Off the Ice

How do you forgive the person who crushed your dreams and left you a crippled wreck? Ethan Russell doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to find out. He’s too busy trying to rebuild something resembling a life from the ruins of what remains after defenseman Tanner McCoy shattered his hip and ended his career as the most promising goalie for the Miami Spirit in twenty years. His grandfather’s small hobby farm seems the perfect thing to distract him from what he’s lost, even if he can’t tell a llama from an alpaca. Tanner knows he doesn’t deserve forgiveness. It’s never occurred to him as an option. With his own career destroyed by the panic attacks that hit him every time he laces up his skates, nightmares plaguing him, and his face too recognizable in his hometown, he gets in his car and runs from it all. Neither Tanner nor Ethan are expecting to meet again. But when a favor for a mutual friend brings them together, they’re forced to navigate a relationship fraught with pitfalls that threaten to swallow them both whole. And maybe, just maybe, the broken man and the man who broke him can learn how to heal each other.