Completed • First Draft - not edited. || "You gonna sit there all night?" Luka glances at me, smirking. I glare back. "I was enjoying the last few seconds of peace before having to spend an evening pretending to like you." "That's funny," he says, unbuckling his seatbelt. "Why?" I snap. "Because I was thinking the same thing." || The rules? Easy enough. 1. Pretend to be the perfect couple. 2. Keep it professional. 3. And whatever you do, don't. catch. feelings. Simple, right? Sofia Calloway never planned on going viral for throwing a drink in Luka Mikhaylov's face. But one video, one pissed-off hockey star, and one furious university later... she's suddenly stuck in a fake relationship with the guy she can't stand. He needs to clean up his image before the NHL draft. She needs the free tuition that comes with the deal. All they have to do is smile for the cameras, hold hands at the games, and act like they don't want to strangle each other. Then come the late-night arguments that last too long. The stolen glances that feel too dangerous. The moment where "pretend" starts looking way too real. Because when you break the rules, someone's bound to lose. And this time, it might be both of them.

Quinn Taylor has made a career out of looking calm. On the ice, she's America's favorite kind of pressure-proof-bright smile, steady answers, the skater everyone wants to root for. Off the ice, she's an only child with a perfectionist's brain and a habit of carrying too much alone. The cameras love her. The country expects her. And the one place she can't afford to fall apart is the one place she's dreamed of since she was little. The Olympics. Macklin Celebrini has always made things feel lighter. He was the new kid at a Northern California rink at twelve-Canadian, polite, a little lost-until Quinn decided he was hers to keep. He became her best friend in the cold air and early mornings, the person who could make her laugh mid-breakdown and never ask her to perform for him. Then life did what life does: seasons changed, schedules got brutal, distance widened, and the kind of friendship that felt unbreakable turned into occasional texts and quiet missing. Now they're both back where the world is loudest. At the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Quinn is chasing the skate of her life for Team USA. Mack is carrying his own weight for Team Canada hockey. When reporters find out they grew up together, the story writes itself-childhood friends reunited, smiles caught on camera, a thousand strangers deciding what they are to each other. The only problem is... the strangers aren't entirely wrong. Between past chapters at a small California rink and present days in the Olympic Village, Quinn and Mack have to figure out what they really meant to each other then-and what they're allowed to be now, with medals on the line and the whole world watching. Because it's one thing to love someone quietly from a distance. It's another to have them show up in your life again and make everything feel possible.