that she let someone else into that vulnerable space. That after everything they’d been through together—after what he did for her, what he became for her—she still ran to someone else.

He’d given her everything. His rage. His love. His monsters.

And she’d chosen quiet. A man with kind eyes, probably, who talked her down instead of tearing the world apart for her.

I got it. I really did. But it wouldn’t matter to Justin.

He wouldn’t see it as survival.

He’d see it as betrayal.

I made it to the courtyard, lit a cigarette with shaking hands. I didn’t smoke often, but right now, I needed the burn in my lungs. The sting to keep me grounded.

"Fuck," I muttered under my breath, staring up at the cloud-choked sky.

We were on the edge of something.

Something bad.

And if no one pulled Justin back soon, he’d fall headfirst into the pit he’d been teetering over for years. The others—his fragments, his voices—were already circling like wolves, waiting to pounce the second his will slipped.

I had seen the aftermath of their freedom.

The blood.

The screams.

The silence afterward, like the world holding its breath again, unsure if the monster was gone—or if it was just taking a nap.

I took one last drag, flicked the cigarette to the ground, and crushed it under my boot.

Then I pulled out my phone, stared at June’s last known location on the screen.

She had no idea what was coming.

And I wasn’t sure who needed more saving now—her... or him.