Surviving As Parents
/1/129726/coverbig.jpg?v=d952b45e9b05aae9f5803a8b2c8d4fc6)
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?"
/0/46870/coverbig.jpg?v=1818cf44f5e62ff2830a5c52e9cc098f)
Surviving After Dark
So? I'm a big girl. I'm not scared of the dark." My Aunt halts at my words. She's frozen, facing into the living room, and I'm glaring at her back so hard that I'm surprised she can't feel holes burning through her ribcage. Finally, ever so slowly, she spins to face me. Her green eyes are piercing,
/0/87968/coverbig.jpg?v=b3333aca140658c3a24c4358eaa5cd78)
Surviving the Alpha Academy
I am Princess Aurelia, but now, I am Torian Vance-my missing twin brother. I came to Wolfden Academy not for glory, but for revenge. Everyone who approaches me is a potential suspect in his murder. I must play the part of a weakling, an imposter, to uncover the truth from the shadows. But my disguis
/0/84034/coverbig.jpg?v=3f26fc254826a9a1a72b3d43957f013e)
My Foster Parents' Fatal Mistake
An MIT acceptance letter lay on my desk, a full-ride scholarship, my ticket to a dazzling future far from my foster home. But my foster father, Rufus, scoffed, his voice flat: "You're not going." Instead, he' d arranged a "tech internship" out West, promising big money and opportunities, while my
/0/84786/coverbig.jpg?v=d088ee6970c4793245479d38f0c49b37)
The Surviving Twin
The spotlight burned on Dr. Julian Thorne, my mentor, as he claimed credit for my life's work. I clutched a crumpled program, every clap of applause a slap, as he casually dismissed my contributions, citing my supposed "unpreparedness" for the pressure. But his true betrayal was revealed as searin
/0/85197/coverbig.jpg?v=351305e1ec8d14847f349945fad35ca5)
Surviving Darkness, Loving Fiercely
The Arizona desert stretched endlessly before us, a shimmering ribbon of highway cutting through red rock and scrub. My best friend Emily and I were three days into our cross-country road trip, the initial excitement long gone, replaced by heat and boredom. Then Emily pointed. "Are you seeing this
/0/85407/coverbig.jpg?v=03249ce24b4f5d179b001b5881ad99fa)
Surviving Eleanor: A Daughter's Rebellion
The smell of grain and something sour-a barn in my suburban kitchen-was the first sign of something deeply wrong with my seemingly normal life with my mother, Eleanor. Standing over the blender, humming an unsettling tune, she poured what looked like chicken feed into it, her eyes wild with a grim,
/0/60595/coverbig.jpg?v=3f4104d0ac35ae70b662f81d04ba2649)
Counterattack To My Biased Parents
Working during summer vacation, a strange customer threw hot milk tea at me and even damaged the machines in the store. The milk tea shop sided with the customer and even took all of my wages to compensate for the damages. When I went to argue about it, I was crushed into minced meat by a large tr
/0/25108/coverbig.jpg?v=554f4b63a96a7e9231d4ab14cab67161)
A LIFE WITHOUT MY PARENTS
It's kind of hard to live a pretty fulfilling life without your parents. A very hard life that begins for me. After my parents' funeral, I had to leave the family home with my grandmother Amandine and my little brother Idriss to manage. I met Stéphane, a neighborhood neighbor who helped me a lot. A
/1/115425/coverbig.jpg?v=61050e76e15e689c8546f34b459712bf)
Surviving My Deadly Contract Beast Husbands
I died in the apocalypse, only to wake up as Kenzie Banks, a bankrupt high-society monster in an interstellar beast-world. But before I could even process my new reality, a cold AI voice informed me of my impending death. "Your contract beast-husbands possess the legal right to execute you at the
/0/86549/coverbig.jpg?v=4047100bbdeda38fc5317ec01b8d3bc0)
My Parents, Their Pet, My Hell
The Great Depression had gnawed away at everything, leaving my family-my parents, Mark and Susan, and me, Sarah-scrambling for survival in a city choked with despair. Then, they found Buddy, a stray golden retriever, shivering in an alley. Suddenly, my meager cannery wages, meant for rent and food
/1/113898/coverbig.jpg?v=ee6bef2650359f161a26a57d5d8df611)
Surviving The Ice Prince's Love Algorithm
Autumn woke up with a brutal headache and a glowing red warning projected onto her retinas. She had been bound to a ruthless system as the "Elite Girlfriend" to Harrison Jennings, the wealthiest, most robotic student on campus. But her status was a death sentence: Cannon Fodder scheduled for delet
/0/47173/coverbig.jpg?v=779165456d55d890333dd802bc3e8593)
Live is not as sweet as sugar and not as bitter as coffee
A girl who has to struggle to meet her family's needs alone while her two older siblings are very pampered by her mother, since her father had an accident the family's burden has been carried by her. her mother really hated her and thought her daughter was bad luck for her family. Will he be able to
/1/130824/coverbig.jpg?v=c210c68abf4913cc603a7370c88c1bf6)
THE ONLY SURVIVING BREEDER AFTER THE APOCALYPSE
The world ended, and somehow, he was the one man left alive. A biological weapon unleashed a catastrophe that wiped out civilization and changed the fate of humanity forever. Cities became graveyards, governments collapsed, and the human population dwindled to almost nothing. When the nightmare fin
/1/127114/coverbig.jpg?v=191daaca05834e33c3307738b4ac6ad9)
Surviving The Fall: My Husband's Deadly Betrayal
I gave up my career in New York to become the perfect, devoted wife to my NHL star husband. But on our second anniversary, a hidden mic in his study revealed a horrifying truth. He wasn't just cheating on me. To protect his multi-million dollar endorsements and please his mistress, he and his moth
/0/88745/coverbig.jpg?v=60f3eabc4e8a0b9a44ba40239d59816f)
Love as a Weapon
After my family's business collapsed, I married my first love's older brother. On the wedding day, even though Jase Mitchell begged me with tears, I never looked back. Four years later, my husband Kade Mitchell passed away from illness, and his stepmother Katie Fuller drove me and my son out o
/1/119548/coverbig.jpg?v=e32305e6fbf95022cc858e9fbb9bf478)
He Let My Parents Die,Then He Died for Me
I was lying in a sterile hospital bed, recovering from a severe hemorrhage that had just taken my baby. Hours later, a police officer handed me a bloodstained watch, informing me my parents had been killed in a car crash rushing to see me. My husband, the city's most feared Mafia Don and a brillian
/0/79760/coverbig.jpg?v=d5d698d703a2208f597d93d044cd80d1)
Loved as a Possession, Ruined as a Pawn
As an architect, Ethan Miller thought dispatching Julian Vance, his heiress wife Tori's latest amusement, overseas would finally bring him peace. Instead, Tori’s savage retaliation struck: a chilling video call revealing auditors in his innocent parents' Brooklyn home, a ruthless digital clock tick
/0/18989/coverbig.jpg?v=e50cde9b39034c575e745858f30a406b)
My Crazy Girl: As Long As You Love Me
He was the heartthrob, the one every woman in the city was crazy over. However, he was a demon deep inside. He would get everything he wanted by all means, no matter in business or love. Getting the wrong room card from the receptionist, she walked into his exclusive suite. When he saw her lying on
/0/27143/coverbig.jpg?v=768dd27f574272f7b7c6acadc22e2b5a)
Life as a celebrity
Geum bi is a crazy but lovely girl. She is jobless,lives with her friend - Lily who is already telling her to get a job. Lily works in a coffee shop. One day, Lily told Geum that there's a job vacancy at a young billionaire's place. Geum was reluctant to go first as the billionaire in question is j
