Chapter 2 Chapter two

Chapter Two

Sophia’s POV

I stood frozen in the middle of the lounge, the television audio buzzing in my ears like background static.

Alexander Blackwood.

He wasn’t just some wealthy stranger who had rented a luxury suite for a night. He was the Alexander Blackwood. Captain of the Saint Jude varsity hockey team, the campus golden boy, the prospective first-overall draft pick, and practically royalty to every student and scout in this city.

A sudden prickle rushed over my skin. That night.....the one thing I thought was a private, buried mistake between two anonymous people.....suddenly felt stripped bare and exposed.

Fragments of that evening crashed back into my head with terrifying clarity.

There had been this darkness in the way he moved, the way his hands had locked onto my waist, the way his dark eyes had pinned me down.

There was something almost predatory about the way he had looked at me.....it was so dangerous that it made the hair on my arms stand up just thinking about it.

I looked down at my gray maintenance overalls, then back at the glowing screen where sports analysts were debating his multimillion-dollar future.

For about ten seconds, the desperate part of my brain chanted: Tell him.

He was loaded. He was the father. He had a moral obligation to help cover prenatal vitamins, clinic visits, and the mountain of debt about to crush me.

Then I looked at the footage of him stepping out of the team bus, swarmed by dozens of cameras, cheering fans, and eager journalists shouting questions about his upcoming season.

What would happen if the scholarship cleaner walked up to the campus god and announced she was carrying his baby?

His PR team would bury me. His wealthy family would probably hire ruthless lawyers to call me a extortionist, rip my scholarship away, and throw me out on the street.

Worse than that.....I didn't trust him. A man who pays cash and vanishes before sunrise isn't looking to play happy family.

I'll handle this myself, I thought, gripping the yellow mop handle until my knuckles turned white. I don't need Alexander Blackwood's charity, and I don't need his drama.

I wasn't some helpless, weeping girl waiting for a prince in hockey skates to rescue me. I had survived on my own this long, balancing a 3.9 GPA in advanced data analytics while working forty hours a week with a failing heart. I had plans. I had dreams of building predictive sports models for major sports franchises.

I was stubborn, I was strong enough to tough my way out of anything at all and I wasn't going to let one reckless night derail my entire life.

I moved my bucket down the hall toward the team’s review room, dragging the mop along the rubber floor mats.

The door was cracked open, and the loud, frustrated voices of two varsity players drifted out into the corridor.

"I'm telling you, Miller, Northern is running a standard one-three-one defensive trap," a burly defenseman groaned, smacking a dry-erase marker against the whiteboard. "If we dump the puck into their left corner, their blue-liner will pinch, and Alexander can skate through the neutral zone on the right flank."

"It won't work," the second player argued, running a hand through his hair. "Their goalie has the fastest lateral glove recovery in the league. If we force the play right, we're skating straight into a turnover."

I stopped outside the threshold, leaning on my mop, staring at the messy diagram drawn on the board.

"You're reading their transition wrong," I said before I could stop myself, my voice cutting through their argument.

Both players snapped their heads toward the doorway, staring at me like a piece of furniture had just started talking.

"Excuse me?" the defenseman scoffed, looking at my rubber gloves and damp uniform. "Did the cleaning staff just try to explain breakout schemes to varsity starters?"

"Northern doesn't run a true one-three-one against fast-skating teams," I replied, crossing my arms over my chest and meeting his arrogant smirk dead-on. "Their left defenseman fakes the pinch to bait the cross-ice pass, but their center collapses low to clog the slot. If you dump it left, you aren't freeing up your captain.....you're feeding their center a breakaway. You need to carry through the middle lane and draw their high forward before kicking it wide."

The second player blinked, looking at the board, then at me.

The defenseman just barked out a harsh laugh. "Thanks for the tip, Einstein. Don't forget to wipe down the benches on your way out."

I didn't argue. I just gave them a dry, unimpressed look, picked up my bucket, and walked away.

Two hours later, during my fifteen-minute break in the library, I pulled out my beat-up laptop.

I opened the hockey team’s public athletic department email and spent ten minutes typing out a breakdown of Northern’s defensive rotations, complete with timestamped transition vulnerabilities from their last four games.

I hit send from an anonymous student mail account without attaching my name.

I didn't do it to help them win. I did it because bad analysis physically irritated me, and watching sports patterns was the only thing that kept my mind off the dull ache in my chest.

By six in the evening, my shift was finally over.

I changed back into my oversized sweater and worn jeans, grabbed my backpack, and headed down the main arena tunnel toward the campus exit.

laughter echoed from the far end of the hallway.

A group of varsity players were walking toward me, gear bags slung over their broad shoulders, smelling of sweat.

Right in the center of the pack was Alexander.

He was wearing a black team jacket, his dark hair still damp from the showers, laughing at something the defenseman said with that easy, magnetic charm that made everyone around him orbit his space.

My heart did a violent, erratic leap against my ribs, hammering so hard my vision blurred for a split second.

He looked up and our eyes locked.

For one terrifying beat, the entire crowded hallway seemed to evaporate.

I froze in my tracks, my fingers tightening around the straps of my backpack. A nervous, awkward little smile tugged at my mouth.....half terrified, half bracing for the inevitable shock when he recognized me. I parted my lips, ready to say a quiet hello, ready to figure out what on earth we were supposed to do about the mess between us.

Alexander's easy grin vanished instantly.

His jaw locked tight. His dark eyes hardened, as they pierced straight through me.

Then, without slowing down for a fraction of a second, he looked away, adjusted his bag strap, and walked right past me.

He brushed past my shoulder like I didn't exist.

Like I was nobody at all.

I stood there, completely stunned, my cheeks burning with humiliating heat as the awkward smile died on my lips.

"Hey, Cap," one of his wingers asked from behind him, glancing back over his shoulder at me. "You know her? Looked like she was about to say something."

Alexander didn't even turn his head.

"Nahhh," he drawled, his deep voice carrying clearly down the corridor. "Never seen that one before."

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

He was lying.

I had seen the exact second his smile died. I had seen the tension snap through his shoulders the moment his eyes hit mine.

He remembered every single second of that night.

He remembered.....and he was acting like I was dirt beneath his boots.

I turned around slowly, watching his broad back disappear down the tunnel, anger completely wiping out every ounce of fear in my body.

Fine, Alexander, I thought, my hands balling into tight fists. You don't know me? Let's see how long you can keep that lie alive.