jj mccarthy hockey

I caught my boyfriend in bed with another girl on the night I was supposed to say yes to him. I should've cried. I should've run. Instead, I walked straight into the locker room of the one man Vince Vanguard was terrified of—his estranged stepbrother, hockey captain Xavier Vanguard. Six-foot-three. Tattooed. Allegedly slept with half the campus. And exactly the kind of weapon a 4.0 GPA girl like me had no business holding. The deal was simple: fake date me until graduation. Make Vince burn. Walk away clean. Except Xavier doesn't do fake. He doesn't do casual either—turns out the campus's most notorious player has never actually wanted anyone. Until me. Until the girl pretending to be his. Then the headlines drop. Xavier isn't just a hockey star. He's the sole heir to a multi-billion-dollar empire, and the man trying to steal it from him is his own father—a man who has already decided that the easiest way to break Xavier is to break the girl wearing his jersey. The kiss in his car wasn't supposed to be real. The bruises on my wrists from his father's men weren't supposed to be real. The three little words he whispered while carrying me out of that warehouse weren't supposed to be real either.But Xavier Vanguard doesn't fake anything—and now he's done sharing. He's claiming what's his. Even if it costs him his inheritance, his future in the NHL, and a bullet meant for me. I came for revenge. I'm leaving with a billionaire, a ring, and a war.