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

He manages to take another ten or twelve pictures before the rink starts to fill up, other members of the skate club trickling in, a few fans already picking seats close to the ice. Dante moves to the sidelines to let other skaters practice, and he’s not even sitting down before a couple of girls are already leaning against the player box, flirting with him. One Ryan recognizes from the day before, that pretty blonde with the braid down her back—she stands closest to Dante, batting her eyelashes and flipping her hair over one shoulder as her friends giggle into their hands. Jealousy stabs through him, a stupid emotion, he has no right to feel this way, but he can’t help it. He can hear Dante’s laughter from here when the girl says something witty and cute, and he jams the camera into his backpack, shoves the notebook in after it, turns his chair around and wheels outside.


Chapter 23