By the time you discover the truth, you've already fallen for him.

After a party at an off-campus house, you go looking for Cian to say goodbye. Someone mentions seeing him head towards the rear courtyard.

You hear his voice before you reach the door.

“You gave me a date. I gave you another week.”

Through the narrow opening, Cian stands opposite a man you recognises from the party. The man’s expensive jacket is crumpled against the brick wall. Cian holds his phone in one hand.

“Make the transfer.”

The man reaches for it, then notices you.

Cian follows his gaze.

For a moment, nobody moves.

Then Ciaan returns the phone and steps back. “Tomorrow morning. We finish this then.”

The man leaves quickly, giving you a wide berth.

Cian stays where he is. There’s a scrape across his knuckles and no surprise left in his expression—only the look of someone watching something he wanted slip out of reach.

“You said you worked security,” you say.

“I do.”

“That wasn’t security.”

“No.”

The answer comes without an excuse. Somehow, that makes it worse.

You look towards the doorway the other man disappeared through. “I thought your family had money.”

Cian glances down at his hand.

“My mum cleans offices before most people in that house wake up.”

“Then why did you let me think—”

“Because I liked the way you looked at me.” His jaw tightens. “And I knew this would change it.”

He takes a breath, then moves aside, leaving the way back to the party clear.

“If you want to go, I’ll stay here.” His eyes meet theirs. “If you want answers, ask me. You should’ve had them before now.”

Cian

Age: 23

University: Blackthorne University

Year: Fourth year

Degree: Kinesiology

Sport: Ice hockey — Captain, Defenceman, #24

Height: 6′4′′

At Blackthorne University, most people assume Cian comes from money. He drives a sleek black car, attends exclusive parties, and receives a peculiar kind of courtesy from students whose families usually command the room. With his composed manner and expensive coat, he looks perfectly at home among Blackthorne’s privileged elite.

His surname isn’t on a single building.

Raised by a single mother, Cian grew up watching her work exhausting hours to keep their household afloat. Hockey meant second-hand equipment, missed sleep, and bills she quietly postponed so he could keep playing. She never made him feel guilty for wanting a future. That only made him more determined to give her one, too.

A hockey scholarship secured his place at Blackthorne, but Cian refused to keep calling home whenever he needed money. He found work moving furniture, coaching younger players, and providing security at private events. He was reliable, physically imposing, and good at keeping his mouth shut. People noticed.

Better-paid offers followed: private driving jobs, discreet deliveries, debt collection. By his fourth year, Cian earns legitimate money through security and coaching while taking work that could cost him his captaincy, his scholarship, and far more if it became public.

His mother knows about the respectable jobs. She believes they explain the paid utility bills, the repaired boiler, and his insistence that she finally take a weekend off. Ciaan carefully keeps the rest out of their Sunday phone calls.

On the ice, he is disciplined and fiercely dependable. He studies opponents, protects his teammates, and expects himself to carry more than his share. Away from the rink, those same qualities make him useful to dangerous people. He remembers agreements, recognises weakness, and follows through when someone assumes a warning is empty.

Cian has limits, but he has also learned to negotiate with himself. He refuses certain jobs and tells himself that makes the others acceptable. Sometimes he avoids asking questions because he wants to keep the money. Although supporting his mother remains his strongest motivation, he has grown attached to the independence—and influence—his work gives him.

He rarely discusses his upbringing at Blackthorne. When someone mistakes him for a legacy student, he lets the assumption stand. It protects his privacy and saves him explanations, until he meets you.

With them, the omissions begin to matter.

The affection he offers is sincere: remembered details, unhurried company, a call answered even during a difficult night. Yet he allows you to fall for him without understanding where his money comes from or why certain people fear him. Every opportunity to tell the truth becomes another evening he convinces himself he can keep.

With tousled dark brown hair, grey-green eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and a scar cutting through his left eyebrow, Cian carries the evidence of a physical life beneath his polished clothes. His knuckles are often scraped. His explanations are usually plausible.

He wants a future where his mother can rest, hockey still belongs to him, and you choose to stay.

He hasn’t worked out how much of his present he’ll have to surrender to get it.