Love Me Like A Champion
Xander Savage plays with footballs.
Freya Woods plays with hearts.
The other plays to win, one plays for fun.
Xander is the campus football champion, gentle, gorgeous, misunderstood. Everyone thinks he's a player, but he's actually the only good boy in school.
Freya is the campus play girl, bold, wild.
When fate throws them together, sparks fly...Neither knows their souls have met before...long ago, in another life, where they loved passionately and broke disastrously. But this time? They're destined to rewrite their ending...can they actually re write the stars?
LOVE ME LIKE A CHAMPION is a reincarnation campus romance about a boy who loves too deeply and a girl who's terrified to be loved.
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Chapter 4
Chapter Four: Damage control
Xander Savage was sleeping when his bedroom door slammed open.
"XANDER!"
He jerked awake, heart racing, eyes unfocused as sunlight streamed through the tall windows of his room. His phone vibrated violently on the bedside table, screen lighting up again and again.
"What..." he muttered, pushing himself upright.
Wendy stood at the foot of his bed, blue hair loose, face pale but sharp with anger. She was holding her phone out toward him like evidence.
"You're trending," she said. "And not for football."
Xander frowned, rubbing his face. "What are you talking about?"
"Freya Woods," Wendy snapped. "She posted your Snapchat chats."
The words hit him like cold water. He grabbed his phone, fingers clumsy as he unlocked it. Notifications flooded the screen. Mentions. Headlines. Screenshots. His name everywhere.
XANDER SAVAGE EXPOSED?
LEGACY CEO'S SON ACCUSED OF SABOTAGE!
PHOTOGRAPHER CLAIMS REJECTION COST HER CAREER
Xander's chest tightened as he scrolled. There they were. Messages he recognized. Voice notes. Screenshots of conversations from weeks ago. Some cropped. Some out of context. Some painfully real.
Freya's caption sat boldly at the top.
I rejected him. Then suddenly LEGACY wasn't hiring anymore. Funny how power works.
His hands shook.
"She leaked everything," Wendy continued, pacing. "Twitter's on fire. TikTok's worse. Half the internet thinks you ruined her career. The other half thinks she's clout chasing."
Xander stared at the screen, throat dry. "She said what?"
"That you're the CEO's son who couldn't take rejection," Wendy said flatly. "Congratulations."
He let the phone drop onto the bed.
"She blocked me," he said quietly. "I never even..."
"Doesn't matter," Wendy cut in. "This is bad. Mum and Dad are going to lose it."
As if summoned by the thought, footsteps echoed faintly from the corridor.
Wendy crossed her arms. "They're going to kill you for this scandal."
Xander leaned back against the headboard, closing his eyes. He drew in a slow breath, then another, trying to steady himself.
"I didn't do anything wrong," he said, more to himself than to her.
Wendy scoffed. "Try telling the internet that."
***
Breakfast at the Savage household was usually quiet.
Greg Savage sat at the head of the table, jaw clenched, newspaper folded neatly but untouched beside his plate. Courtney sat opposite him, posture composed but eyes hard. Wendy picked angrily at her food. Xander sat straight-backed, hands folded, expression calm in the way only made people angrier.
"Do you understand," Greg said slowly, "the position you've put this family in?"
Xander nodded. "Yes, sir."
Greg's hand slammed against the table. "You are not just a footballer. You are our son. You carry our name."
"I know," Xander said quietly.
Courtney turned to him, disappointment sharper than anger in her gaze. "You told me you didn't know her personally."
Xander swallowed. "I should have been clearer. I'm sorry, Mum."
Greg scoffed. "Sorry won't fix the headlines."
Courtney leaned back slightly. "Why did you ask me to give her a trial if you knew her?"
Xander met her eyes. "Because she's talented. And because I didn't want what happened between us to affect her career."
Silence followed.
Wendy laughed harshly. "Look where that got you."
Courtney sighed, rubbing her temple. "I didn't hire her because she wasn't fit. She lacked etiquette, manners, humility, professionalism, and confidence."
"She was rude," Greg added. "Arrogant."
"And now she's trying to destroy us," Wendy said. "She's my enemy for life."
Xander looked down at his plate. "I'm sorry," he said again. "To all of you."
Courtney studied him for a long moment. "This is why we have PR," she said at last. "And they're handling it."
He nodded. "I understand."
Greg's voice softened only slightly. "This cannot happen again."
"It won't," Xander promised. But even as he said it, his chest felt tight.
***
Freya adjusted her camera lens, forcing a smile as her client laughed across the small café table.
"Let's take five," the woman said, standing. "Coffee break?"
"Sure," Freya replied automatically. She set the camera down and reached for her phone. The notification was already there.
OFFICIAL STATEMENT FROM XANDER SAVAGE
Her fingers trembled as she opened it. It read:
(The Snapchat conversations circulating online are false. I have never met or spoken to Freya Woods personally. Any claims suggesting otherwise are untrue.)
Her vision blurred. She scrolled. She glared at thousands of comments:
"She's lying."
"Clout chaser."
"Trying to bring him down."
"Disgusting behaviour."
Her hands began to shake uncontrollably.
"He denied everything," she whispered. She locked her phone, swallowing hard, trying to breathe.
***
The art gallery at North Fall University was quiet, the way Freya liked it. Sunlight filtered through tall windows, dust motes floating in the air. She walked between shelves, searching for a magazine she needed for a project, her mind spinning.
"Freya."
She turned sharply.
Xander stood behind her, hoodie pulled low, hands raised slightly as if to calm her.
"What are you doing here?" she snapped.
"I need to talk to you," he said.
"You ruined my life," she shot back. "And now you want to talk?"
"I didn't tell my mum not to hire you," he said quickly. "I swear."
She laughed bitterly. "Then what about the press release?"
"My mother controls my PR," he replied. "I woke up to it too. It was damage control."
"So you just let them call me a liar?"
His jaw tightened. "You shouldn't have posted our private conversations."
Her eyes flashed. "You made me look crazy."
"And you made me look corrupt," he said. "We're both wrong."
Freya's chest heaved. She pulled out her phone. "Say that on live."
Xander's eyes widened. "Don't."
She tapped the screen. He moved fast, pulling his hoodie over his face and turning away as the live notification flashed.
"XANDER SAVAGE JUST STALKED ME," Freya said loudly into her phone, already moving. "Look at this."
He ran.
Freya dropped her bag, camera clattering to the floor as she chased him, breath burning, phone held high. Comments flooded the screen, hearts flying, messages scrolling too fast to read.
"He's running!" she shouted. "Why are you running if you're innocent?"
They turned corners, students staring, voices rising. Then he was gone. Freya stopped abruptly, chest heaving, spinning in place. She had lost him. The live video continued.
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7.2
After a one night stand with the woman whose house Jason broke into, his life has never been the same. Like a siren's call, he can't get the nymphomaniac woman off his mind. Weeks later, while getting intel for the crew's next heist, Jason lays eyes upon the woman and follows her into a secret strip club. She appears to lead a double life. One where she's the CEO of a multimillion company and her father's golden child. The other side of her life is that she owns a strip club and is extremely erotic. Can Jason learn to live with her as she is? Will he put his pride aside to be with the woman? ... especially when his crew is hired to kidnap a woman who turns out to be the love of his life.
7.4
I was a broke clinic doctor drowning in debt, so I took a confidential job to evaluate a billionaire heir's fertility.
I marched into the VIP ICU, pinned the struggling patient down, and injected a sedative. I finished the extraction and loudly declared to the family lawyer that the Holt heir was completely sterile.
But then, a chilling laugh echoed from the doorway.
The real heir, Jarrod Holt, the tyrant of Wall Street, stepped in. I had just sterilized his younger brother right in front of him.
Facing a decade in federal prison, I was completely at his mercy. To make things worse, my arrogant ex-boyfriend tried to publicly humiliate me, and my greedy uncle threatened to burn my dead mother's belongings for ransom. I was pushed to the absolute brink of ruin.
But instead of destroying me, Jarrod offered a terrifying lifeline. He bought out a Manhattan high-rise in five minutes just to ruin my ex, then handed me a marriage contract.
I was terrified and deeply confused. Why would this ruthless billionaire force a nobody into a fake marriage? He knew details about my past that no one should know. Did he discover my hidden identity as 'E', the underground surgeon the entire medical world was hunting for?
With my back against the wall, I signed the prenuptial agreement.
"I do," I whispered at City Hall.
He shoved his heavy, antique family ring onto my finger. It was supposed to be strictly business with absolutely no physical contact, but when his lips crashed violently onto mine, I knew I had just sold my soul to the devil.
7.1
I worked eighty-hour weeks on Wall Street just to keep my sick brother alive, enduring endless humiliation from the wealthy family that adopted us.
But when I went to surprise my boyfriend of three years, I found him kissing my spoiled adoptive sister, Tatum.
They were celebrating their engagement to merge their powerful families.
To keep me quiet, my adoptive mother, Eleanor, threatened to freeze my brother's medical trust fund unless I attended the party to play the supportive sister.
Instead, I discovered Eleanor had been embezzling from my brother's life-saving fund to cover her own bad investments.
The nightmare worsened when a drunken Ryder cornered me in my apartment stairwell.
"Once I marry Tatum, Eleanor is giving me control of Liam's trust fund to buy out my father's board members."
He planned to drain my brother's medical money, dump Tatum, and keep me as his mistress.
For a decade, I suffered their abuse hoping for a shred of decency, only to realize they were plotting to leave my brother to die on the streets for corporate greed.
Calling the police wouldn't stop these billionaires. I needed absolute power.
Remembering the dark, predatory gaze of Jaren Jarvis—the ruthless billionaire who had watched me fight back at the party—I canceled my call to 911.
If they wanted to destroy my only family, I was going to use the devil himself to crush theirs.
7.8
For five years, I was the flawless wife to the heir of the De Luca empire, securing billion-dollar acquisitions to prove my worth.
But my husband, Alessandro, still paraded his mistress in our home, publicly humiliating me as a "cold spreadsheet" while she sneered in triumph.
It didn't stop at infidelity. When I dared to cut off her credit cards, Alessandro decided to teach me a lesson.
He allowed his mistress to secretly file down the metal clasp on my horse's saddle right before a massive public equestrian event.
My leg was completely shattered in a horrific, agonizing fall in front of hundreds of elite guests.
While I lay bleeding in the dirt, my husband didn't even glance my way. Instead, he rushed to hold his mistress, shielding her eyes from the gruesome sight.
Later, pretending to be unconscious in the infirmary, I overheard him ordering his guards.
"Get rid of the saddle. It was just a lesson to remind her who's in charge."
He didn't just want me humiliated; he wanted me crippled and broken.
As the sterile smell of the hospital hit me, a horrifying realization set in—I was two weeks late. I was pregnant with his child.
The thought of my baby growing up in this ruthless, toxic family made my blood run cold, and the last spark of my love turned into absolute hatred.
The obedient wife died on that dirt track.
I quietly contacted his family's biggest rival and activated my secret scorched-earth protocol. It was time to burn his empire to the ground.
7.3
Six years ago, my father tore up my mother's trust fund and threw me out into a freezing New York storm.
Crawling in the mud with a high fever, I was nearly run over by a massive Rolls-Royce.
The man in the backseat, ruthless billionaire Hiram Houston, looked at my bleeding face with absolute disgust.
"Throw her in the trunk."
He coldly ordered his driver to lock me in suffocating darkness and dump me behind a sketchy private clinic in Queens like garbage.
I survived that night, completely abandoned by my family.
But the ultimate cruel joke came when I realized the anonymous sperm donor I later used from that exact same clinic gave my son a pair of piercing, ice-blue eyes.
For six years, I clawed my way up to become an untouchable lawyer and designer.
I raised my son Julian alone, publicly humiliated my abusive father, and thought I had buried the monster of my past forever.
But today, during a tense corporate negotiation, my uncle accidentally showed Hiram a picture of my little boy.
The ruthless corporate butcher stared at a child who looked exactly like a mirror reflection of his own youth.
"Boss... he looks exactly like you."
I locked my apartment door, my body shaking with silent sobs as I slid down to the floor.
He ordered a full background check on me, and now he knows the truth.
The man who once left me for dead is coming for my son.
7.9
Catalina had just won the Best Actress Golden Globe. It was supposed to be the absolute pinnacle of her acting career.
But a broken heel on her way backstage sent her crashing right into the arms of Brogan Cohen. He was Hollywood's most untouchable A-lister, and the man she despised most.
A hidden paparazzo snapped a perfectly timed photo of him kneeling to untangle her dress, making it look like a deeply intimate, secret romance.
The internet instantly exploded.
Brogan's rabid fanbase tore Catalina apart, branding her a shameless clout-chaser.
To make matters worse, a rival actress weaponized the scandal, accusing Catalina of sleeping her way to the top to steal roles.
Within days, Catalina's world collapsed. Her upcoming lead role in a major indie film was suspended. Two luxury fashion houses unilaterally terminated her contracts.
Meanwhile, Brogan simply hopped on his private jet and fled to the South of France, leaving her trapped in her apartment as a mob of screaming paparazzi battered her front door.
She had spent years proving her talent, only to be blacklisted and labeled a manipulative homewrecker over a stupid accident.
The sheer injustice of it suffocated her. She hated Brogan with a fiery, visceral passion for destroying her reputation and running away like a coward.
With her career bleeding out, her manager slammed a contract on the desk: an unedited, live-streamed survival dating show on a private Caribbean island.
"You need to prove you are entirely repulsed by Brogan Cohen."
Catalina grabbed the pen and signed her name with aggressive, sharp strokes.
She was going to flirt with every model on that island, burn this false narrative to the ground, and make Brogan choke when he turned on his TV.