Campus Fake

Sometimes the person who sees through every carefully constructed smile is the one who makes it possible to begin healing. In Campus Fake, Cadence Keys brings readers back to Clark Fork University for an emotional college hockey romance about friendship, pretend dating, and the courage to face the past. Everyone sees her as confident, fearless, and endlessly cheerful. She laughs easily, supports the people around her, and appears to have everything under control. Behind that carefully maintained image, however, she has spent years hiding her pain. When her estranged brother arrives and insists that she return home for Christmas, she must confront a family history she would rather leave untouched. Her roommate and close friend, Harrison Gordon, steps in with an unexpected solution. The quiet hockey goalie claims to be her boyfriend and offers to accompany her on the difficult trip. What begins as a convenient lie gives them a chance to face the situation together. Harry has always noticed the feelings hidden behind her jokes and deflections. As their pretend relationship develops, his patience and steady support challenge the beliefs she holds about herself. But she is keeping a painful secret, and she fears that revealing what happened on the night that changed her life will destroy the trust they are beginning to build. Blending friends-to-lovers romance with fake dating, emotional healing, survivor's guilt, and found-family themes, the novel explores how difficult it can be to accept forgiveness when shame has shaped one's sense of worth. Campus Fake is the fourth and final book in the CFU Hockey series, although it can also be read as a standalone romance. It is suited to adult readers who enjoy college sports romance, emotionally vulnerable heroes, slow-building romantic tension, and stories about rebuilding trust and discovering that the past does not have to define the future.