Your older brother gave John Logan one simple job when you transferred to Briar University: Keep an eye on you. Somewhere between movie nights at the hockey house, endless teasing, and becoming inseparable from Hannah and Allie, that job got a lot more complicated. Now you and Logan have a secret. No labels. No strings. No one can ever find out especially not your brother. It was supposed to be casual.But the hardest rules to follow are the ones you make for yourself
Working as the social media manager for a professional hockey team means living your life behind a lens capturing moments, shaping narratives, making players seem larger than life. Most of them make it easy. Ilya Rozanov doesn’t. He avoids your camera like it’s personal. Gives you nothing to work with. Acts like you’re barely there except for the moments he slips. The ones no one else seems to notice. The way his attention lingers. The way he shows up anyway. The way he watches, even when he pretends not to care. It doesn’t make sense until it does. Until late nights and road trips and too much unspoken tension blur the lines between professional and something else entirely until one night, somewhere between exhaustion and honesty, the distance between you finally disappears.And afterward, nothing is the same.Because Ilya Rozanov might act like he’s not interested but people don’t look at you like that, don’t stay like that, don’t cross lines like that unless it meant something.
Scott Hunter has spent years being everyone else’s version of reliable. Captain. Veteran. The guy who says the right thing in interviews and keeps the locker room from imploding after bad losses. He’s built an entire career on control on never letting anyone see the cracks.Then you get hired as the team’s new social media manager.You’re too loud in quiet rooms, too honest with him, and somehow immune to the sharp look he gives reporters when they ask stupid questions. You tease him after losses, steal his hoodies without asking, and turn every carefully constructed wall in his life into something flimsy enough to breathe through. Scott tells himself it’s temporary. A distraction. Until late nights on road trips become private jokes. Until your hand brushes his in the equipment tunnel and he thinks about it for three straight days. Until one drunken almost-kiss after a team party changes the entire shape of your friendship. Now he’s stuck somewhere between wanting you and wanting to keep the version of himself he’s spent years surviving as. And Scott Hunter has never been good at losing.
They’ve been best friends since scraped knees, bike rides at sunset, and secrets whispered under bedroom ceilings. Everyone else sees itthe way they orbit each other, the way jealousy slips into their voices, the way no one else ever quite measures up. They’ve crossed the line before: one stolen kiss that changed everything, one reckless night they pretend never happened. But admitting what it means would risk the only constant they’ve ever had each other. So instead, they stay suspended in the almost, loving each other in every way except the one that matters most.
You and John Logan can’t stand each other or at least that’s what everyone believes. Every conversation turns into an argument, every encounter ends in frustration, and your friends are convinced one day you’ll either kill each other or finally kiss. But when one unexpected night reveals there’s something far more dangerous than hatred hiding beneath years of tension, the line between love and resentment begins to blur. The problem is… neither of you knows how to stop fighting long enough to admit what you’ve really been feeling all along.
Everyone at Briar has the same opinion about you and John Logan: “They’re just best friends.” You’ve known each other since middle school, chose the same college without even planning it, and somehow ended up in the same tight-knit friend group. Between classes, parties, and nights at the hockey house, you’re practically attached at the hip. That’s exactly why no one suspects a thing. Not the late-night knocks on your dorm room door. Not the mornings when Logan quietly slips out before anyone wakes up. Not the fact that every stolen kiss has to stay hidden from the people you care about most. The arrangement was never supposed to become complicated. It was just two best friends blowing off steam. Until one reckless night changes everything. A missed period. A pregnancy scare. And suddenly, the secret you’ve spent so long protecting threatens to come crashing down. Now you’re forced to ask yourselves what’s scarier letting the hockey house find out you’ve been hooking up all along, or admitting that if the test had been positive… neither of you would have wanted to face it with anyone else
François Arnaud is the last person you expect to become a habit. It starts after a film festival afterparty in Toronto too much champagne, too much eye contact, and one impulsive decision to follow him back to his hotel because he looks at you like he already knows every version of you. By morning, you both agree it can’t become anything serious. He’s constantly traveling for filming, you’ve just gotten out of a relationship that left you emotionally exhausted, and neither of you wants the complication. So it becomes simple.No dates. No labels. No promises. Just late night texts saying you awake? whenever he’s in your city.At first, it’s perfect. François is charming in a dangerous way the kind of man who kisses you slowly just to ruin your ability to think. He learns your body embarrassingly fast, memorizes your coffee order, steals your sweaters, and somehow still insists this is “casual.” But the lines start blurring almost immediately. He begins staying after instead of leaving before sunrise. He starts showing up even when sex clearly isn’t the reason. Some nights he cooks for you barefoot in your kitchen while speaking soft French under his breath. Other nights he listens to you talk about your fears like it’s the most important conversation he’s ever had. And then jealousy slips in. François sees another man flirt with you at a party and spends the rest of the night cold and distant before finally snapping “You think I like hearing someone else talk to you like that?” You remind him this arrangement was his idea.That’s the problem.Because somewhere between tangled sheets, airport reunions, and pretending not to care, François Arnaud fell violently in love with you and he has absolutely no idea what to do about it.
John Logan was never supposed to become your best-kept secret. For three years, you’ve hidden the truth behind fake arguments, stolen nights, and lies convincing enough to fool everyone—including yourselves. But secrets don’t stay buried forever. When someone starts exposing pieces of your relationship one by one, the line between love and destruction disappears. And by the time the final secret comes out, losing each other might be the least of your problems.
As the team’s public relations assistant, you’re supposed to help clean up athletes’ reputations not become part of the story. But suddenly you’re attending charity events on Shane’s arm, posing for staged date-night photos, and pretending his hand on your waist doesn’t make your heart stop. Shane hates every second of it.Or at least he pretends to.Because behind closed doors, the lines start blurring fast. Fake kisses for cameras turn into real ones in parking garages. Inside jokes become something softer. More dangerous. And the man who once barely acknowledged you at work starts looking at you like he’s forgotten how to breathe. The worst part? Shane gets jealous over things he technically has no right to care about.Like reporters flirting with you. Or teammates asking if the relationship is “actually real.” Or you mentioning that this arrangement ends once the season does.That’s when the fights start.Messy ones. The kind where Shane says things he shouldn’t, where both of you pretend this is still fake even while sleeping tangled together in hotel rooms during away games.And somewhere along the way, the team realizes their captain has fallen catastrophically in love.Unfortunately, you might be the last person to notice
You’ve been Garrett Graham’s best friend since childhood. You’ve survived family dinners, college, hockey parties, terrible decisions, and basically every stage of life together. So when one drunken night crosses a line neither of you expected, you make a deal: friends with benefits, no feelings, no jealousy, no strings attached. Simple. Except Garrett starts looking at you differently. You start getting jealous. The late-night hookups become something you secretly look forward to, and suddenly the rules you made are the only things keeping you from admitting the truth. Because maybe sleeping with your best friend was never the dangerous part. Maybe falling in love with him is.
François Arnaud moves into the apartment across from yours in the middle of winter.At first, you don’t even realize who he is.You just notice the man dragging boxes through the hallway at midnight wearing a beanie pulled low over his curls, swearing softly in French every time another cardboard box slips from his arms.You help him pick up a stack of books that spill across the floor.“Thanks,” he says breathlessly, flashing a tired smile that feels unfairly pretty for someone covered in dust and snow.Only later, after your friends start screaming in the group chat over the blurry elevator photo you accidentally sent, do you realize your new neighbor is an actor.And apparently kind of famous.But François doesn’t act famous.He’s quiet. Keeps mostly to himself. Waters the dying plants in the hallway when nobody else remembers. Plays old jazz records loud enough for you to hear through the walls late at night.Somehow, the two of you slowly fall into each other’s lives.You start sharing morning coffees on the fire escape.He helps you carry groceries upstairs. You begin recognizing the signs of his bad days the pacing, the insomnia, the way he disappears under hoodies and avoids eye contact when filming gets stressful.And François starts depending on you more than he means to.One night, after paparazzi corner him outside the building, he shows up at your door visibly shaken. Angry. Humiliated. His hands trembling from adrenaline.“I just needed somewhere quiet,” he admits softly.So you let him in.After that, the line between friendship and something else becomes impossible to ignore.He starts falling asleep on your couch. Leaves half-finished tea mugs in your kitchen.Touches your waist absentmindedly when squeezing past you in narrow spaces.And the worst part?He looks at you like home.But fame has a way of ruining soft things.Because the internet notices you. Fans start photographing you together. Rumors explode overnight.Suddenly strangers are dissecting your life, your ap
Twelve weeks. That’s all the time you have in Paris before your work visa expires and your life back home resumes exactly where you left it. Falling in love was never part of the plan especially not with the charming chef whose warmth feels more like home than the apartment you’re renting. Gabriel tells himself there’s no point in wanting someone who’s already counting down the days until she leaves. But somewhere between late night walks along the Seine, shared meals after closing, and stolen kisses that taste like promises, twelve weeks stop feeling like enough. When your contract ends, you’re faced with a choice: board the flight home and leave Paris as a beautiful chapter… or risk everything by renewing your visa for a future that only exists if Gabriel wants it just as badly.
Nobody on the team understands why Hayden Pike listens to you.Not the coaches. Not the reporters. Definitely not the veterans who’ve watched Hayden ignore rules his entire career. But somehow, the second you walk into a room and tell him to knock it off, he does. You’re the team’s travel coordinator organized, sharp-tongued, impossible to intimidate and Hayden has been obsessed with you since the first time you told him he was “one bad quote away from becoming a public relations crisis.”The problem? You can’t stand him.He’s arrogant, impulsive, constantly flirting just to annoy you, and somehow always finding excuses to touch you. A hand at your waist guiding you through crowded airports. Fingers brushing yours when he passes over room keys. That smug grin every time he makes you blush in front of the team.Then a snowstorm strands both of you overnight during an away game.One hotel room.One bed. Way too much tension.What starts as hate-fueled arguments turns into whispered conversations at 2 a.m., accidental confessions, and the realization that Hayden Pike is far softer with you than anyone else gets to see.Which becomes a serious problem once the team starts noticing the way he looks at you after games like you hung the moon.
You’ve been with your boyfriend for almost three years. He’s kind, dependable, and the person everyone assumes you’ll marry one day. There’s just one problem. His best friend. It starts with lingering glances across crowded rooms, jokes that last a second too long, and the unmistakable feeling that every time the two of you make eye contact, the rest of the world disappears. Neither of you says anything because you both know how wrong it would be but pretending the attraction isn’t there only makes it stronger. The worst part? You catch him looking at you when your boyfriend isn’t paying attention. And every time your eyes meet, he looks away with the same guilty smile you know is mirrored on your own face. Neither of you wants to betray someone you care about. But feelings don’t disappear just because they’re inconvenient. As your relationship with your boyfriend begins to crack under the weight of problems you’ve both been avoiding, his best friend becomes the one person who always seems to understand you. The line between friendship and something more grows blurrier with every late-night conversation, every accidental touch, and every moment that feels like it should belong to someone else. The question isn’t whether the chemistry is real. It’s whether some feelings are worth losing everything for.
You have a boyfriend. Garrett Graham knows it—and he knows he should stay away. But one stolen kiss turns into secret late-night meetings, hidden messages, and feelings neither of you can control. Nobody knows. And Garrett is starting to lose his mind pretending he doesn’t want you all to himself. Because some secrets are easy to keep… Until you start falling in love with the person you’re hiding.
Your job is simple as socia media manager: control the narrative. What gets posted. What gets deleted. What the fans see and more importantly, what they don’t.You’re good at it.You have to be.Because if anyone ever saw the way Ilya Rozanov looks at you when the cameras are off, everything would fall apart.It’s not supposed to be like this. Not the late night edits that turn into late night conversations. Not the way he finds you after losses, restless and sharp, like you’re the only thing grounding him. Not the way arguments spiral fast, intense, too close until neither of you remembers what you were even fighting about. Except him.He remembers everything.Every time you pull away. Every time you remind him this is temporary. Every time you choose your job over whatever this is between you.And it makes him worse.More reckless.More obvious.Jealous in ways he doesn’t even try to hide anymore. Scott Hunter pushes your buttons on purpose, dragging you into content, making you laugh just to watch Ilya shut down across the room. Kip Grady starts connecting dots he really shouldn’t be able to see. And Shane Hollander? He doesn’t say anything just watches Ilya like he already knows how this ends. Even Svetlana Petrova can’t ignore it anymore. She warns you once, quietly: Ilya doesn’t lose control like this unless it matters. That should scare you. It does.But not enough to stop. Because the almosts are worse than anything else almost touching, almost kissing, almost getting caught when a door opens at the wrong time or footsteps echo too close. Until one night, it’s not almost. And afterward, standing too close in a room that suddenly feels too small, reality hits just as hard as everything else You can delete a post. You can spin a story. But you can’t control this. And if it gets out? You won’t be the one who survives it.
Garrett Graham has rules. No dates. No sleepovers. No feelings.You have rules too.No asking where he’s been. No meeting the family. No pretending that the way he looks at you after practice means anything.For months, it works. You sneak into his room after late-night parties, trade sarcastic remarks in the hockey house kitchen the next morning, and act like strangers whenever Hannah, Logan, Dean, and Tucker are around.Everyone assumes Garrett is just being Garrett.No one notices the lingering glances. The bruised knuckles from fights he starts after someone flirts with you. The way you somehow become the first person he texts after every away game.The arrangement was supposed to stay simple. Until jealousy, secrets, and feelings neither of you agreed to start breaking every rule you made.
Everyone on the team thinks Hayden Pike has a crush on you.You think they’re being ridiculous. Sure, Hayden always sits beside you on flights, volunteers for interviews you’re running, and somehow finds you first after every game but he’s friendly with everyone. You never think anything of it.Your secret boyfriend, however, definitely does.Dating Shane Hollander means pretending there’s nothing between you while working for the same team. In public, Shane barely even looks at you.Privately, it’s another story.And lately, Shane’s patience is running thin.Because while you stay completely oblivious, he has to stand there watching Hayden Pike openly fall for you without being able to tell anyone you’re already his.
You and your boy best friend have been inseparable since elementary school. Through awkward school dances, heartbreaks, graduations, and every major life milestone, he’s always been your person. The line between friendship and something more doesn’t blur until your sophomore year of college. At a crowded house party, fueled by too much alcohol and years of unspoken tension, you share a kiss that neither of you talks about afterward. It should have been a one-time mistake. Instead, it becomes a pattern. Every few months, at weddings, parties, reunions, or nights out with friends, the same thing happens. One look across a crowded room, one too many drinks, and suddenly you’re slipping back into a familiar routine. By morning, you’re best friends again, pretending nothing happened. Years pass. Careers begin. Relationships come and go. Both of you date other people, insisting that whatever exists between you doesn’t mean anything. It’s just history. Just comfort. Just bad decisions made after midnight. But the longer the tradition continues, the harder it becomes to ignore the truth: neither of you compares your partners to each other because you’re looking for something better. You do it because you’ve already found the person who feels most like home. The story follows two best friends spending years running from feelings hidden beneath jokes, loyalty, and late-night mistakes, until one of them finally asks the question they’ve both been avoiding:
She stayed with a boyfriend who made love feel like survival cold words, control, and constant hurt disguised as romance. But his best friend saw everything she tried to hide: the silence, the forced smiles, the quiet sadness. While trying to stay loyal, he slowly fell in love with her, becoming the only person who made her feel truly safe. Torn between the boy who claimed her and the one who truly cared, she had to decide if love was supposed to hurt or if she had been loving the wrong person all along.
You don’t like Scott Hunter. And you being the teams PR manager makes it harder.He’s the kind of player who gets under your skin on purpose smirks when he shouldn’t, says just enough to throw you off, then watches like he’s waiting for a reaction. And you never give him one. Not in front of the team. Not where it counts. But he keeps pushing anyway. It starts small standing too close, low comments meant only for you, that look he gives you like everything is some kind of private joke. You tell yourself it’s harmless. Annoying, but harmless. Until the night it isn’t. A line gets crossed blurred, really and suddenly avoiding him isn’t as easy as it used to be. Because now every argument feels charged, every glance lingers too long, and every time he brushes past you, it’s like he’s daring you to acknowledge what happened. You don’t. Neither does he. So it becomes this quiet, frustrating standoff two people pretending nothing changed while everything clearly did. And the longer it goes on, the harder it is to ignore the truth he’s not teasing you just to get a rise out of you anymore. And you’re not pushing him away as hard as you should.
You were never supposed to catch John Logan’s attention. At Briar, you’re known as the quiet girl with a book always in her hands the one who keeps to herself and stays far away from the hockey world. You’re not looking for popularity, a relationship, or a place in the spotlight. Then one night, a poetry open mic changes everything. Suddenly, everyone knows your name including John Logan, the hockey star who’s used to everyone wanting him. Except you don’t. What starts as teasing, stolen conversations, and undeniable chemistry turns into something neither of you expected. But when rumors spread and Briar decides someone like you could never be with someone like him, you’re forced to question whether Logan’s attention is real or just another game. Because the hardest part isn’t falling for John Logan. It’s believing he could actually fall for you
