The Hockey Prince's Secret Ice Queen

All I wanted was to find a computer genius to process the non-linear dynamic equations for my ecological model.

Instead, I found myself cornered by Julian Andrews, the university's hockey prince, trading a public, staged kiss for his academic support.

To finalize our "deal," I was dragged to the campus ice rink.

The cheerleaders and puck bunnies immediately swarmed him, mocking my plain clothes and treating me like a pathetic joke.

Brooke, the head cheerleader, even set up a figure skating competition with a date with Julian as the grand prize.

She performed a basic spin, blew him a kiss, and smugly waited for me to fall flat on my face and humiliate myself.

His hockey teammates laughed from the sidelines, watching me try to support Julian as he stumbled around the ice like a newborn giraffe.

But as I held his warm hand to keep him from falling, I couldn't help but feel something was terribly wrong.

Why was a top-tier athlete faking such awful balance?

And why did his ice-blue eyes stare at me with such knowing anticipation, as if he already knew about the professional figure skating past I had spent years trying to bury?

"Just let go and skate."

He whispered, slowly releasing my hand.

I took a deep breath, glided to the center of the rink, and landed a flawless double Axel.

As the entire rink fell into a dead, shocked silence, I realized I had just exposed not only my own hidden past, but also the biggest secret of the campus god.