Ryan Talonovich is the star of his college hockey team, until an accident during practice leaves him confined to a wheelchair. The doctors say he'll walk again but a new season is already underway and he's been replaced on the team, which leaves him feeling alone and betrayed. What's the use of fighting to get back on the ice now?<br><br>Then he meets Dante Espinosa, a short track skater on the city's speed skating club. Though he has to work overtime to afford his sport, Dante is hell on ice, and dreams of making the cut on the U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team.<br><br>Their love of the ice brings them together, but too many obstacles stand in their way: Ryan's struggle with therapy. The memory of Dante's first boyfriend. Lack of funding to the event, Dante's harassing boss, a skating friend in love with him, and Wil Dietrich, who will do anything to win.

Power Play

But it’s what he wants to do. College? No, not really, not unless they offer short track programs, which they don’t. None of the local ones do anyway, and he can’t afford to go out of state. Maybe further up north, but he was born and raised in New Jersey and if he goes anywhere else, it’ll be Lake Placid, that’s it. That’s his dream…well, one of them, to train with other athletes and make the Olympics one day. He knows it’s probably futile—he’s already getting too old for the sport, most short track skaters burn out before they’re even twenty-five—but it’s his dream, even if it never comes true. He’ll strive to reach it until it slips completely out of his grasp.


Chapter 9