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

Dante shoves the display together a little too roughly and the cardboard falls apart around him like a house of cards. “What?” he asks, exasperated. He hears the tight anger in his own voice and sighs. “I’m sort of busy here—”


“You getting hungry yet?” Bobby asks.


Something in the way he says it suggests he’s not just talking about food and Dante wants to tell him about Ryan, he wants to say, Look, I got a boy now, back off.But there’s nothing overt there, nothing he can pin down and object to—Bobby would put his arms up as if he means no harm and then get pissy and Dante doesn’t need that. He is a littlehungry, but he knows his boss well enough to know that if he runs next door to get sandwiches, it’ll come out of Dante’s pay. “I’m fine,” he says, turning back to the display.


Chapter 72