Three Hundred and Sixty Five What?? Hell No!!

leverage

ARIA.

The floorboards of the main living room creaked under my boots as I paced back and forth, my arms crossed tightly over my chest. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of Kellan’s off-campus lodge, thick snow drifted down, swallowing the surrounding forest in a white haze.

Kellan sat on the edge of a leather sofa, wearing a simple gray sweatshirt. He looked impossibly relaxed, his elbows resting on his knees as he watched me furiously wear a path into his rug.

My jaw clamped shut. I hated it, but the memory of the way Mason’s smug smirk had utterly vanished, the way his jaw had dropped as Kellan claimed me in front of everyone.

“It’s leverage,” Kellan continued, taking a slow step toward me. “You want Mason to regret what he did? You want to turn the tables on him and that miserable girl? This is how you do it. You walk beside me, and suddenly, Mason is the one feeling small.”

“I don’t care about making a cheating jerk jealous,” I lied, my voice shaking slightly.

“Liar,” Kellan purred, taking another step until he was standing directly in my space. The faint, clean scent of soap enveloped me. “And even if you don’t care about Mason... what about the rest of it?”

My heart stuttered. “What rest of it?”

“You spent a year anonymously attacking me online,” Kellan whispered, leaning down so his dark eyes were level with mine. “You think I’m a monster. You think I’m hiding something.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“If you walk away now,” Kellan said softly, his voice dropping into a murmur, “I take you to the university ethics board, you get expelled, and you spend the rest of your life wondering what really happened. But if you fake-date me? You’re in my inner circle. You’re at my games, in my lodge, in my life. You get total access. You can dig as much as you want.”

My hands trembled at my sides. Every instinct screamed at me to run, to stay away from the boy I blamed for my sister’s death. But the thought of revenge against Mason and the overwhelming, desperate chance to finally find out what happened to Lily pulled at me like a tide.

He was offering me the keys to his world.

“One year,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, though I forced every ounce of strength I had into it. “Until your NHL signing is locked in. Then we walk away, and you burn the evidence about my accounts.”

A slow, satisfied curve touched the corner of Kellan’s lips. “One year.”

“We need rules,” I said quickly, backing up a step to put some distance between us. “Rule number one: no real feelings. This is a business contract. Nothing more.”

“Agreed,” Kellan said instantly.

“Rule number two: we don’t interfere in each other’s private lives. Outside of public appearances, you don’t ask where I am, and I don’t ask where you are.”

“Fine.”

“And rule three,” I added, glaring at him, “public affection only when absolutely necessary. No sudden kissing.”

Kellan chuckled, a low, rumbling sound in his chest. “Fair enough. But if we’re going to convince the media and the scouts, we have to look real. People notice the little things.”

Before I could ask what he meant, Kellan closed the distance between us again. He raised a hand, his large, warm palm gently resting against the side of my neck. My breath hitched. His thumb stroked softly along my jawline, sending a shock straight down my spine.

He leaned in close and I braced myself for his lips, but instead, he brushed his mouth softly against my cheek, right below my eye—a tender, intimate press that lasted only a second.

“For the cameras,” he murmured against my skin, his warm breath fanning across my face before he pulled back.

My heart was hammering wildly and my skin burned where his lips had touched me. I swallowed hard, forcing my face to remain completely blank.

“It means nothing,” I said coldly.

“Nothing at all,” Kellan agreed, though his dark eyes held a strange, unreadable intensity as he grabbed his coat from the back of the sofa. “Let’s go. Time to give the campus something to talk about.”

Five minutes later, we stepped out of the lodge together and began the long walk across the snowy central quad.

The winter afternoon was bright, the sky an, icy blue. Kellan walked beside me and without a word, he reached down and slid his fingers between mine.

I stiffened, almost pulling away, but his grip was firm.

As soon as we reached the paved pathways near the student center, the whispering started.

Students stopped in their tracks on the snow-covered lawn. Group conversations died down to stunned silence. Necks turned. People pulled out their phones, nudging their friends, staring at the two of us holding hands as if they were looking at a ghost.

“Is that really Aria Bennett?” a girl near the fountain whispered loudly to her friend. “The girl Mason cheated on?”

“Look at them... Kellan won't even let go of her hand,” a guy in a university jacket muttered.

I kept my head held high, staring straight ahead, but my fingers tightened slightly in Kellan’s grip. He didn't flinch. Instead, he squeezed back, a subtle, reassuring pressure that anchored me to the ground.

For a dangerous second, standing beside the tall, broad-shouldered hockey captain, feeling the heat of his hand laced tightly with mine…

I shook the thought out of my head immediately, sickening guilt pooling in my stomach. It’s a game, I reminded myself.

He’s the enemy.

Never forget why you’re doing this.

***

That night, my dorm room was dark, lit only by the soft, blue glow of my laptop screen on the desk.

I sat back in my chair, staring at the blank screen. Now that the deal was struck, I needed to fulfill my side of it. I opened my secondary browser and navigated to the main anonymous hate account I had used for months—@HayesExposed.

It was time to delete it. To erase the poison I had built up and begin my search for the truth about Lily from the inside.

I typed in the password and hit enter. The dashboard loaded, showing the profile banner and the thousands of followers who tuned in for my daily attacks on Kellan.

I moved my mouse toward the account settings button. But before I could click it, my eyes caught the top of the feed.

My heart stopped.

A post sat right at the very top of the page. Timestamped just twenty minutes ago.

“Don’t let the fake romance fool you,” the post read, accompanying a blurred photo of Kellan outside the sports complex. “Golden Boy Kellan Hayes is a liar and a monster who belongs in a cell. He’s hiding the truth about what he did to Lily, and he thinks a fake girlfriend will save him. We know what you did, Kellan.”

The breath left my lungs all at once and Cold sweat broke out across the back of my neck.

I hadn't opened the account all day and hadn't written a single word of that post.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard, shaking violently as I stared at the screen. Someone else was logged into my account.

Someone else was posting vicious attacks on Kellan—using my name, my secret, and my dead sister to destroy him.