“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?
Fake Engaged to My Hockey Rival Chapter 1 The Rivalry Ignites
[POV: Lanaya Roux]
The arena smelled like blood, crushed ice, and Zamboni exhaust.
It smelled like losing.
Lanaya Roux pushed her burning lungs past the point of reason, her skates carving parallel gashes into the fresh sheet. Five minutes on the clock. Down by one.
The scoreboard glared a neon threat: Thornhill 2, Redstone 3.
Her fault. She’d missed a wide-open shot in the second period, and the missed opportunity had been gnawing at her ribs ever since.
“Roux! Left side!” Rip’s voice cut through the deafening roar of eight thousand screaming fans.
She pivoted hard. The puck hit her stick blade with a sharp, satisfying snap. For a fraction of a second, victory tasted metallic and real at the back of her throat.
Then the shadow dropped over her.
Maverick Hayden.
Six-foot-four of pure suffocating pressure dressed in black and crimson. He came into her peripheral vision and she heard the exact moment his skates slowed — that particular drag and reset of a body that had been moving at full speed and then simply stopped. She almost didn’t look up. When she did, he was already watching her. His grip on his stick had gone loose. Not relaxed. Loose, the way a fist goes loose when something surprises the muscles into forgetting themselves.
It lasted less than a second. Long enough for something old and nameless to surface in his face, something that had no business being on a hockey rink, something that looked almost like recognition before it curdled into something harder. Then his grey-blue eyes locked on hers and the coldness slid back into place. Hard. Deliberate. Like something he had to do, not something he was.
“Huntress.” His voice was a low, rough rasp that scraped directly down her spine.
“Move, Hayden.”
“Make me.”
“Gladly.” Lanaya feinted right, then dropped her shoulder left.
He didn’t bite. His stick flashed out, hooking her ankle in a blatantly illegal move.
She went down hard. Her shoulder slammed into the boards, the impact rattling her teeth, sending a sharp familiar spike of pain through her collarbone.
She waited for the whistle. It didn’t come.
She scrambled up, blood thundering in her ears. Maverick was already skating away, his broad back turned to her.
“Coward,” she hissed.
Twenty seconds left. Rip won the face-off. The puck found her stick again. She didn’t think. She just drove.
Maverick swerved to cut her off. This time she didn’t try to go around him. She dropped her shoulder and plowed straight into his chest, used the momentum to fire the shot.
Top shelf.
The goal lamp flared red. The horn blared so loud the ice vibrated beneath her blades.
3-3.
Her teammates swarmed her, shouting, but Lanaya shoved through the mass of blue and silver jerseys and skated straight to center ice, stopping inches from Maverick’s chest.
“Still bitter, Reaper?” she sneered over the crowd chanting her name.
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Lucky shot.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.” She stepped closer, tilting her head up to glare at him. “But you wouldn’t know actual skill if it high-sticked you in the teeth.”
He leaned down. She could smell cedar and dark musk mixing with the sharp scent of his sweat. “You celebrate in my face again, Roux, and we’re going to have a real problem.”
“We already have one.” She shoved him hard in the chest. “You’re breathing my air.”
His hand snapped up. She didn’t wait to see what he intended.
Lanaya swung.
Her heavy leather glove caught him flush across the jaw with a sickening crack.
The referee’s whistle screamed.
“Penalties! Both of you! Box! Now!”
The penalty box smelled like stale sweat and terrible decisions. Lanaya dropped onto the wooden bench, her chest heaving, her shoulder throbbing a vicious rhythm.
The glass door slammed shut behind them.
Maverick sat at the far end, putting as much distance between them as the cramped space allowed. He stared straight ahead at the ice, jaw rigid, a faint red mark already blooming where she’d hit him.
The silence stretched tight enough to snap.
“Still playing dirty, Huntress?” His tone was bored. His eyes were not.
“Still hiding behind daddy’s money, Reaper?” she shot back without missing a beat.
His hands flexed on his knees. “Eight years, and your trash talk hasn’t evolved past high school.”
“It doesn’t need to for you. You’re not worth the effort.”
“I was worth a punch to the face.”
“That was charity.”
Eight years. The number choked her. Eight years since Crew drowned. Since her brother died and took everything good in her life with him. Since the last time she and Maverick had been anything other than this.
Her eyes dropped to the number stitched on his chest. 29. Crew’s birthday.
“Take that number off,” she whispered.
Something moved through Maverick’s face when he looked down at it. Not just guilt. Something older than guilt, more private, the expression of a man who had been tending a grave for years without being asked to, without being thanked, without being seen. His right hand moved — barely, almost nothing — and then stopped itself and dropped back to his knee.
“No.”
“You don’t deserve to wear it.”
“He was my best friend. The only one I had.”
“You lost the right to call him that the day you let him drown.”
He flinched. The mask cracked, something utterly broken flickering beneath it before it slammed back into place.
“You think I don’t know that?” His voice was a lethal, quiet rasp. “You think I don’t wake up every night seeing him go under?”
“Good. You should.”
The final horn blared before she could weaponize another word. 4-4. A tie. Neither of them won. Both of them lost.
The box door swung open. Lanaya was on her feet instantly, desperate to get out of his orbit. But Maverick moved first, shifting his massive frame to block the narrow exit.
“Move,” she ordered.
He didn’t. He stared down at her — no smirk, no performance. Just the raw expression of a decision that had already been made without her input.
“We need to talk.” His voice dropped so low only she could hear it. “About Crew. And about Hargrove’s offer.”
The name landed like a blade between her ribs.
She didn’t know the terms yet, didn’t know what it would cost her or how far it would reach. But the way Maverick said it — careful, watching, already braced for her reaction — told her enough. Whatever the offer was, it had been built around her. Engineered for a version of her life where running out of options was the whole point.
Like a trap that had been waiting patiently for her to stop moving.
“No.” Lanaya wrenched free and threw her weight against his shoulder, forcing past him. She hit the ice fast, desperate to escape the arena, the flashing cameras, and him.
But his voice chased her into the dark mouth of the tunnel. Hard and absolute, layered with a consuming promise.
“You can’t keep running from me, Lanaya. And I’m done letting you try.”
Fake Engaged to My Hockey Rival Chapter 2 The Ultimatum
[POV: Lanaya Roux]
The player’s tunnel was a suffocating throat of concrete and shadows.
Maverick’s grip on Lanaya’s elbow didn’t loosen. His long fingers dug through the thick fabric of her jersey, the heat of his palm seeping into her skin like a brand. An unwanted electric jolt shot straight up her arm. She hated it. She hated the immediate, traitorous way her body registered his touch.
“Let go of me,” Lanaya warned. Her voice echoed off the damp walls.
“Not until you listen.”
“I have nothing to say to you. And I definitely don’t want to hear whatever lie you’ve cooked up about Crew.”
She yanked her arm back hard enough to strain her injured shoulder. Maverick used her momentum against her. He stepped smoothly into her space, crowding her backward until her spine hit the rough concrete wall.
He was too big. Too close.
The heavy scent of cedar, dark musk, and pure adrenaline flooded her senses, suffocating the last remaining oxygen in the tunnel. Her breath hitched. A dark, twisted pull tightened low in her stomach, a physical awareness she violently tried to push down.
“It is not a lie.” His voice was a brutal rasp. “But that is not why I stopped you.”
“Then what? Did you just want to gloat about the tie?”
“Look at your phone, Lanaya.”
She glared at him. Her heart was hammering a frantic, erratic rhythm against her ribs, and it had nothing to do with the game. Without breaking eye contact, she dug her phone out of her gear bag.
The screen lit up the dim tunnel.
Six missed calls from Camden Roux. One forwarded email attachment from her father’s assistant.
Lanaya opened it. It was a drafted press release.
Redstone Franchise Files for Bankruptcy. Crew Roux Memorial Foundation Slated for Immediate Liquidation.
The concrete wall dug painfully into her shoulder blades. The air left her lungs completely. “No. My father would never let this happen.”
“He is broke, Roux.” Maverick stepped a fraction closer, trapping her between his arms. The friction of his chest brushing hers sent a sickeningly hot spark straight through her. “He has been bleeding money for years. The only way to save Redstone and the foundation is a joint merger with my father.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“The board won’t approve the buyout if the two star players are tearing each other apart on national television. We are a PR nightmare.”
“Then I will request a trade.”
“You can’t.”
“Watch me.”
“No one will take you, Lanaya. Alexander already made sure of it.”
The name came out flat. Not the way a son says a father’s name with pride or resentment – something older than either of those. Something that had been worn smooth by years of learning to move inside that authority rather than against it. A weariness so settled it had become structural. For one unguarded second, she almost felt something like recognition. Then it was gone, and so was any softness in his eyes.
“He controls the league,” Maverick continued, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register that vibrated against her skin. “You are locked in. We both are.”
Lanaya pushed against his chest, but it was like shoving a wall of pure muscle. “What do they want from us?”
Maverick stared down at her. His eyes were storm-dark, filled with a volatile mix of rage and a starving, suffocating heat that made her pulse pound in her throat.
“An engagement.”
Her blood ran ice-cold. “What?”
“They want us engaged. Publicly. By tomorrow morning.”
Lanaya let out a harsh, broken laugh. “Fake engaged? To you? I would rather swallow glass.”
“Do you think I want this?” He leaned down, his mouth brushing dangerously close to her ear. The sheer heat radiating off his body was unbearable. Electric. “You think I want to pretend to be in love with the girl who looks at me like I am a murderer?”
“You are a murderer.”
He flinched. The muscle in his jaw ticked violently, but he didn’t pull away. He stayed so close she could feel the heavy, rapid thud of his heart against her own.
“I won’t do it,” Lanaya whispered fiercely. “I will let the team burn before I put a ring from you on my finger.”
“You will do it.”
“You can’t force me.”
“I don’t have to.” Maverick pulled back just enough to lock his dead, grey-blue eyes with hers. The raw dominance in his stare made her shiver. “Because if you walk away tonight, I will buy Crew’s foundation myself. And I will burn it to the ground.”
Her hands curled into fists. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me, Huntress.” The toxic promise slid over her skin like a blade. “Say no, and see what I destroy next.”
Lanaya shoved past him. She was done. Done with his voice and his heat and the way he said Crew’s name like he still had the right to.
She made it ten steps down the tunnel before she stopped.
She didn’t mean to. Her body just halted, the way it always did at this exact stretch of corridor, in front of the framed team photograph bolted to the concrete wall. The old Redstone junior squad, twelve years old in matching jerseys, squinting into the flash. Crew was in the center, grinning with his whole face, one arm thrown around Lanaya’s shoulders and the other around Maverick’s.
The three of them. Before everything.
She almost let herself remember what it had felt like to stand between them, how solid and permanent the world had seemed in that fraction of a second before the camera flashed. Almost. She turned away before the memory could finish forming, before it could show her the part that came after.
Then she made the mistake of looking back.
Maverick was not watching her anymore. He was watching the photograph. His jaw was tight, his arms loose at his sides, and his expression was something she had never once allowed herself to actually look at. Something that had no cruelty in it. Something that looked like a man standing at the edge of a wound that had never once closed.
He didn’t know she was still watching.
For just that moment, neither of them was an enemy. They were just two people standing in a tunnel, staring at a boy who was never coming back.
Then Maverick’s eyes shifted and found hers, and the cold slid back into place like a door being shut from the inside.
Lanaya turned away and walked out into the noise of the arena corridors and did not look back again.
But the image she carried with her, the one that followed her all the way to the parking lot and refused to let go, was not his threat.
It was his face when he thought no one was watching.
Fake Engaged to My Hockey Rival Chapter 3 The Contract
[POV: Lanaya Roux]
The silence in the tunnel shattered.
Lanaya brought her hand back and slapped Maverick Hayden across the face.
The crack echoed off the concrete. Her palm burned. His head snapped to the side.
He slowly turned his face back to her. The grey-blue of his eyes had gone completely black. The red mark of her handprint bloomed over the bruise she had already given him on the ice.
“Feel better?” His voice was a lethal, quiet rasp.
“You are a monster,” Lanaya breathed.
“I am a businessman.”
“This isn’t business. This is blackmail.”
“It is survival.” Maverick crowded her again, the raw heat of his body trapping her against the wall. “If the foundation goes under, everything Crew built dies with it. The youth clinics. The scholarships. All of it gone by Friday. Unless we sign the contract.”
“Where is it?”
“My penthouse. Tomorrow morning. Eight AM.”
Lanaya shoved both hands against his chest. She needed distance before the heavy cedar-laced scent of him completely suffocated her.
“I hate you,” she promised. The words tasted like poison. “I will sign your contract. I will smile for the cameras. But if you think for one second this changes anything between us, you are dead wrong.”
“I don’t want it to change anything.”
“Good.”
“Tomorrow morning, Huntress. Don’t be late.”
He turned and stalked into the shadows. Lanaya stayed pinned against the wall, her legs shaking. She raised her trembling hand to her chest, right over her wildly beating heart.
She was engaged to the boy who let her brother drown.
Eight AM felt like an execution.
Maverick’s penthouse was a cold monument to the Hayden empire. Floor-to-ceiling windows, dead air, no pictures. Sharp angles, black leather, and sterile glass.
Lanaya stood clutching her coffee cup like a weapon while two corporate lawyers slid a thick stack of papers across the oak table.
“The contract stipulates a twelve-month public engagement,” the lead lawyer said. “Cohabitation is mandatory. You will move into this penthouse by the end of the week.”
“No.” The word tore out of her. “Absolutely not.”
“It is non-negotiable.” Maverick’s voice was flat, completely shut down. “A fake engagement looks fake if we live in separate apartments. Page four, section B. Read it yourself.”
Lanaya crossed the room and snatched the contract off the table.
Her stomach plummeted.
Both parties agree to reside in the primary residence of Maverick Hayden for the duration of the twelve-month term. Failure to comply will result in immediate termination of the merger agreement and the liquidation of all associated assets, including the Crew Roux Memorial Foundation.
She dropped the paper as if it burned her.
“You agreed to trap me.”
Maverick finally looked up. The coldness in his eyes cracked, revealing that same dark, starving intensity from the tunnel. “Sign the paper, Lanaya.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then the foundation is gone in five minutes.”
He held out the silver pen. A challenge. A threat.
She snatched it from his hand. Her fingers brushed his, and the violent spark of electricity that shot up her arm made her teeth click together.
She signed her name so hard the pen tore through the paper.
“There,” she spat. “You have your fake fiancée. Are we done?”
Maverick stood and reached into his suit pocket, pulling out a small velvet box.
“Not quite.”
He snapped it open.
The diamond was massive. A perfect blinding cut set in platinum. Heavy, expensive, and completely terrifying.
“Give me your hand,” he ordered.
“I can put it on myself.”
“Give me your hand, Roux.”
She extended her left hand slowly, fingers trembling. Maverick’s calloused hand wrapped around hers. The heat of his skin was a shocking contrast to the cold metal. He held her firmly, his thumb pressing into her pulse point, before slowly pushing the diamond onto her finger.
It fit perfectly.
The weight of it was wrong. Too familiar. Like something that had been measured in advance, or waiting, or both.
Her mind went somewhere she hadn’t let it go in eight years.
She was fourteen. The old outdoor rink on Fenwick Street, the one the city had since torn down. Late October, the ice still rough from the first freeze, the sky that particular dark blue it only went in the hour before full dark.
Crew had been doing backwards crossovers in the center, showing off for no one in particular, which was completely on brand.
“Lanaya, watch this!” he shouted, and immediately fell flat on his face.
She laughed so hard she had to grab the boards.
“You good?” Maverick called from the far end. His voice had just started to change that year, catching on itself in unexpected places.
“I meant to do that,” Crew announced from the ice.
Maverick skated over without a word and pulled him up by the collar. Crew immediately went back to his crossovers, unbothered, still grinning. That was the thing about Crew. He filled every silence he walked into. He made the cold feel warm and the ice feel like somewhere you had chosen to be.
When Crew drifted back to center, Maverick stopped beside Lanaya at the boards. Not talking. Just there.
She hadn’t looked over at him for a long moment. When she did, he was already looking at her. Not at the rink. Not at Crew. At her.
The cold air burned in her throat. He was fourteen years old and he had the look of someone who had just understood something enormous and was not yet sure it was safe to say out loud.
“It’s gonna snow tomorrow,” he said finally. Still looking at her.
“Okay,” she said, which was a stupid thing to say, and she knew it immediately.
Crew called out from the center. The moment broke. Maverick pushed off the boards and skated away, and Lanaya told herself it was nothing, it was the cold, she was imagining things.
She spent the next three years telling herself that.
Then the summer came.
And after the summer, there was nothing left to tell herself at all.
The memory snapped shut. The penthouse swam back into focus, sharp and sterile and nothing like Fenwick Street. Nothing like any version of them that had ever been safe. She became aware that Maverick’s thumb was still pressing against her pulse point, and that her heart rate hadn’t slowed down at all.
“Beautiful,” the lawyer murmured, packing up his briefcase. “Welcome to the family, Miss Roux.”
The lawyers left. The door clicked shut.
Lanaya stared down at the ring, the weight of it anchoring her to a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from.
“It’s done,” Maverick said, his voice dropping to a dangerous rasp. “You’re mine for the next twelve months.”
Lanaya looked up. For one fraction of a second, she was fourteen again, and the ice was rough, and the sky was that particular dark blue. Then she buried it.
“I am not yours. I will never be yours.”
Maverick stepped into her space. His long fingers wrapped around the back of her neck, his thumb resting dangerously close to her pulse.
“Keep telling yourself that, Huntress,” he whispered, his gaze dropping to her mouth. “Let’s see how long you actually believe it.”