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 Josey shakes her head. “Not really. You don’t have to stay the whole time. Dante’s up for the five hundred and the thousand, I think—he’s not a distance skater. I mean, he can do it, but he’s fast and that’s what counts in the short runs. He just needs to win one of those races and he’s going to State. If he wins the five hundred, he won’t skate in the thousand.”


Frowning, Ryan looks up as the crowd erupts in fresh cheers, the current heat over. One of the skaters circles the ice, his arms in the air, grinning in victory—Ryan recognizes him as that Dietrich kid, the one Dante told him about, had his father pay his way into the quarterfinals. Ryan doesn’t like his smug air, the cocky way he bows at the crowdGet off the damn ice already,he thinks, watching the guy ham it up. Jesus, you won, isn’t that enough? Do you have to rub it in, too?


Chapter 50