All Chapters of THE ICE WE BREAK :Fake dating the ice king : Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Leo POVThe moment Maya told me she had found something connected to my mother, every other concern that had dominated my life over the previous weeks seemed to lose importance almost instantly, because arguments with Jax and draft projections and development camps and media speculation all faded into distant background noise beneath the weight of a single possibility I had spent years trying not to believe in, and despite everything I had learned about managing expectations and protecting myself from disappointment, I felt hope return so quickly that it was almost frightening.We met inside one of the quieter study rooms on campus shortly after sunset, choosing a place where nobody would interrupt us and where curious students would have little reason to linger, yet even before Maya placed the documents on the table between us I could tell from the seriousness in her expression that this was different from the countless dead ends we had already encountered, b

Dual POV: Leo & MayaThe diner sat along a quiet stretch of highway far enough from Northridge that nobody connected to the university would have any reason to stop there, and as Maya and I pulled into the nearly empty parking lot beneath a gray afternoon sky that threatened rain without fully committing to it, I found myself staring at the building longer than necessary because after years of unanswered questions and months of chasing fragments of information that never seemed to lead anywhere meaningful, the possibility that someone inside might finally possess real answers felt almost too significant to believe.Neither of us spoke much as we walked toward the entrance.Not because there was nothing to say.Because there was too much.Hope had a strange way of making silence feel safer than conversation.The former employee had insisted on meeting in person.No calls.No messages.No recorded co

Leo POVI woke up to twenty-three missed calls and more messages than I could count, and before I even opened the first notification I already knew the situation had become far worse overnight, because scandals inside college athletics rarely stayed contained once national media discovered them, and judging by the flood of calls coming from sponsors and athletic administrators and people connected to my draft process, the story about Maya and me had officially crossed into territory where careers could be affected.The first article I read made my stomach tighten.The second made it worse.By the fifth article, I realized the narrative had already been chosen.The public wasn’t asking whether the relationship had been fake.They were discussing it as established fact.Every headline built on the previous one.Every commentator repeated the same assumptions.Every discussion painted a picture of cal

Leo POVBy the third day after the scandal broke, the story had become so large that trying to contain it no longer felt realistic, because every attempt at damage control simply generated another cycle of headlines and speculation while reporters continued uncovering old footage and former sponsors continued releasing carefully worded statements, creating an environment where nobody seemed interested in discovering what actually happened and everyone seemed far more interested in deciding who should be blamed for it.The worst part was watching what the situation was doing to Maya.Every time I opened social media or turned on a sports channel or walked past a television inside a public space, I encountered another version of the same narrative being repeated with increasing confidence, and despite knowing how unfair it was and despite understanding that she was carrying far more criticism than she deserved, I found myself unable to protect her in an

Maya POVThe strange thing about heartbreak was that it rarely arrived all at once, because despite everything that had happened during the previous week and despite the avalanche of criticism and accusations continuing to bury me beneath headlines I never asked for, there was still a part of me that believed Leo and I would survive it together, not because the situation was easy or because the pressure wasn’t immense, but because we had already endured so much worse and somehow found our way back to each other every time.That belief started cracking the moment I watched another interview.Not because Leo said something cruel.Not because he betrayed me.Because he said almost nothing at all.The clip spread across social media within minutes of airing, and by the time I watched it the commentators had already begun dissecting every word and every pause and every expression, searching for hidden meanings that would fuel ano