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

The first few lessons, his mother paid his skate fee, a mere five dollars back then. He took to the skates like an angel takes to flight—it was an innate ability, something he had done in a previous life and it all came rushing back at him the moment he stood up on those thin blades. He felt the ice beneath his feet as intimately as any lover’s body, the air on his face like the breath of God, the race in his blood. Skating became as essential to him as eating, sleeping, breathing. He took the job at Later Skater when his mother told him she couldn’t afford the skate fee any longer, and some days he ran from sun up to sun down, school then the rink then work, an unending cycle. Any day he didn’t skate was wasted in his mind.


Chapter 102