MasukBrick’s POVI watched the kid skate off toward the tunnel after the first session, shoulders locked tight, one hand hovering near his ribs like he expected the next hit to come from under his own jersey.A faint scent still hung in the air—powdery, soft, nothing like the usual locker-room musk. Not masculine enough. It clung even after he left, and I hated that I noticed.The crash kept replaying. The moment I’d caught him before he hit the ice, arm locking around his waist, his chest pressing against mine. Something had felt terribly wrong. My pulse had stuttered. Hard. Like my body had short-circuited against another man’s.Never happened before.“Fuck,” I muttered, low and frustrated. The idea was insane. I was normal. Not gay. So why the hell had that moment left me flushed? It wasn’t intimate. Just a save. Routine. Yet my skin still remembered the exact shape of him against me.Rook glided up beside me, stick across his shoulders. “Yo, everything alright?”I kept my eyes on the
The practice rink felt colder when it was empty. No crowd noise. No boards rattling from other drills. Just the low hum of the refrigeration system and the sharp scrape of three pairs of skates already waiting for me at center ice. Maddox “Brick” stood tall and broad, silence making the empty rink feel colder still. Callahan “Rook” circled him, stick tapping the ice as he muttered something I couldn’t hear. Honestly, I didn’t care. Gary “Tank” leaned against the boards, arms crossed, watching me like he already didn’t trust me. Annoying. I’d picked up their nicknames by accident last season while stuck on the bench, watching the veterans. Brick. Rook. Tank. I’d learned enough from the sidelines to know they liked getting inside a rookie’s head just for fun. The way they watched me now made it clear they planned the same for me. I stepped onto the ice and felt every inch of the binding pull tight across my ribs. “Sterling.” Brick’s voice carried without effort. “Drop the stic
POV SLOANEEight months ago, I stopped being Sloane Sterling. I became Jaxson Sterling instead. My twin brother's name. His roster spot. His number. His entire life, stuffed into a hockey bag and carried across the country while he lay unconscious in a hospital bed. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Jaxson was supposed to be the one walking into preseason camp, not me. But when his career, his future, and everything he'd worked for suddenly hung in the balance, I made a choice I couldn't take back. I cut my hair, learned how to lower my voice, changed the way I walked, and started binding my chest beneath layers of compression and hockey gear. I memorized his stats, his habits, his favorite plays, even the stupid stories his teammates told about him. After eight months, I'd gotten good at being Jaxson. There was only one problem. My brother had patience. I had a temper.That temper got me into trouble halfway through the second period. The opposing defenseman caught me with
POV SloaneEight months ago, my brother forgot how to wake up.I remember thinking that was the strangest way to describe what had happened. The doctors never called it sleep. They called it unconsciousness, and they spoke in careful voices that made everything sound less frightening than it was. But I knew my brother. Jaxson didn’t sleep this long. He didn’t stay still. He didn’t lie quietly while machines breathed for him. He was the kind of person who could never sit through an entire movie without getting up for snacks, never walk past a hockey rink without stopping to watch, and never accept losing without demanding another chance. Even as kids, if I beat him at anything, he would insist on a rematch before I’d even put the game away. Now I could hold his hand for hours and get nothing in return.I sat beside him that morning, watching pale light creep through the hospital blinds. His face looked peaceful, which somehow made everything worse. The bruises from the accident ha
“Don’t go changing your mind on me.” Kai murmured as his hand moved over me. There was a dangerous intensity in his eyes now, something barely restrained, like all the desire he had kept buried for so long had finally broken loose. “I won’t.” Heat rushed through me, but beneath it came a flicker of fear. Not fear of him, exactly, but of how much I wanted this… how easily I could lose myself in everything I had spent so long trying to deny. My heart raced as I held his gaze. Oh My God! I wanted him. And somehow, that frightened me more than anything. The steering wheel dug into my back. And now… his hands were everywhere… under my shirt, up my skirt, and gripping my ass and yanking me down so I felt exactly how hard he was. “Fuck, Isla,” he groaned against my mouth. “I’ve been holding back for months. Watching you. Wanting you. And then I walk in and he’s got his tongue in your mouth—”He bit my lower lip hard enough to make me gasp, then soothed the sting with a gentle kiss.“D
Kai’s eyes locked on mine across the chaos, the fight still simmering under his skin. For a second… the whole kitchen seemed to hold its breath. Then something in him snapped.He tore free from the teammates holding him, shoved past Sarah, and closed the distance in three long strides. His hand closed around my wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but firm enough that there was no mistaking the intent.“We’re leaving!”I widened my eyes in disbelief. “Excuse me?”“Now!”“I’m not leaving because you got jealous and decided to pick a fight!”His eyes flashed. “Jealous?”“Yes! Jealous. I’ve asked you, Kai, to explain yourself!” I shouted. I genuinely didn’t understand Kai’s erratic behavior. He’s really out of his mind.A few people nearby suddenly found the floor incredibly interesting. I heard their footsteps approaching.Kai stepped closer and whispered in a grumpy voice that sent shiver down my spine. “You were kissing Asher.”“And?”“And you were letting him touch you.”I laughed once,







