
OFF THE ICE,INTO THE FIRE
faith.chigbu999 · Ongoing · 54.7k Words
Introduction
When a leaked video threatens to destroy Trevor Donovan’s career before it even begins, his management team needs a fix. Fast. Clean. Believable. They need a girl next door, not a puck bunny. They need Zara.
The problem? Zara thinks Trevor is exactly what the headlines say he is. Arrogant. Reckless. The kind of man who burns everything he touches and calls it entertainment.
The bigger problem? She says yes anyway.
What starts as a controlled arrangement staged dates, coordinated social media, a reality campus show designed to rebuild his image turns into something neither of them planned for. Because spending every day beside someone breaks down walls that took years to build. And Trevor Donovan, underneath the scandal and the swagger, is hiding damage that mirrors her own.
Zara came to fix his reputation. She didn’t come to fix him. She definitely didn’t come to fall.
But the cameras are always rolling. And some things can’t be faked no matter how hard you try.
Off the Ice, Into the Fire is a dark, addictive enemies-to-lovers campus romance about public scandal, private healing, and two broken people who find each other in the last place either of them expected.
Chapter 1
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.
Last Chapters
#47 Chapter 47 The Thing About Knowing
Last Updated: 6/5/2026#46 Chapter 46 Now I Know
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#45 Chapter 45 Something I Wasn’t Performing
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#44 Chapter 44 Episode Three
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#43 Chapter 43 Forty-Seven Minutes
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#42 Chapter 42 The Confrontation
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#41 Chapter 41 Dylan Escalates
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#40 Chapter 40 Wave Break
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#39 Chapter 39 The Marcus File
Last Updated: 6/4/2026#38 Chapter 38 The Ice, Three AM
Last Updated: 6/4/2026
You Might Like 😍
Accardi
“I thought you said you were done chasing me?” Gen mocked.
“I am done chasing you.”
Before she could formulate a witty remark, Matteo threw her down. She landed hard on her back atop his dining room table. She tried to sit up when she noticed what he was doing. His hands were working on his belt. It came free of his pants with a violent yank. She collapsed back on her elbows, her mouth gaping open at the display. His face was a mask of sheer determination, his eyes were a dark gold swimming with heat and desire. His hands wrapped around her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the table. He glided his fingers up her thighs and hooked several around the inside of her panties. His knuckles brushed her dripping sex.
“You’re soaking wet, Genevieve. Tell me, was it me that made you this way or him?” his voice told her to be careful with her answer. His knuckles slid down through her folds and she threw her head back as she moaned. “Weakness?”
“You…” she breathed.
Genevieve loses a bet she can’t afford to pay. In a compromise, she agrees to convince any man her opponent chooses to go home with her that night. What she doesn’t realize when her sister’s friend points out the brooding man sitting alone at the bar, is that man won’t be okay with just one night with her. No, Matteo Accardi, Don of one of the largest gangs in New York City doesn’t do one night stands. Not with her anyway.
Alpha VS Omega' Twin VS Twin (A Dark Werewolf Romance)
Stripped of everything, Callum is thrown into the Rookeries, where packless wolves go to die. But he survives. He builds a pack from the broken and the damned. He falls in love with Valentina, a dhampir hunted by the same vampire Parliament that destroyed his life.
In a city ruled by immortal aristocrats and controlled by ancient dragons, Callum learns the hardest truth: individual virtue cannot defeat systemic evil. But small victories matter. And some fights are worth losing everything
Lightborn: The Demon’s Bond
The Family Books 1-3 (A Mafia romance)
The saint to my sinner. with her innocent eyes and devilish curves.
A Madonna that was meant to be admired but never touched.
Until someone took that innocence from her.
She left.
The darkness in my heart was finally complete.
I avenged her, I killed for her, but she never came back.
Until I saw her again. An angel dancing around a pole for money.
She didn’t know I owned that club. She didn’t know I was watching.
This time I won’t let her escape.
I will make her back into the girl I knew.
Whether she likes it or not.
2/ Judge and Jury- I can’t stop watching her.
I’m not even sure I want to.
Taylor Lawson, blonde, beautiful, and totally oblivious to how much dangers she’s in.
She’s also the one juror in my upcoming murder trial that hasn’t been bought.
The one who can put me behind bars for a very long time.
I know I should execute her.
After all that’s what I do.
I am the Judge.
I eliminate threats to The Family.
And Taylor is a threat.
But I don’t want to kill her.
Possessing her, making her love me seems like a much better plan for this particular Juror.
3/ Rags and Ritches-
A Queen Among Tides (Book 5 in the Gods' Saga)
Shocked to find he's been bound in more ways than one to Sebastian, the future King to the Kingdom of Atlesper, Lemuel resists Sebastian's advances at every turn, believing this may be one pairing Goddess Zarseti got wrong.
Lemuel will have to face his past in hopes of starting a new future, but an overly flirtatious King is the least of his worries when he learns Sebastian's parents are convinced that a conniving usurper disguised as a curvy blonde, is the future king's true soulmate.
A Queen Among Tides is the 5th book in the Queen Among Series/The Gods' Saga. This is an interconnected series. To see how it ends, I recommend reading the full series.
Books in the series order:
A Queen Among Alphas - Book 1
Bite-Size Luna - A Queen Among Alphas Prequel (available under book 1)
A Queen Among Snakes - Book 2
A Queen Among Blood - Book 3
A Queen Among Darkness - Book 4
Whole Again - A Queen Among Alpha's spin-off (available under book 1)
A Queen Among Tides - Book 5
Valor, Virtue, and Verve - Tides Prequel Spin-off (will be available under book 5)
A Queen Among Gods - Book 6
Runaway Empress - A Queen Among Snakes Prequel (will be available under book 2)
A Queen Among Tempests - Book 7
Dark Vocation - Darkness spin-off (will be available under book 4)
A Court of Arcane Souls Anthology (side character short stories exclusive to Ream)
Royal Shadow Series (Next Gen Coming Soon)
Bound by Fate, Freed by Choice
Her escape leads her to Alpha Rowan, the commanding leader of the Blackwood Pack, who offers shelter, protection, and an unexpected chance at a new life. But Rowan’s fierce and jealous fiancée sees Lyla as a threat, and the pack’s charming Beta is drawn to her quiet strength.
As a dangerous attraction simmers between Lyla and Rowan, they begin to unravel a dark web of secrets that implicates Kaiden and threatens both their worlds.
With her hidden power awakening, Lyla must navigate treacherous loyalties, face the alpha who shattered her, and decide: Will she follow the destiny fate forced upon her, or claim the love and strength she has chosen for herself?
A pack of their own
Let Them Kneel
Cast out by her pack. Forgotten by the Lycans.
She lived among humans—quiet, invisible, tucked away in a town no one looked at twice.
But when her first heat comes without warning, everything changes.
Her body ignites. Her instincts scream. And something primal stirs beneath her skin—
summoning a big, bad Alpha who knows exactly how to quench her fire.
When he claims her, it’s ecstasy and ruin.
For the first time, she believes she’s been accepted.
Seen.
Chosen.
Until he leaves her the next morning—
like a secret never to be spoken.
But Kaelani is not what they thought.
Not wolfless. Not weak.
There is something ancient inside her. Something powerful. And it’s waking.
And when it does—
they’ll all remember the girl they tried to erase.
Especially him.
She’ll be the dream he keeps chasing… the one thing that ever made him feel alive.
Because secrets never stay buried.
And neither do dreams.
The Deadly Mafia Princess
Her gang take the matter in their own hands, to try to save their leader from the horror of her home. What none of them know, they wasn’t her real parents, and now Ro will be sent away to live with her real family. That makes her closest members in her gang pack up and move as well. They don’t want to be far away from their leader.
To protect what’s mine
HER ALPHA, HER SAVIOUR
Kane Hellboud, charm and wealth personified, wanted only me in exchange for her treatment. No cameras, isolation, or noose-like rules were part of the deal. Behind his smile? Cold, violent possessiveness that destroyed our fake marriage.
Most of all, I didn’t know the supernatural walked among us, hiding in the cracks of ordinary life. Not until Abel Stone stepped into mine—dark-eyed, sharp-tongued, and oozing dangerous promises. He’s my new boss. He shouldn’t make my skin tingle or my pulse race. I shouldn’t feel this primal pull, this illogical recognition that tugs at something deep in my bones.
Around him, lights burst, electronics fry, and something ancient in me awakens.
Kane feels it. His grip tightens, punishments turn brutal, and he hides the truth of what I am.
Trapped between two powerful men, I’m no prey, no pawn—no helpless victim.
Prisons burn. Monsters bleed. As for me? I'm the storm in skin—deadly beyond suspicion.
Mates: Regrets and Redemption
With my heart in pieces, I sought solace in the last place I expected—my Alpha's arms. One night turned into a dangerous entanglement, and now my Alpha refuses to let me go. As the Alpha’s obsession grows, I'm caught in a web of desire and fear.
Curtis, the boy I once loved, still holds a promise I made, but the Alpha’s powerful presence pulls me deeper into his world. Should I forgive Curtis and keep my word, or should I risk everything for a chance at something wild and unpredictable with the Alpha who won’t take no for an answer?
“There are no limits between us,” he chuckled, the mirth sparkling in his gorgeous eyes. “And all of this stems from the night you gave me both pain and pleasure. I’m simply returning the favor.”
He took two steps forward, and I stepped back. “But…” The memory of what I had done filled me with fear, and I knew I had to get out of there. “I…”
“No, Firecat.” He placed an index finger on my lips. “This will take your mind off that son of a bitch.” His strong hands pulled me by the waist until I felt his hard manhood.












