I don't fall for women. Women fall for me. I'm Lake Decker, best running back in the league. Former. After a debilitating injury forced me to step back from my budding career, the last thing I thought I'd be doing was drooling at the feet of my stale-looking therapist. But her saucy attitude, strict professionalism, and the occasional shiner have my curiosities piqued.

Welcome to Silver Falls University, where the elite come to thrive. My life as a queen bee was always traced for me. I'm rich, I come from an influential family, and I constructed my personality to become the girl everyone wants to be. I rule Silver Falls University with bright smiles and the pretense of being everyone's friend. But in a place where toxic rich kids love to see others fall, no one is safe.

I've always been a tough North Shore girl. Fighting is in my blood, survival in my DNA. But two years ago, Caden King broke me, and he has proof of it. Now he wants to blackmail me into doing a job for him. The kind that puts my chance of escaping the North Shore at risk. The kind that means betraying my own crew.

I’m a survivor. A fighter down to my blood. I need the release that comes when I step in that octagon, I crave it. I spent too long being beat down and broken in every sense of the word, and I almost didn’t make it. Fighting saved me though, and then I saved myself. When I am offered a full ride scholarship to a college in the middle of nowhere Alabama over 2000 miles away, I grab the chance with both hands and run like hell.

Still married. Those words change everything. Now my should-be ex-husband, Ramsey Stockton, the former pro football star turned felon and hero who left this town—and me—behind years ago, is at my door offering me a deal with the devil. If I let him stay and play his wife again for ninety days, he’ll give me a quiet divorce and his family ranch—the one my inn is on. When I scoff at the idea, he offers a million-dollar bonus to help my business float through this rough patch, but only if I’m his.