Sins on the Rink

“Chapter 2: The Fine Print,”

“Chapter 2: The Fine Print,”

────── ❅ VIANA ❅ ──────

The eviction notice was still in my coat pocket three days later, folded so many times the creases had gone soft.

I hadn't told my mom. She had enough to deal with, stuck in that recliner with her leg propped up, waiting on a surgery we couldn't afford and calling every twenty minutes to ask if I'd eaten something today. I lied and said yes. I hadn't eaten since yesterday.

The rink called me Thursday morning. Not to yell at me for skating without a slot. Worse.

"Ms. Silvervale, unfortunately your membership's been terminated." The girl on the phone sounded like she was reading off a script. Probably was. "New ownership's restructuring access."

"Restructuring," I repeated. "You mean he's kicking me out."

"I can't comment on that."

I hung up before she could hear my voice c***k, because crying over a man who bought a building just to spite me felt pathetic even by my standards.

I went anyway. Couldn't help it. Some habits you don't break just because the door's locked.

He was there. Of course he was there, standing rinkside in a suit that probably cost more than my mom's entire hospital bill, talking to some guy with a clipboard like the world existed to take his orders.

"You," I said, before I could stop myself.

Cross turned. Those eyes again, dark and unreadable, doing that thing where they looked straight through me instead of at me.

"Ms. Silvervale." Formal. Like we hadn't already had a fight three days ago. "I was hoping you'd come by."

"You terminated my membership."

"I did." He didn't even pretend to feel bad about it. "I have a proposal instead."

"I don't want your proposal."

"You haven't heard it yet."

The clipboard guy disappeared like he'd been trained to vanish the second things got interesting. Smart man.

Cross gestured toward the small office off the rink, glass walled, empty. "Five minutes. If you hate it, you can leave and I'll never bother you again."

I should have walked. Every instinct told me to walk. But five minutes of listening cost nothing, and I was six days from being on the street with my mom's medication in a duffel bag, so I followed him into that glass box like an i***t who thought she still had options.

He shut the door. Pulled a folder out from under his arm like he'd had it ready this whole time. Like he'd known I'd show up.

"I need a girlfriend," he said. "Publicly. For eight months, maybe less."

I laughed. Actually laughed, short and sharp. "Excuse me?"

"My board wants proof I'm stable. Settled. Not some reckless bachelor throwing money at hotels and hockey teams with nothing to lose." His jaw ticked. "A relationship solves that problem. Cameras love a story. You skate, I play hockey, it writes itself."

"And what, you just picked me? Random girl you evicted from a rink three days ago?"

Something flickered in his expression. Fast. Gone before I could name it. "You're memorable."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

I should have left right there. Instead I made the mistake of looking down at the folder he slid across the desk, and the number on the first page made my stomach drop straight through the floor.

Two hundred thousand dollars. For eight months of pretending to date a man I couldn't stand.

"You're insane," I said, even as my brain was already doing the math. Rent. Mom's surgery. The physical therapy. All of it, gone, solved, in eight months of faking something that wasn't real.

"I'm efficient." He leaned back, watching me do exactly what he knew I'd do, which made me want to slap the calm right off his face. "You need money. I need a story. It's a transaction, not a sacrifice."

"I have a life."

"You have a mother with a surgery she can't schedule and an eviction notice you're currently folding into origami in your coat pocket." His voice didn't change. Didn't get cruel. Just flat, factual, like he'd read my whole file and memorized it for sport. "I'm not guessing, Ms. Silvervale. I did my research."

My hands went cold. "You looked into my mother?"

"I look into everyone I make offers to."

Freaking hell. I wanted to throw something at him. Instead I sat there, jaw locked, hating how right he was about every single thing.

"Fine," I said, before I could talk myself out of it. "Say I agree. What exactly does pretend girlfriend mean?"

"Dinners. Public appearances. A few events my board expects to see us at." He slid a pen across the desk, the same unreadable calm on his face. "And you move into my building. Security reasons. The press gets aggressive once this goes public."

"I'm not moving in with you."

"Then we don't have a deal."

I stared at that pen for a long time. Longer than I wanted to admit.

────── ❅ CROSS ❅ ──────

I watched her hands shake over the paperwork and hated myself a little for enjoying it as much as I did.

Not the fear. Never the fear. The fight underneath it, the way she kept looking for an angle even as she signed her name at the bottom of a contract that was going to change both our lives in ways neither of us saw coming.

My wolf paced under my skin the entire meeting, quiet but present, cataloguing every inch of her like it needed proof she was really there. Her scent filled that glass office until I could barely think past it, winter and something warm, and I had to grip the edge of the desk to keep from doing something reckless like crossing the room and finding out if it tasted the way it smelled.

She signed. Slower than she wanted to, faster than she probably should have.

"There," she said, sliding the folder back at me like it burned. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic," I said, and meant it more than I let on.

I should have felt satisfied. Contract signed, board appeased, cover story locked in place before anyone asked too many questions about the girl I'd been seen watching a little too closely at that rink three mornings running.

Instead all I felt was the countdown starting in my chest, quiet and certain, because a mate bond didn't care about paperwork or boardrooms or eight month timelines.

It only cared about one thing. Claiming what was already his.

She had no idea what she'd just signed up for.

And in six days, when the first article hit and her photo showed up next to mine on every gossip site in the country, someone was going to see it. Someone who'd been hunting wolves like me for ten years, patient and quiet, waiting for exactly this kind of mistake.

I'd just handed them a target.

────── ❅ ──────