LOGINWalking in on the university’s six-foot-tall hockey captain wasn't on my schedule today. Walking in on him completely naked in the showers—and watching him grin like he'd planned it—was even worse. Most guys would cover up. Not Carter Graham. He just flashed that insufferable smile and asked if I wanted a closer look. He's rich, arrogant, and the one athlete I swore I’d never interact with. But now he needs a tutor to save his career... and he just realized I'm the girl from the shower. Scrubbing the Briar hockey locker rooms at 1 AM was supposed to be easy money. But behind Carter's cocky smirk, he’s trapped. His abusive billionaire father threatens to pull his inheritance unless he settles down with a respectable girl, and a failing psychology grade means he’s one bad test away from getting benched right before NHL scouts arrive. When Carter realizes I’m the only student on campus who aced the midterm, he corners me with an arrangement I can't afford to refuse: 1. Tutor him so he doesn't lose his NHL draft spot. 2. Play his devoted fake fiancée to fool his terrifying father. In exchange? He wipes out my crushing tuition debt and acts as my insanely possessive fake boyfriend to help me catch the eye of the campus rockstar I’ve crushed on for years. The terms were simple: strictly business, no feelings, no real touches. But as fake touches turn into real, dangerous obsession... who breaks first?
View MoreCarter POV There is a ritual in hockey that nobody explains to you as a kid, which is that after sixty minutes of trying to put each other through the glass, you line up at center ice, tap gloves, and say good game to every man who has just tried to take your head off, and you are expected to mean it. I had been counting since the tunnel. Not shots and not seconds, but red lights, a habit from the back seat of a leased sedan, four between the rink and the house, and every time I felt the cold start to rise in my skull I laid them out one at a time. First light. Second. Third. It is a bad system, and it had worked for twelve years. Coach Miller had cornered me in the hallway before warmups and said, without preamble, "One penalty and you sit. I don't care if he spits in your soup," and then, because he is not a stupid man and had seen the film, he had added, in a lower voice, "I don't know what he is to you, Graham. I know what he is to my scouting report. Keep it a hockey game." I
Clara POV I told him in his bedroom with the lamp on, because the lamp has to be on, and that was the first thing I said when we got there. The hockey house was quiet except for Brody snoring through a wall, and Carter had walked me up the stairs past the little green light on the landing with one hand hovering at the small of my back, not touching, like a man escorting something that might spill. Briar had won four to one. I had watched the last two periods standing in the gap at the end of the bench with my forehead against the glass and Delroy planted behind me like a bouncer for the least popular club in California, and when the horn sounded Carter had skated straight to me with a split lip and said, through his mouthguard, "Where do you want to go?" and I had said, "Somewhere with a door." He closed it now. He did not lock it, and he saw me notice, and without a word he wedged a skate lace into the frame so that it stayed open a hand's width, and I loved him so much in that mo
Dean POV The Theta formal served a drink called the Sorority Spritz, which was mostly food coloring, and I had been nursing one for two hours as an excuse to stand in a corner and not watch Allie. I had told her to meet someone. I had said it standing on her landing, with my hoodie in a Trader Joe's bag, in the hurt, stupid voice of a man who wants a fight, and the words had left my mouth sounding like permission, and I had spent every minute since wanting to take them back. Jaxson, standing next to me, had given up trying to cheer me up around nine and was now eating strawberries off the chocolate fountain with a plastic fork. "You're doing the thing," Jaxson said. "What thing?" "The brooding thing. It's on your face. Brody says you look like a Victorian orphan." "Brody can say that to my face." "Brody's afraid of your face." He pointed the fork. "Dance with someone. Anyone. That girl in the yellow looks sad." "I'm fine." "You're a liar. You're the worst liar on the team, in
Allie POV The Theta formal had a chocolate fountain, a string-light canopy, and an ice sculpture of the Greek letter theta that was already weeping onto the carpet by eight o'clock, and I stood next to it in a green dress I'd bought for a wedding I hadn't attended, pretending to be a woman with no regrets. My plan was scientific. Clara had taught me the word in a week of walking around with a purple pen: a control group. If I took a man to bed who had no history, no hoodie, and no idea how I took my eggs, and felt nothing at all in the morning, then Dean was a habit, like biting my thumbnail, and habits can be broken. I had a list of requirements, and they were the same as always. He had to be handsome. He had to be a stranger. He had to be someone who would never, ever, wait outside my building. So when a very tall man in a gray suit appeared beside the weeping sculpture and said, "It's crying," I turned around with my chin up and my heart beating like a woman reaching the top of
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