Fake dating the Captain's step brother
One unforgettable summer. One goodbye that never came.
As children, Kayla and Cole found something that felt too big for their age to understand. Then summer ended. Kayla went home, disappeared without a goodbye, and broke the heart of the only boy who believed she'd come back.
Years later, after losing her mother, Kayla returns to the city of that unforgettable summer and transfers to an elite private school where old money families rule, hockey is everything, and Cole has become the untouchable team captain everyone admires. He's the boy she never stopped loving.
He acts as if she's a complete stranger.
But Cole remembers everything.
He recognized her the second he saw her. He just can't forgive the girl who walked away without a word.
When Cole's stepbrother asks Kayla to be his fake girlfriend for an important family event, just one weekend, no strings attached, she agrees, hoping pretending to move forward will help her finally let go of the past.
Cole has no intention of standing by while his stepbrother parades the only girl he's ever loved on his arm.
Now Kayla is caught between two brothers, one fake relationship, and feelings that never truly disappeared. She'll have to decide whether first love deserves a second chance, or if some goodbyes can never be undone.
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Chapter: chapter 57 Kayla povThe reunion banners went up Monday morning, navy and gold stretched across the entrance, old team photos lining the trophy case, the whole school humming with an energy I hadn't felt since before any of this started.I stood in front of my locker, staring at nothing in particular, Rhys's words from a few nights ago still sitting heavy in my chest.*I need to actually decide. Soon.*I'd meant it when I said it. I still meant it now, standing here with the reunion week stretching out ahead of me, students buzzing past on either side, and some quiet, steady certainty had been settling in me since that conversation, clearer with every day that passed.Priya found me between classes, falling into step beside me with her usual energy."You're doing the thinking face," she said."I have a thinking face?""You have several faces. This is the thinking one." She bumped my shoulder lightly. "What's going on in there?"I hesitated, then decided there was no point pretending anymore, no
Last Updated: 2026-11-06
Chapter: chapter 56Cole povI found her in the kitchen the next afternoon, exactly where she usually was this time of day, humming quietly to herself while she iced a fresh batch of cookies that had actually turned out properly this time.I stood in the doorway a moment before she noticed me, working up something I still wasn't fully sure how to say."Need something?" she asked, glancing up, careful in the way she'd been careful with me for weeks now, like she was still bracing for whatever version of me might show up."Can I help?"She blinked, surprised, the icing bag pausing mid-motion. "With the cookies?""Yeah.""Of course." She recovered quickly, sliding a second bag of icing across the counter toward me, though something in her movements stayed careful, watchful.I pulled up a stool and got to work, mostly making a mess of the first few cookies, my lines uneven, icing pooling in places it shouldn't."You're doing the thing where you press too hard," she said, glancing over. "Lighter touch."I adj
Last Updated: 2026-11-06
Chapter: chapter 55 Chelsea povThe account was clean, three layers removed from anything that could trace back to me, built slowly over the past several evenings during the narrow window between my mother's phone calls and her nightly check on my room.I sat cross-legged on my bed, laptop balanced on my knees, scrolling through the reunion event page one more time, watching the guest list grow, watching Kayla's name appear in the RSVP list Priya had posted publicly like she wanted the whole world to know exactly where to find her that week.I didn't have a plan yet. Not really. Just fragments, pieces I was gathering the way I always gathered things, patient, methodical, waiting for the right shape to emerge from them.My door opened without a knock.I closed the laptop too fast, the motion itself giving away more than I wanted it to, and looked up to find my mother standing in the doorway, her expression already hardening into something I recognized from months of careful surveillance."What are you do
Last Updated: 2026-11-03
Chapter: chapter 54Kayla povLater that evening, I sat curled on the living room couch scrolling through the reunion schedule again, still smiling faintly over Cole's disastrous baking attempt, when I found myself opening our text thread instead.I typed something out. Deleted it. Typed it again.‘Priya just showed me the cookie you burned. I think you might actually be worse at baking than you are at chemistry, which honestly I didn't think was possible.’I read it over twice, then, before I could talk myself out of it, added one more line underneath.‘I'm really glad you came back into my life. Even with the burnt cookies.’My thumb hovered over for a long moment, heart doing something complicated in my chest, before I finally hit it and set the phone face-down on the couch cushion beside me like that might slow down whatever I'd just set in motion.It buzzed almost immediately.‘Cole: The cookies were a tactical choice. Building character.’‘Cole: Also. I'm glad too. More than the text is letting me
Last Updated: 2026-10-29
Chapter: chapter 53Kayla povThe Stanley living room smelled like fresh coffee and something faintly floral, and I sat curled on the couch beside Rhys, finally free of any cast or crutch, watching him attempt to explain a chemistry concept neither of us actually cared about."You're not even trying," he said, tapping his pen against the textbook."I'm listening intently.""You're staring at the wall behind my head.""It's a very interesting wall."He gave up, tossing the pen onto the coffee table with a small laugh, and for a moment we just sat there, the quiet easy in a way it hadn't been in weeks.Both our phones buzzed at once, then again, then a third time in rapid succession."Okay, what," Rhys muttered, pulling him out.Priya's message sat at the top of the group chat, three exclamation points deep.‘ASHBOURNE IS DOING A HOCKEY CAPTAINS REUNION. ALUMNI. EXHIBITION GAME. DINNER. THE WHOLE THING.’"A reunion," I said, scrolling through the flood of details. Former captains returning. A meet-and-gree
Last Updated: 2026-10-27
Chapter: chapter 52 Chelsea povThree weeks had passed since the hallway, and my life had shrunk down to the exact dimensions of this house.Homeschooling now, a tutor arriving twice a week, my mother hovering close enough that I'd started measuring the distance between us in feet rather than rooms. My phone sat in a basket by the front door every evening, some agreement she'd worked out with the lawyer, monitored, restricted, a leash disguised as concern.The hearing was still pending. No formal charges yet, though the word "possible" kept attaching itself to every conversation my mother had on the phone in the next room, low and careful, like I couldn't hear every word through the thin walls anyway.Expelled. Officially, permanently, a mark that would follow any future application I ever filled out again.I sat at my desk most afternoons, staring at a blank notebook page, the careful architecture I'd spent ten years building reduced to this, four walls and a tutor and a mother who flinched slightly ev
Last Updated: 2026-10-25
Chapter: Chapter 5MISHA’S POVThe first thing I registered was the low, steady beep of a monitor and the sharp, clean scent of antiseptic. Hospital. My body felt heavy, limbs slow to respond, as if someone had poured lead into my veins while I slept. I forced my eyes open.Nikolai sat in the chair beside the bed, sleeves rolled to his elbows, watching me with the same unreadable calm he had worn in the alley. And standing just behind him, pale and tight-jawed, was Ken.For a single, disoriented second I thought I was still dreaming. Then the memory of his voice on the phone,soft, post-orgasm, telling Katya he loved her while calling me nothing,slammed back into place with perfect clarity.I sat up so fast the monitors spiked.“You,” I breathed.Ken took an automatic step forward, concern already arranged on his face like a mask he had practiced. “Misha, thank God. When I got the call I—”“Get out.”Nikolai’s gaze flicked between us, assessing. He spoke first, voice even. “He was the last person you spo
Last Updated: 2026-09-14
Chapter: Chapter 4MISHA’S POVI wanted to end the call. I wanted to vanish from the surface of the earth if it meant never hearing another word. But my feet had rooted themselves to the pavement, and the phone stayed pressed against my ear even though I already knew what was coming.“Oh, that was so exhilarating,” Ken’s voice murmured in that soft, confessional tone he used to reserve for me. “I love you so much, Katya.”The low, satisfied rumble that followed told me everything. They were in the aftermath,bodies tangled, breath slowing, the kind of quiet intimacy that only comes after someone has taken what they wanted.“What about Misha?” Katya asked. I could almost see her, glowing with the victory of claiming what had once been mine.She had told me once, years ago, that she would always win because I was no match for her. She had been right. If she could turn my own fiancé against me, then yes,she could keep winning forever.Ken laughed. The sound was light, almost careless. “Misha? She’s nothing
Last Updated: 2026-09-14
Chapter: Chapter 3MISHA'S POVHe didn't look surprised, didn't comment on the mess I'd made. A man like him had surely watched women lose their composure before—but mine came from a different place entirely."You're Sasha Reza?" His eyes searched mine as he settled into the chair across from me.The waitress kept apologizing, as though she'd knocked the glass from my hand herself, and cleaned the spill while gaping at Nikolai between glances. Her clumsiness outpaced even mine."Ye…s." I stammered, trembling. If he recognized me, wouldn't he have shown it? If he were pretending, suspicion would have flickered across that unreadable face. But his expression gave nothing away, his body language perfectly neutral—and I was the one shaking as the waitress poured me wine, replaced the shattered shot, and took her time admiring the man seated opposite me."Your hand is shaking. Are you all right, Miss Reza?" His stare demanded an answer.I stared into the wine glass I'd nervously lifted to my lips. A mistake—
Last Updated: 2026-09-14
Chapter: Chapter 2MISHA’S POVThe sole mercy of home was its indifference. No one noticed me, no one cared, and that anonymity let me slip straight into my room to confront the catastrophe I had unleashed in a single day.How was I supposed to raise the money to pay Miss Modelo? I could only pray the sum was not as monstrous as she had claimed.Earlier my head had throbbed; now a swarm of unanswered questions forced the pain into the background. My phone buzzed. A message from Miss Modelo’s assistant:THIS IS MISS MODELO’S ASSISTANT. WITH THE PHOTOS ATTACHED TO THIS EMAIL, YOU CAN TELL THE PRICE OF EACH DAMAGED ITEM. SHE EXPECTS YOU TO BRING THE MONEY TO HER AT THE ADDRESS BELOW IN 72 HOURS.I was already unraveling before I finished the last word. I dialed Sasha—the nearest thing to a friend I had ever known, the one person who had confided in me and, from the day we met, repeatedly saved me.“I don’t know the man,” I blurted the moment she answered, “and I have only a few hours to bring him to the bo
Last Updated: 2026-09-14
Chapter: Chapter 1The Wrong ShoesI felt the stares before I understood them.They slid across my skin like cold fingers—quick, judgmental, amused. I kept my chin level and my smile fixed because that was what servers did when the room decided you were the evening’s entertainment. The tray in my hands was steady. The lobster rolls sat in perfect rows. I told myself the looks meant nothing.Sasha caught my wrist as I passed her station.“You’re wearing the wrong shoes,” she murmured.I looked down.One black boot. One brown. Katya’s. Of course. This morning I had been late, half-asleep, scrambling for anything that would get me out of that house before Natasha’s voice could find me. I had grabbed the first pair that felt like boots and run. Now the entire restaurant was watching the mismatch like it was a private joke.“I’ll fix it after this table,” I mouthed.Sasha squeezed my wrist once and released me. “Storage unit. My slippers are there. Go.”I turned toward table twenty-three.I never saw the wom
Last Updated: 2026-09-14
Chapter: Chapter 6I woke before the servants came, the way I always had at Blackstone, and for one disoriented moment I reached for the familiar shape of my own room before I remembered where I was.The ceiling above me was wrong. Too high, too far away, painted with a mural of wolves running beneath a full moon that I hadn't noticed the night before, too exhausted by then to notice anything except the size of the bed and the fact that no one had followed me into the room to watch what I did with my grief.I lay there a long while before I made myself move, staring at those painted wolves, tracing the line of the largest one with my eyes until I'd memorized the exact curve of its spine. It felt easier than thinking about the conversation I'd had in the throne room, though my mind kept circling back to it anyway, the way a tongue returns to a sore tooth.‘You've made your reasons very public.’‘No, I didn't.’I hadn't expected honesty. I'd expected denial, or worse, the practiced sympathy men like my fa
Last Updated: 2026-09-10
Chapter: Chapter 5I had imagined this moment more times than I cared to admit.In most versions, I imagined a woman built in her father's image, sharp-eyed and calculating, already searching the throne room for weaknesses before she'd finished her first bow. I had prepared for that woman. I had rehearsed, in the quiet hours before dawn, exactly how little of myself I intended to give her.The woman walking toward me down the long hall was not searching for anything.She walked the way someone walks into cold water, steady because stopping would be worse than continuing, her spine straight in a way that looked deliberate rather than natural. The royal cloak sat unfamiliar on her shoulders, the silver too new against skin that had clearly spent more time in sunlight than any noblewoman I'd met at court. Her hands were folded in front of her, and even from this distance I could see how tightly.She did not look at the throne the way most did, with calculation, gauging distance and posture and exactly how
Last Updated: 2026-09-10
Chapter: Chapter 4(The Bride the Crown Claimed)Horns woke me before dawn. I parted the curtains and froze. Royal soldiers filled the courtyard below, hundreds of them, and as I watched, the silver banner of House Clifton came down from the eastern tower while crimson and black rose to take its place.No battle. No blood spilled to earn it. My father's kingdom was disappearing in complete silence.The King hadn't conquered us with an army. He'd conquered us with a signature.By midmorning the fortress no longer felt like ours. Royal officials moved through the halls with ledgers open, counting grain stores and horses and weapons that had belonged to House Clifton for four generations, while our own guards stood aside at the gates, stripped of their command, watching strangers take their posts without a word of protest left to give.Then the seamstresses arrived. They didn't ask permission before they began.I stood still while they measured me, while our family's colors were folded away and replaced wi
Last Updated: 2026-09-08
Chapter: Chapter 3I didn't mean to say it. The words left me before I'd decided to speak them, quiet, but they landed in the chaos like a stone dropped into still water, and the ripples silenced everyone.Every face turned toward me.My father answered before the messenger could."You don't."Two words. No warmth in them, no explanation, nothing but the flat certainty of a man stating a fact of weather. I had heard my father deny me things before, small things, a dress I'd wanted, a suitor I'd once dared to mention. I had never heard him deny me my own life in quite so few syllables.Something in my chest went cold and small.The messenger, Damon, I would later learn, watched the exchange without expression, and when no one spoke further, he inclined his head, set the second scroll containing the formal terms upon the table, and took his leave with the unhurried calm of a man who had delivered far worse news to far more dangerous rooms than this one.The moment the doors closed behind him, my father ex
Last Updated: 2026-09-08
Chapter: Chapter 2(The Daughter They Chose to Sacrifice)The pup in my lap wouldn't stop shaking. He was the smallest of the litter we'd found near the eastern wall three days ago, half-starved, one ear torn from something that had tried to make a meal of him before the border patrol found him first. I'd been coming to the kennel every morning since, sitting on the cold stone floor with a bottle of warmed goat's milk, waiting for his trembling to slow.It hadn't, not yet. But it would. Everything did, eventually, if you were patient enough to wait it out."There," I murmured, running my thumb along his spine. "You're safe here."I almost believed it myself.The estate ledgers sat open beside me on the bench, columns of grain shipments and border taxes I'd been meaning to review since breakfast. My aunt liked to remind me that noblewomen didn't dirty their hands with kennel work or account books, that there were servants for such things, that a lady of House Clifton ought to be seen at needlework or in
Last Updated: 2026-09-08
Chapter: Chapter 1(The King's Demand)The Royal Council Chamber smelled of old wood and older blood."Has House Clifton forgotten who wears the Crown?"My voice was quiet, but I let it cut through the room like a blade drawn slow enough for everyone to hear the metal sing.The Royal Chancellor cleared his throat and stepped forward, a scroll trembling faintly in his grip. "Your Majesty, House Clifton has again refused to relinquish the disputed borders of Blackstone Fortress. They claim ancestral right supersedes the Crown's decree."A general near the front slammed a fist against the table. "Then take it by force. Clifton has grown too comfortable believing his name protects him.""His army is not small," another countered, leaning forward with brows drawn together. "If we march on Blackstone, we risk dragging three border packs into a war none of them asked for.""Cowardice," the first general spat."Strategy," the second shot back, jaw tight.Voices rose. Chairs scraped. A minister threw up his hand
Last Updated: 2026-09-08
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