Fake Engaged to My Hockey Rival
"Still playing dirty, Huntress?" he taunted, pinning me with those piercing grey-blue eyes.
"Still hiding behind your daddy's money, Reaper?" I shot back, my blood boiling.
Lanaya Roux and Maverick Hayden are college hockey royalty-and bitter rivals. As the captains of competing university teams, their hatred on the ice is matched only by the legendary feud between their billionaire families' empires.
But when their ruthless fathers force them into a fake engagement to secure an $18 billion corporate merger, Lanaya and Maverick are thrown into the ultimate game of survival.
The rules are simple: Live together in the same penthouse. Smile for the cameras. Pretend to be madly in love for six months.
It was supposed to be strictly business. But behind closed doors, the venom they spit at each other quickly morphs into a scorching, undeniable addiction. Maverick is an arrogant, aggressively protective alpha who refuses to let her go, and Lanaya is the fiercely independent captain who refuses to submit.
Beneath their explosive chemistry lies a devastating secret: a shared tragedy from eight years ago that claimed the life of Lanaya's brother and shattered their innocent childhood bond.
With the national hockey championship on the line, scandalous secrets surfacing, and unseen enemies sabotaging their every move, the line between love and hate has never been so dangerous.
What happens when the fake engagement to your worst enemy becomes the only real thing in your life?
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Chapter 6
[POV: Lanaya Roux]
The blinding flash of cameras was a physical assault.
Lanaya stood at the center of the Redstone arena press room, her face locked into a smile that felt brittle enough to shatter. The air was thick with the smell of cheap coffee and expensive perfume. Dozens of reporters shoved microphones forward, their voices a deafening roar of overlapping questions.
Maverick stood beside her.
He was wearing a perfectly tailored navy suit that made him look less like a hockey player and more like a predatory CEO. His arm was wrapped securely around her waist. His hand rested low on her hip, his long fingers pressing possessively against the silk of her dress.
Every time she tried to put an inch of space between them, his grip tightened, pulling her flush against his side.
You will hold my hand. You will smile for the cameras.
His threat from the night before played on a vicious, agonizing loop in her mind. Along with the ghost of his mouth on hers.
"Maverick! Lanaya!" A reporter from Boston Sports Network shoved his way to the front. "The rivalry between Thornhill and Redstone is legendary. How did you two keep this relationship a secret for so long?"
Maverick leaned into the microphone. "It wasn't easy," he said, his voice a smooth, deep rumble that carried perfectly over the noise. "But when you find something real, you protect it. We didn't want the media circus interfering with our seasons."
"And the merger?" another reporter shouted. "Critics are saying this engagement is awfully convenient timing."
Lanaya's stomach plummeted. She opened her mouth to recite the PR-approved script, but Maverick beat her to it.
He shifted his stance, turning slightly to look down at her. His grey-blue eyes locked onto hers. The expression on his face was terrifyingly gentle, completely masking the toxic, volatile man she knew he was.
"The merger was a surprise to us both," Maverick lied flawlessly. "But my father and Camden Roux realized what Lanaya and I have known for months. Some partnerships are meant to be permanent."
He reached up. His thumb lightly brushed a stray curl away from Lanaya's face. The touch was agonizingly tender.
The cameras went wild.
"Miss Roux!" A sharp female voice cut through the chaos. "You're wearing Crew's number. Does this engagement mean the feud over his foundation is finally over?"
The room went dead silent.
Lanaya froze. The smile melted off her face. The name Crew was a physical blow to her chest. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. The lights in the room suddenly felt too bright, too hot.
She felt Maverick's hand tighten sharply on her hip, grounding her.
"The foundation," Lanaya forced the words out, her voice trembling slightly, "is exactly why we are all here. The merger ensures that Crew's legacy will continue to grow and support young athletes across the city."
"So you forgive Maverick for the accident?"
The question was a grenade.
Lanaya stared at the reporter. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. She could feel Alexander Hayden's furious gaze burning into her from the side of the stage. She could feel her father's panic.
She felt Maverick go completely rigid beside her. The arm around her waist felt like iron.
She looked up at him. The mask had cracked. Under the glaring lights, the raw, broken guilt he hid from the world was painfully visible in his eyes. He was waiting for the execution. He was waiting for her to say no.
If you look at me like you hate me... I will pull you in front of the cameras and do exactly what I just did.
Lanaya swallowed the bile in her throat. She looked back at the reporter, forcing a serene, devastating lie past her lips.
"There is nothing to forgive. It was a tragedy. Maverick was Crew's best friend. He loved him just as much as I did."
The words came out steadier than she expected. She told herself it was because she was a good liar. She didn't examine the other possibilities.
A collective sigh of relief swept through the executives. The reporters scribbled furiously.
Maverick stared down at her, chest heaving slightly. The shock in his eyes was absolute.
"Thank you, everyone," the lead PR director announced, stepping quickly to the podium. "That is all the time we have for today."
Maverick didn't wait. He dropped his arm from her waist, grabbed her hand, and pulled her off the stage. His grip was entirely too tight as he dragged her down the hallway, ignoring the executives and PR reps trying to intercept them.
He didn't stop until they reached a deserted VIP lounge. He shoved the door open, pulled her inside, and slammed it shut, locking it.
"What was that?" he demanded, his voice a lethal, vibrating rasp.
Lanaya ripped her hand from his grip. "That was me doing my job. That was me saving my brother's foundation."
"You lied."
"Of course I lied! That is the entire point of this arrangement!"
Maverick stepped into her space, crowding her backward until her spine hit the heavy oak door. The distance between them vanished. The suffocating heat of his body was overwhelming.
"You don't forgive me," he stated.
Lanaya didn't answer immediately. The silence stretched one beat too long, thin and fragile and loaded with everything she had spent the morning performing over. She turned her face slightly to the side, not quite looking at him. When she finally spoke, her voice was flat - not cold, but controlled, the way a person sounds when they are keeping something from moving.
"No," she said. "I don't."
Something shifted in Maverick's face. Not softness. Nothing as readable as that. More like the faint recognition of a man who has heard a line before and knows exactly what it costs to say it. His jaw tightened once, then released. He looked at her the way she had looked at the photograph in the tunnel - like he was standing at the edge of something he couldn't afford to step into.
Then it was gone.
He leaned down. His face was mere inches from hers. The heavy scent of cedar and pure adrenaline flooded her senses.
"Good," he said, his voice dropping into a dark, low register that made her shiver. "Because if you stop hating me, Huntress... we are both going to lose."
She turned away first. She didn't slam the door on her way out. She just left, quietly, which was worse, and both of them knew it.
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8.3
I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved.
On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there.
I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera.
She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning.
I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine.
"She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad."
My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family.
"Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you."
The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
7.1
Barrett handed me a Montblanc pen and a legal document, his voice as cold as the rain lashing against his Tribeca penthouse. He told me to sign an admission of guilt for an SEC violation I never committed.
"Eighteen months in prison, Anaya," he said, adjusting his cufflinks without looking at me. "The trust fund is set up. You'll get twenty million dollars the moment you step out."
I was being sold. The man I had loved for ten years, the man whose secrets I had kept, was trading my freedom to save his merger with Adele Townsend. He had scrubbed the digital logs of Adele’s illegal trades and pinned everything on me. When I refused, he didn't see my heartbreak; he only saw a malfunction in a business transaction.
"Do not speak her name," he hissed when I mentioned Adele’s fraud. "This merger is bigger than you."
He forced the pen into my hand, calling me dramatic while his security guards dragged me to a locked bedroom to "cool down." I spent three days parched and starving, listening to the muffled sound of champagne corks popping down the hall. They were celebrating my destruction. My heart finally gave out in that luxury cage, the darkness swallowing me as I realized I was nothing more than a disposable asset to him.
I died in that room, alone and betrayed by the person I trusted most. How could he do this? How could a decade of loyalty be worth less than a stock price? Why did I let him treat me like a sacrificial lamb for so long?
GASP. I shot up in bed, my lungs burning, but I wasn't in the penthouse. I was in my old, peeling Brooklyn apartment, and the date on my phone was May 12th—three years ago.
My phone buzzed with a text from Barrett: "Where are you? Bring the Townsend files. Now."
A cold, cruel smile touched my lips as I typed the reply that would start his nightmare.
"I quit."
7.5
Bryn hovered as a translucent soul over her own fresh grave, just three days after she was buried.
She had been shoved off a cliff by Keifer, the boyfriend she provided for, while her adopted sister Fabiola watched and laughed.
Now, they stood at her grave crying fake tears, ready to steal her massive inheritance.
Suddenly, Dominic Hutchinson, the arrogant school tyrant who made her life a living hell, arrived.
He didn't come to mock her. He dug up her grave with his bare, bleeding hands, hugging her freezing urn as he sobbed in pure despair.
He ruthlessly exposed Keifer and Fabiola's murder plot, sending them to federal prison.
Three months later, Dominic stood before her rebuilt headstone in a pristine white tuxedo.
"It's finally over. I can finally come pick you up."
He pulled out a silver scalpel and slit his own wrist, leaving a bloody kiss above her carved name as he died.
Bryn fell to her knees, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.
The boy she thought hated her had loved her with his entire life, while the parasites she trusted had killed her.
Why had she been so utterly blind?
A blinding light swallowed her soul, and Bryn suddenly snapped her eyes open.
She was standing by her high school lockers, completely alive.
She had returned to exactly three years before her death.
9.7
What else could Bella Kiretti possibly want?
She had the perfect billionaire husband, the cars, houses,vacations and even the most beautiful children.
Everything was given to her on a golden plate.
But so everybody thought.
With her husband always on business trios and her children now in College, Bella is left home alone most of the time.
Everything was automatically running for her...wake up, eat, scroll through social media, walk the dog and sleep.
Until there was a knock on the door; her twenty year old Nephew,Jack is in town and he wants a place to stay.
"You have grown, and matured."
He was no longer the boy she carried when he was young, he was taller, bigger and his d**k was just the perfect size.
7.3
Betrayed by the man she loved. Katrina Donovan's death was supposed to be the end. Instead, when Katrina opens her eyes, she isn't in heaven-She's in Rachel Sterling's body. The very woman who stole her lover, harvested her heart. The villain everyone hates.
Now trapped in the life of her enemy, Katrina must pretend to be the spoiled, manipulative heiress while hiding the truth that would destroy them all.
Worse-Owen Blake, the cold and powerful billionaire adopted son of the Sterling family, watches her every move. He despises "Rachel", believes she destroyed the only innocent girl he ever cared about. He doesn't know the girl he mourns... is standing right in front of him.
With hatred burning in her veins, Katrina swears she will not waste this second chance. She will expose the lies. Reclaim what was stolen. Make every person who carved out her heart beg for mercy.
But revenge is dangerous-Especially when the only man who might uncover the truth is the one who wants her dead.