IVY
Seven years ago, Gabriel Castellano took the best night of my life and turned it into a punchline. It cost me my spot on the national team and the only future I'd ever planned.
Now he's here. Traded to Whistler, parked in my booth with his new teammates, telling me to surprise him like he's never seen my face before.
As far as he knows, he hasn't.
So I did what any professional would do. I "accidentally" poured a pint of our worst IPA straight down his six-hundred-dollar shirt. Surprise!
Here's the problem: his team just partnered with The Penalty Box, keeping my late father's bar alive, and the town wants repairs that cost more than we clear in a season. Which makes the man I've spent seven years hating the closest thing I have to leverage.
And every night he comes back, hating him gets more expensive.
GABRIEL
People have told me who to be since I was fifteen, and I've never once disappointed them. Golden boy. Franchise face.
So I can't explain the bartender.
She hates me. Openly. Specifically. Like she's had it ready for years.
The worst part isn't that I don't know why.
It's that I'm starting to think I should.
A slow-burn, high-angst hockey romance with:
- Enemies to lovers—he doesn't remember her, she remembers everything
- Forced proximity, one blizzard, one bar
- A second chance carrying a seven-year grudge
- A grovel that draws blood
- Found family, a bar worth fighting for, and one mechanical wolf
- Dual POV, slow burn, open door, guaranteed HEA
For readers who loved the grovel in Elle Kennedy's The Mistake and the BC-set slow burn of Stephanie Archer's Behind the Net.
Book 1 in The First Line.
