Sage POV: "Let me kiss you." The request was a low, hurried murmur—warm, quiet, and laced with the faintest edge of mortification. Stunned, I snapped my head up toward the sound. Julian Andrews filled my vision. He easily towered a head over me, his lean, athletic frame silhouetted against the bright morning glare, casting a long shadow across the cobblestones. Briar University's star forward. Team captain. The athletic department's untouchable golden boy. Campus rumor had it that Julian was notoriously indifferent, never sparing anyone a second glance. Behind him, a solid wall of navy-and-gold varsity jackets blocked the brick path. His teammates were whistling, shoving each other, and effectively cutting off my only exit. The sudden commotion immediately bottlenecked the morning foot traffic. Whispers rippled through the crowd, and within seconds, a dozen students reached into their pockets out of sheer muscle memory, black camera lenses catching the light as they aimed squarely at us. Julian's sharp eyes tracked the movement, his jaw tightening into a hard, irritated line. Before I could take a single defensive step back, he closed the distance between us. Leaning down into my space, his broad shoulders shifted in a subtle, fluid maneuver—throwing up an impenetrable physical wall that completely shielded my face from the intrusive glare of the cameras. His sharp, striking face hovered breathtakingly close. His deep baritone brushed against my ear, lost to the autumn wind, meant for me alone: "Sorry to drop this on you," he whispered, his pale blue eyes disarmingly earnest, holding a quiet heat that sent a tremor straight down my spine. "The guys backed me into a locker-room dare... but I'm not here to use you as a joke. We can fake it. Angle it so it looks real—whatever you're comfortable with. Just help me get them off my back, and I owe you one." It was only then that my brain finally rebooted. What on earth? He's actually trying to kiss me? A sharp flare of pure absurdity hit me, and my gaze dropped to my reflection in the dark glass door of the adjacent building: an oversized, faded gray hoodie that swallowed my frame whole, soft, thin jeans worn at the knees, bare-faced dark circles carved beneath my eyes from forty-eight hours of non-stop coding, my dark hair hastily twisted into a cheap plastic claw clip, and a pair of oversized, thick black-rimmed glasses sitting heavy on the bridge of my nose, completely hiding my face. I looked like a refugee from an all-night disaster. How had Briar's golden prince ended up in front of me? When I looked back up, my breath trapped in my throat anyway. He was too close, his clean scent of winter mint and cedar wrapping around my senses. Having those pale blue eyes staring straight down at me made my chest tighten in a way I really didn't want to acknowledge. "Clock's ticking, Cap!" Landon howled from the sidelines, hands cupped around his mouth as the rest of the players lost their minds laughing. "Plant one on her, or enjoy the five-AM bag skate!" A raucous chorus of barks and chest-thumping went up from the team. A few yards away, two girls heading toward the dining hall froze in their tracks, pointing their phones. "Wait, who the hell is that?" one of them laughed loudly, zooming her camera in on my face. "She looks like she just crawled out of a dumpster. There's no way Julian's actually kissing her. Post it on Sidechat right now—this is going straight to number one." The cruel words hit like a splash of ice water, snapping me out of my daze and instantly killing the stupid flutter in my chest. I hated the attention. Four years ago, after my family and my former training partner framed me and destroyed my competitive skating career, I swore I would never be public entertainment again. I buried my name, switched majors, and hid behind oversized fleece and thick glasses just to live an invisible life. If I ended up on the campus forums with Julian Andrews, the internet vultures would dox me before noon—and drag up the toxic scandal I had bled to walk away from. My research was already on the verge of falling apart. I didn't have time for this circus. I locked my grip around my heavy binders, my knuckles straining white. "Find someone else for your dare, Andrews," I said coldly, taking a step back to put distance between us, my voice tight with adrenaline. "I'm not interested in being part of your game. Move." I kept my head down, attempting to brush past him. "You're Sage Kelley, right?" The sound of my name brought my boots to an immediate halt. I blinked up at him, caught completely off guard. "Professor Beaumont's senior research student," Julian straightened up slightly, his cadence measured and even, carrying an intellectual sharpness that seemed impossible beneath a varsity jacket. "I saw your Havenwood Creek senior capstone proposal sitting on his desk over Sunday dinner." My heart gave a hard, hollow thud. Professor Beaumont was my academic advisor—and the guardian of the final research endowment my late father had left behind. Julian leaned in slightly, his voice dropping to a near-whisper against the whistle of the wind. "I spent an hour going over your codebase." My lips parted. "You... read my proposal?" "Your simulation keeps crashing because your core fluid algorithm strategy is flawed," Julian murmured, his pale blue eyes deadly sharp. "And Uncle Des mentioned that if you don't deliver a working version by this Friday, the department is pulling your grant—which means you don't clear your senior thesis, and you don't graduate in May." The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Friday was the deadline. If the funding was pulled, the project died, my senior capstone failed, and I would be forced to stay another semester without my degree. Worse, my father's final ecological legacy would be reduced to scrap paper. I had been panicking over that exact deadline for two days straight, and Julian had just laid it out like it was nothing. Worse, I couldn't even brush him off. I had heard the rumors about Beaumont's nephew—the CS prodigy everyone in the department talked about. I just had never realized it was him. "I know how to fix your algorithm," Julian stated plainly, laying his cards on the table, his gaze locking onto mine with an unshakeable, quiet certainty. "Help me get through this bet. In return, I'll rewrite your boundary calculations tonight. Deal?"

Sage POV: "Fine," I muttered through gritted teeth, heat crawling rapidly up my neck. "Just the angle. Nothing real." "Just the angle," Julian agreed, his voice a low, steady rumble. "Don't move." "TWO SECONDS, CAP!" Landon's roar tore through the noise. "DO IT OR YOU'RE DEAD!" Julian didn't hesitate. Before my racing brain could fully process the insanity of what I was doing, his large, warm hand came up, calloused fingers sliding gently around the nape of my neck to steady me. His touch was firm, yet unexpectedly restrained, sending an electric shock straight down my spine. He stepped completely into my space, his broad shoulders blacking out the crowd, the morning glare, and every intrusive phone camera on the brick path. Then, he leaned down. My breath trapped in my throat. He didn't actually kiss me. He just tilted his head, his mouth barely grazing the corner of mine before coming to a stop just beside my ear. He was so close I could feel the clean heat of his breath—mint and fresh cedar against the crisp autumn chill—stirring the loose hair at my temple. To the crowd, the angle made it look like Briar's golden boy was completely consuming me in a deep, reckless kiss. But between us, he was holding back, perfectly still, giving me just enough space to breathe. It was an illusion. Yet it was intimate enough to make my heart stall out completely. CLICK. FLASH. A deafening barrage of cheers, wolf-whistles, and hysterical screams detonated around us. "HOLY SHIT! HE ACTUALLY DID IT!" Julian pulled back slowly, his thumb brushing lightly across the curve of my jaw before his hand dropped away. His pale blue eyes were dark, unreadable, and burning with an intensity that made my knees feel dangerously hollow. "Thank you, Sage," he murmured, so quiet only the wind caught it. "Send the error logs. I'll call you after nine." Without waiting for a reply, Julian spun on his heel, deliberately drawing the rowdy players, the pointing phones, and the roaring noise away with him as he walked down the quad. He left a wide, empty corridor behind him. I didn't stop to think. I hugged my heavy binders to my chest, kept my head down, and all but sprinted across the quad. I didn't stop until I was safe inside Morrison Hall. SLAM. Analia was hanging completely upside down from the top bunk when I threw our dorm room door shut, her wild red curls dangling toward the floorboards, her green eyes wide as saucers. "You kissed Julian Andrews?! The Julian Andrews who hasn't looked at a girl since freshman orientation?!" I collapsed hard against my desk, chest heaving, the ghost of mint and cold pine still clinging to my skin. "We didn't kiss. We angled it," I gasped, the defense sounding pathetic even to my own ears. "It was a transaction. He's Professor Beaumont's nephew—he promised to debug my Havenwood model tonight so my funding doesn't get axed on Friday." "Oh, you angled it?" Analia swung down the wooden ladder, landing with a heavy thud and shoving her glowing screen two inches from my nose. "Tell that to the entire student body! Look at Sidechat!" I looked. My stomach plummeted straight through the floorboards. Someone had filmed the entire encounter from the top of the dining hall steps. From that vantage point, it looked breathtakingly, undeniably real—the athletic department's undisputed god towering over a girl in a washed-out gray hoodie and thick black-rimmed glasses, his hand tangled in her dark hair as he bent her backward into an intimate kiss. The post was already trending at number one on the campus board, the comment section updating faster than I could read. [TRENDING #1: Golden Boy strikes? Julian Andrews caught making out with a random on the central quad! Footage included.] - User_422: Who even is she?? Four-eyed lab nerd looks like she hasn't brushed her hair or changed her glasses since midterms. Did she drug him? - User_589: It's obviously a lost dare, look at the boys laughing. Poor Julian, someone get him hand sanitizer before those thick lenses scratch his face. - User_631: Did they drag this four-eyes out of the science basement? Total nobody trying to climb the social ladder. Embarrassing. - User_704: Anyone have her name or major? I give it two hours before she gets doxed. And pinned right at the very top of the thread was a verified account boasting a crown emoji: @brookesterling_official: Some four-eyed girls will do anything for five seconds of attention. See you at practice Saturday, J. 💅 A cold sweat broke out across my shoulder blades. "Who is Brooke Sterling?" I asked, my throat dry. Analia stared at me like I had lost my mind. "Head cheerleader! Queen bee of the athletic department! She has spent two solid years telling anyone who will listen that Julian belongs to her. And now you're on camera letting him breathe down your neck." "He's not her boyfriend," I muttered. "Try telling that to her squad," Analia groaned, flopping onto her mattress before her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Wait. You're completely crimson. Sage Kelley, did you actually like it?" "I did not!" I grabbed a massive hydrology textbook and buried my flaming face behind it. "He was just way too close, that's all! It was an involuntary biological reaction!" "Sure. Purely scientific." At exactly nine o'clock, my laptop pinged with an incoming email. The sender was an unrecognized student address, with a massive zip file attached. With trembling fingers, I ran the executable. The red error logs that had plagued node forty-two for two weeks simply vanished. The fluid-velocity curves mapped out across my screen in flawless, seamless arcs. He had done it. In less than four hours, he had single-handedly solved the codebase that was about to ruin my senior thesis. We were square. My grant was safe, and I never had to cross paths with Briar's hockey prince again. Then, my phone buzzed violently against the desk. Both Analia and I jumped. I reached out, my pulse skipping as a text popped up from the same number that had just delivered my data: Julian: I know we're technically square, but can I beg for one more favor? Coach has lost his mind and is making the team cross-train on figure skates to fix our lateral edges. The front toe picks are an absolute nightmare. I did a little digging into my favorite research assistant—word is you used to be quite the prodigy on the ice. Free to coach a desperate captain this Saturday at 2, at the rink? Coffee is on me. The breath left my lungs all at once. "Word is you used to be quite the prodigy..." I whispered the words aloud, my throat closing up. Panic surged through my veins, sharp and icy. Four years ago, after my family and my former training partner framed me and destroyed my competitive skating career, I swore I would never step onto a public rink again. The only person on this entire campus who knew I was a National Junior Silver Medalist was Analia. If Julian had dug up my past, how long before those internet vultures on Sidechat connected my face to old competition broadcasts? My quiet, invisible life was over. "He doesn't know anything," I stammered, frantically trying to rationalize the dread clawing at my ribs. "Maybe he just saw me balance on the wet rocks at the creek..." Analia didn't laugh. She sat up slowly, all the playful teasing completely draining from her face. "Sage, be serious. Julian Andrews is a projected first-round NHL draft pick," Analia said, her voice deadly quiet. "If the varsity captain actually needed an edge-work coach, the athletic department would hire a retired Olympian. Why on earth would he text a quiet girl from environmental science?" My hands went completely clammy. Nervously, my heels tapped twice against the floorboards—click, click—the old skater reflex I could never shake whenever adrenaline flooded my system. "It's a coincidence," I insisted, my voice cracking. "Briar's hockey prince doesn't do coincidences," Analia countered, her green eyes widening. "Either he figured out exactly who you used to be, or that dare on the quad wasn't random at all." Before I could snatch the phone away, Analia's thumbs flew across the screen with lethal speed. She's free! We're both free! See you Saturday at two! "Analia!" I lunged, but the screen had already flashed. Sent. Three seconds later, the phone buzzed: Julian: Great. Try not to let the captain break a wrist. See you Saturday. I collapsed face-down onto my pillow, letting out a muffled groan as my pulse pounded violently in my ears. He hadn't just debugged my code. He had set a trap. And with a single text, Julian Andrews was dragging me straight back toward the ice—with no idea how to stop him.

Sage POV: Saturday afternoon. The Briar Ice Arena. I told myself the entire walk over that this was strictly an academic exchange. I told myself that three times, while stubbornly ignoring the fact that I had changed my sweater twice and put on cherry lip balm before leaving the dorm. The arena was freezing, but the bleachers were surprisingly packed with students. The moment Julian stepped onto the ice wearing a dark gray hoodie and black track pants, every phone in the facility tilted in his direction. Two sophomore girls near the glass squealed, while freshmen whispered excitedly by the boards. Julian Andrews was campus royalty. Even off-duty, people stopped what they were doing just to watch him breathe. He spotted me by the barrier and pushed off into an aggressive, powerful forward hockey stride. Big mistake. His forward lean drove the jagged front toe pick of the rented figure skate violently into the ice. His feet flew out from under him, and two hundred pounds of varsity captain crashed with a deafening thud, sliding ten feet across the white sheet on his back. The arena erupted into hysterical laughter. Landon Hayes was leaning on his stick, howling, while Beckham McKee snapped photos on his phone with glee. Julian propped himself on one elbow, looking through the glass right at me with an embarrassed, devastatingly handsome grin. "Told you. These blades are an absolute menace." I laced up a pair of stiff, clunky rental skates, stepped onto the ice, and pushed off with careful, basic strides. I deliberately kept my balance flat and unremarkable, moving just like any other college kid on a public rink so I wouldn't draw a single eye. "Need a hand, 'Hockey Prince'?" I asked, stopping beside him and holding out my palm. Julian looked up. His embarrassed grin softened into something quiet and intense, his pale blue eyes holding a heat that made my breath catch.He reached out, his rough, warm palm completely engulfing mine. His touch sent a jolt of static straight up my arm, making my heart trip over its rhythm. I tightened my core, pulling him up. His immense weight tilted toward me, his broad chest brushing against my shoulder as he found his balance. "Rule one," I instructed, forcing my voice to stay clinical despite my burning cheeks. "Stop leaning forward like you're charging a defender. Stand tall. Keep your weight centered over the blade, or the teeth will throw you every single time." "That's it?" Julian looked down at his skates, his warm breath stirring the hair near my ear. "It can't be that simple." "It is. Your brain is just driving an oversized hockey tank." Julian let out a low, surprised laugh, the deep vibration rumbling right against my ribs. "Julian! What on earth are you doing?" A sugary, sharp voice sliced through the cold air. Brooke Sterling glided up like a polished queen bee, flanked by three girls in matching designer athletic sets. She skated right up to Julian, familiarly linking her arm through his as if planting a flag on property she owned. "You run this arena on Friday nights! Why are you wobbling around on cheap rental figure skates?" Julian smoothly extracted his arm from hers, taking half a step toward me. "Cross-training. This is my coach, Sage." Brooke's gaze dragged down from my messy hair, past the oversized black-rimmed glasses resting heavy on my nose, down to my faded sweater and scuffed rental boots—measuring my bare face and total lack of mascara against her own flawless, airbrushed glam. Her red lips curled into a toxic, pitying smirk. "Coach?" Brooke laughed softly, her cheerleaders giggling right on cue. "Julian, you got the four-eyed creek girl who digs in mud to coach you? Can she even see the ice through those thick lenses without breaking her nose?" Sasha, Brooke's chief attack dog, rolled her eyes with a cruel smirk. "Seriously, can she even skate without those heavy specs slipping down her face? Maybe she can hold your water bottle while we skate, sweetie." Analia instantly stepped right up to the barrier in front of me, her red curls practically bristling with fury. "Her name is Sage, you over-bleached mannequin," Analia snapped, her green eyes blazing. "And her four-eyed brain has more processing power in its left pinky than your entire squad combined." Sasha scoffed, crossing her arms. "Cute hair, Bright. Did you dye it red to match your failing GPA?" "Say that again and I'll dye the ice with your mascara—" "Ana, don't. Leave it," I caught Analia's sleeve, firmly pulling her back before she could physically launch herself over the barrier. Landon immediately skated over, sensing the blood in the water, spreading his arms like a ringmaster. "Hey! Since everyone's here, let's make it interesting! A girls' figure skating contest! Winner gets a Saturday date with the captain!" The arena blew up. The cheerleaders screamed, and people in the stands started chanting Brooke's name. Brooke's smile turned razor-sharp as she looked at me. "Count me in. What about you, 'coach'? Scared to step up?" "I'm not participating in a dating circus," I said coldly, taking a step back toward the exit gate. "I came here to coach basic edge physics, not to be painted as a trophy in your athletic games." Brooke's sneer widened with pure condescension. "That's what I thought. Good girl. Know your limits and go back to your muddy ditch." I clenched my fists inside my pockets, my jaw locking tight. They weren't just attacking me; they were reducing my hard field research and my father's memory into a cheap joke. My eyes flicked to Julian. The CS prodigy. The only person in this building who knew how to unravel my crashing simulation code. A sudden, sharp realization clicked in my head. Wait. If the rule of this stupid bet was that the winner earned exclusive, uninterrupted time with the team captain... then winning wasn't about romance at all. Winning meant I got guaranteed, one-on-one access to Briar's sharpest coding mind to debug my Havenwood algorithms under the excuse of a "date." It was a free, high-powered computational rescue disguised as a campus reward. Julian observed the sudden shift in my expression, his pale blue eyes gleaming with dark, knowing amusement. He took a deliberate step toward me, his voice dropping into a low, smoky murmur meant for me alone: "The winner gets to call the shots on the date, Kelley," Julian whispered, offering a devastatingly subtle half-smile. "Whatever you want to do with that time... is entirely up to you." He knew exactly what I was calculating. He was handing me the green light. Analia grabbed my arm, shaking me furiously. "Sage! Look at these plastic vultures! Destroy them! Show them who actually owns this ice!" I locked my eyes on Brooke's arrogant face, then looked back at Julian. The cold, quiet rage in my chest turned into solid, unbreakable steel. "Fine," I said, my voice ringing clear across the cold arena. "Count me in."