OFF THE ICE,INTO THE FIRE

Petra shoves her phone in my face before I even put my coffee down.

“Look at this.”

I look.

Forty-three seconds. I watch it twice. Trevor Donovan, Crestwood’s golden boy, starting center, the guy whose face is on three different campus banners, standing at a team party with a girl pressed against him and his hand doing something the camera angle makes look a lot worse than maybe it was. Maybe.

Four million views. Still climbing.

I set the phone on my desk and pick up my coffee.

“Okay.”

Petra stares at me.

“Okay? That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something. He’s literally the face of this university’s hockey program.”

“He’s literally what I expected.” I take a sip. Hot, bitter, exactly right. “Men like Trevor Donovan always end up exactly like this. It just usually takes longer for the camera to catch it.”

Petra drops onto my bed with a groan.

“You don’t even know him.”

“I know the type.”

I do. I have known the type since I was sixteen years old, sitting in the back seat of my mother’s car while Marcus stared out the window and said nothing for two hours because there was nothing left to say. Four years of his life. A sport he loved. A program that protected the wrong person because the wrong person happened to be talented, connected, and impossible to touch.

I shut that down before it goes further. This is not about Marcus.

I pull my laptop open and find the constitutional law reading I have been putting off since Tuesday. Petra keeps scrolling through the video comments, reading the worst ones out loud with increasing volume. I am three paragraphs into Marbury versus Madison when someone knocks on our door.

Petra frowns.

“You expecting someone?”

“No.”

She opens the door.

The man in the hallway does not belong in a freshman dorm corridor. Mid-forties, a suit that costs more than my meal plan, a tablet under one arm, and the specific expression of someone who has not stood in a line for anything in years. He looks past Petra directly at me.

“Zara Lennox?”

I close my laptop.

“Who’s asking?”

“My name is Richard Hale. I represent Trevor Donovan’s management team.” He does not wait to be invited in. He steps through the doorway, glances once at Petra like she is a piece of furniture he is deciding whether to move, and focuses back on me. “I apologize for coming unannounced. We are working under some time pressure.”

I do not stand up.

“I am a pre-law sophomore. I am not sure what Trevor Donovan’s management team thinks I can do for them.”

Something moves behind his eyes. Not surprise. More like confirmation, like I just answered a question he already had the answer to.

“You are also the head of Crestwood’s Student Integrity Board, the face of the campus women’s advocacy campaign, and you have fourteen thousand Instagram followers who describe you, consistently, as the most genuine person on this campus.” He glances at his tablet. “Their words, not mine.”

Petra makes a sound behind him. I do not look at her.

“That is flattering,” I say. “I still do not see the connection.”

Richard Hale sets his tablet on my desk and turns it to face me. On the screen is a document. A contract. My name is already in the header.

“We need someone credible,” he says. “Someone the public will believe. Someone with a reputation clean enough to transfer, at least partially, to Trevor’s image while we manage the fallout from last night.” He pauses. “We need a girlfriend.”

The word sits in the room like something that landed too hard.

I look at the contract. Then at him.

“You want me to fake date a man I have never met.”

“We prefer the term image partnership.”

“I prefer the term no.”

He does not flinch.

“Ms. Lennox, I would ask you to look at page three before you decide.”

I do not want to look at page three.

I look at page three.

The number is clean and specific and real. Enough to cover the rest of my degree without touching my mother’s savings account. Enough to pay down the physical therapy bills she keeps telling me are fine and are not fine. Enough to stop doing the math every month that always comes out the same wrong answer.

I close the tablet screen.

“How long?”

“One semester. Possibly two if public response requires extended coverage.”

“How public?”

“There is a reality show element.” He says it the way people say minor side effects. “Campus-based. Already greenlit before last night. Trevor was attached. The network wants authentic campus life, the relationship dynamic, the full picture. With the current situation, the show becomes part of the image rehabilitation process. You would both be filmed.”

I look at him.

“You want me to fake date a man I have never met. On camera. For a reality show.”

“We prefer image part…”

“If you say image partnership one more time I am going to ask you to leave.”

His mouth closes.

I stand up. Walk to the window. Outside, the Crestwood campus is doing what it does on a Monday morning. Students crossing the quad, someone throwing a frisbee badly, a day that looks completely ordinary and is not. Four million people have already decided who Trevor Donovan is. His management team has decided who I am. Nobody asked either of us.

I turn around.

“I want final approval on anything involving my personal narrative. I want a separate NDA covering my family. I want the full amount transferred before we film a single frame.”

Richard Hale does not smile, but something in his posture shifts toward it.

“I can have revised terms to you by this afternoon.”

“Then I will read them this afternoon.” I cross my arms. “Are we done?”

He picks up his tablet. Moves toward the door. Stops.

“One more thing, Ms. Lennox. Trevor would like to meet before anything is finalized. Tomorrow morning. The Harlow Hotel, ninth floor.” He pauses with his hand on the frame. “He asked to see you specifically before signing.”

The door closes.

Petra is looking at me like I have grown something unexpected.

“Zara.”

“Don’t.”

“You just…”

“I said don’t.”

I pick up my coffee. It has gone cold. I drink it anyway because my hands need something to hold and my brain is already three moves ahead, already building the version of myself I will need to be when I walk into that hotel room tomorrow and meet the man whose face is on three campus banners.

My phone buzzes on the desk. Unknown number. One text.

Looking forward to it.

I stare at the screen.

He already has my number.