All Chapters of It Wasn't Just a One-Night Stand: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Two in the morning at the team's training facility. Only one row of cold white lights glowed above the ice.The Zamboni was making its final lap.I stopped at the top of the stands, my feet rooted to the floor.The blade scraped across the surface, leaving behind a thin film of water that gleamed under the lights like a long mirror.That sound had followed me until I was nineteen.My father had driven one of these machines for nineteen years. He woke at four every morning, even when the garage was eighteen degrees. Before every shift, he slapped the steering wheel twice.He'd loved that job with everything he had, and they turned it into a weapon to humiliate his daughter."You don't look right."Nova sat on the bench, his stick across his knees. The bandage on his brow was gone, and a row of black stitches stood out against the cut.I walked down and slapped my voice recorder on the boards. "Mr. Nova, why did you bring me here?""A business deal." He stood up."Sixty minutes. An exclu

Nova moved fast.The night I mailed the contract, he made two posts on Instagram.The first denied the nightclub rumors. He explained that the two women were strangers he'd met at the same party. He'd realized they had been drugged and escorted them out.Both women quickly shared the post and commented on it.They thanked Nova for not revealing the truth right away, waiting instead until they'd identified the perpetrator and filed a police report.The second post was a photo of our fingers intertwined.No face shown. No tag.I liked this approach. At least I could still live and work normally instead of being chased around by the media.And Sienna wouldn't have a chance to use her family's influence to muscle the exclusive away from me.But what I couldn't understand was why Nova had chosen to spend ten million dollars hiring me to play his girlfriend when he could have simply cleared his name.I dialed the number I knew by heart but hadn't called in six years.It was answered quickly.

"You went to Ashbury?" He didn't speak until we'd cleared two blocks.My hand paused on the magazine for half a second. "Yeah.""What year did you graduate?""Class of '23. I transferred during junior year and finished with night classes," I said. "You were already in the league by then."I handed him my phone with the transfer records I'd faked a month ago.Don't shake. Don't let him see through it.He glanced at the screen. His brow twitched. "No wonder. Doesn't ring a bell."I took my phone back. My back was slick with sweat.That reporter's notebook was sitting on his marble counter right now, and here he was with one hand on the wheel, telling me he didn't remember.In this little game of ours, neither of us was being honest.The long drive wasn't a lie. A full forty minutes, and he said exactly three things the whole way. The rest of the time he listened to voice messages from the team doctor.I turned to the window and counted streetlights. By the hundred and seventeenth, I fina

My mother didn't want me involved with the Aldridge family, so I didn't go asking them why they'd given so much money.But that didn't mean I would pretend it had never happened.I hired a private investigator, Ethan Cole, to look into my background and the Aldridge family.I had a feeling the results would be surprising.A few days later, I attended the team's victory party as Nova's date.As the team's star, Nova was surrounded by fans within minutes of walking in.Happy to stay out of the spotlight, I carried my third glass of sparkling water to the far end of the balcony.Owen Halvorsen, the goalie, was drunk and sprawled on a couch, bragging to two rookies. "You know why Nova hasn't dated anyone in six years? It's because the night of college graduation, some two-hundred-pound chick snuck into his room."My fingertip tapped the side of the glass, over and over, without me realizing."Next morning he woke up, bolted straight to the bathroom, and puked his guts out. He's had trouble

Four hours later, the internet exploded.Everyone was stunned that Nova's only public girlfriend was an obscure blog reporter.Rumors about me spread wildly, dragging Nova into the storm with them.His past was dug up: the teammate he'd beaten for no apparent reason in college, the overaggressive hits on the ice, all of it.The backlash snowballed fast. Nova's Olympic eligibility went under review.Because I loved Nova, I knew hockey had been his dream since he was eight, a dream his mother had spent a lifetime sewing protective gear to make possible.I wasn't going to let everything he'd worked for be destroyed.I logged on to Instagram, denied my relationship with Nova, and sent Claire a message: "The story's done. Sixty minutes. Not a word cut. Put your name on it."I packed the contract, the check, the voice recorder, and his mouthguard into a box and left a note on the table: "I've only ever run twice in my life. The first time was for me. This time is for you. Don't come looking