Finding my way to you
The Hockey Prince's Secret Ice Queen
All I wanted was to find a computer genius to process the non-linear dynamic equations for my ecological model. Instead, I found myself cornered by Julian Andrews, the university's hockey prince, trading a public, staged kiss for his academic support. To finalize our "deal," I was dragged to the campus ice rink. The cheerleaders and puck bunnies immediately swarmed him, mocking my plain clothes and treating me like a pathetic joke. Brooke, the head cheerleader, even set up a figure skating competition with a date with Julian as the grand prize. She performed a basic spin, blew him a kiss, and smugly waited for me to fall flat on my face and humiliate myself. His hockey teammates laughed from the sidelines, watching me try to support Julian as he stumbled around the ice like a newborn giraffe. But as I held his warm hand to keep him from falling, I couldn't help but feel something was terribly wrong. Why was a top-tier athlete faking such awful balance? And why did his ice-blue eyes stare at me with such knowing anticipation, as if he already knew about the professional figure skating past I had spent years trying to bury? "Just let go and skate." He whispered, slowly releasing my hand. I took a deep breath, glided to the center of the rink, and landed a flawless double Axel. As the entire rink fell into a dead, shocked silence, I realized I had just exposed not only my own hidden past, but also the biggest secret of the campus god.
Chapter 1 No.1
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?"
Broken To Finding Love
"Sign those papers, or be ready to face my wrath." Teddy, Jane's husband, slammed her face with divorce papers on the day of their one year anniversary. "No I won't. You can do whatever you want." Jane, the heiress of the Lockwood empire had run away from home, due to an arranged marriage her f
On My Way To STEAL Your Heart
~Book 3 in the Second Generation Obsessive Series~ "Why did you say yes to our marriage? You could have refused also?", She asked him, while staring into deep enchanting eyes. He smiled sadly and responded, "I don't want any girl's life to be ruined because of me again". And his words and the
Finding My Mr Right
Risa Johnson was the only child of Mrs Johnson, she was a young CEO. Her mother was very scared that she might die without getting to see Risa get married and have kid, She kept pressurizing Risa to get married. Meanwhile Risa was never lucky with relationships. She kept running into men that tre
Finding My Luna
"Where is my luna?" Zoren asked his staff. "Alpha, we can't find her in the nearby province. Maybe she's in the city so it's hard for us to track her down," one of his staff replied politely. He angrily attacked it and then grabbed it by the neck. He threw it and hit the wall. It was like an anima
A Way To Survive
Uri is a descendant of the vampire king. A human family raised him. When he was living happily with his family, an organization called Red Leaf found him and wanted to kill him. After escaping death, Uri learned about a community of people like him; they were hunted by the Red Leaf organization and
Way Back To NeverLand
In the quiet cotton factory town where Asher Blackwood and Henry Williams reside, peculiar occurrences begin to unfold, shrouded in an eerie air of mystery. Whispers in the shadows suggest the hand of Neverland, an enigmatic force lurking in the periphery of their lives. Soon, these whispers lead to
Finding My Star Within
My twenty-fifth birthday was three weeks away, and if I wasn't married by then, a rare genetic condition would claim my life. My fiancé, Liam, the man I' d loved my whole life, was supposed to be my savior. But then, at a charity auction, Liam publicly awarded Sarah Jenkins-his assistant, whom I ha
Finding My Baby Daddy
Pandora thought she would have a white picket fence and 2.5 kids with her high school sweetheart. That was until he stood her up on their date and she caught him cheating. Newly divorced Pandora goes to Vegas and lets her hair down. A wild night with a stranger results in her waking up with a terrib
FINDING MY MR RIGHT
Luna Hunter thought she had it all. A future with a man she scarified everything for. But betrayal struck her when she overheard her boyfriend and his best friend mocking her on being pathetic. Their relationship of five years was just a game for him. Broken and humiliated, she had a one-night
Love My Way
She didn't mean to knock the mayor to the ground, let alone shove a fistful of coins into his chest and vanish into the night. But that's exactly what Blair Walker did after one too many tequila shots at her cousin's wedding. Three accidental meetings later, she found herself waking up next to him.
My Heart Belongs to You
Viren the ML of the story who doesn't believe in romantic commitment. Living in NYC for a long time and his past experiences gave strength to his belief. He is the only son of the biggest industrialist Rai Bahadur. He is the CEO of the company. He is a ruthless businessman for the outer world but
Finding My Tripplet
FINDING MY TRIPLET (All i want is happy family ) Prologue ★★★★ She is not just any woman she is a woman of power,authourity and fame... Ladies of her age envy her,married men want to have her as their concubine not cause she is beautiful with crazy shape only
Finding my love
Beauty is unlucky whenever it comes to getting a life partner, she focused on her career not until he fall deeply in love with Chris. How is their love life in the story? Who is Amelia? The answers to these questions are in the story.
Finding My Soulmate
Becoming the girlfriend of your secret childhood crush should feel like a dream come true, right ? But that was not the case with Sofia. Instead, she was betrayed by the person in the worst possible way, which turned her life upside down. She was separated from her parents and her biggest support sy
Marrying My Rival, Finding Forever
My phone rang for the tenth time. It was Olivia. The woman I was supposed to marry in thirty minutes. "Liam needs me," she said, distant and thin. "He fell during a stunt on set. The doctor said it' s serious." This wasn' t new. It was always Liam. Two months ago, she left our engagement party for
Hate To Love You, My Alpha
When the forests burn down by their enemies-the witches, the werewolf tribe of Terra is forced to go to Persus tribe for help. As a peace offering between the two, Princess Aurora is to be used as a treaty. She is to marry prince Marcus of Terra, however on the day of their wedding she found out th
Top Adoration: Devote My Life To You
Only when Yena was about to lose her life did she learned her sister's true color and the fact that the one she truly loved was that arrogant man, who died with her. Her life took another round and she had already learned the lesson from her previous life. This time, she would try her best to love
Desire To Have You In My Arms
Edmund had been searching for Rebecca ever since she left with his unborn child seven years ago. Over the past few years, he had got rid of all the thorns in their path. He had ruthlessly dealt with his grandfather and parents, who were against his decision to be with her. Now he was on the verge
You Belong To Me, My Lost Luna
I watched helplessly as my husband chose his pregnant mistress over me, then without thinking twice, he threw me in a dungeon for a crime I know nothing about. It occurred to me that I was just a perfect pawn. At the time he married me, he needed a Luna to ascend the throne, and I was just convenien
Love Agreement: Give My Heart To You
Freya, the youngest vice director of the forensic department, failed whenever she went for the blind dates, not because she was not charming enough but because of her occupation. Bryan, the son of the billionaire in the city, saved her out of danger when she was trapped with another blind date. This
