Sports romance books, from the rink to the diamond

Aaron Carlisle is the best male figure skater the University of California, Maple Hills, has to offer. When I was offered a spot at UCHM and my skating partner wasn’t, Aaron was luckily in the same position, and we became pairs. This is our third year of skating together and our third year of getting our asses kicked.

I have a theory that Aubrey is a Soviet spy. I don’t have any evidence, and my theory isn’t well developed. Developed at all, actually. But sometimes, when she’s screaming at me to straighten my spine or lift my chin, I swear a slight Russian accent slips out.

Which is peculiar for a woman from Philipsburg, Montana.

Comrade Brady was a figure skating superstar in her heyday. Even now, her movements are delicate and controlled, and she moves with such grace it’s hard to believe she can shout as loud as she does.

Her graying hair is always pulled back into a tight bun, which accentuates her high cheekbones, and she’s always wrapped tight in her signature faux-fur black coat, which Aaron jokes is where she hides all her secrets.

The rumor is she was supposed to go to the Olympics with her partner, Wyatt. However, Wyatt and Aubrey were practicing those lifts a little too often, and she ended up holding a baby instead of a gold medal.

That’s why she’s been in a bad mood since she started coaching twenty-five years ago.

“Clair de lune” fades as Aaron and I finish our routine nose to nose, our chests heaving against each other as we try to catch our breath. When we finally hear a single clap, we move apart and skate toward what will undoubtedly be the source of my next headache.

I haven’t even stopped moving when her green eyes lock on me and narrow. “When are you going to land your Lutz? If you’re not going to deliver, it needs to come out of your long program.”

Aside from Brady, successfully doing a quadruple Lutz and not landing on my ass is the current bane of my existence. I’ve been practicing for God knows how long, but I can’t quite manage to nail it. Aaron can execute it flawlessly, which is why I convinced the choreographer to put it into our routine in the first place.

Pride is a foolish thing.

“Calm down,” Ben offers, his voice soft, soothing the fear and adrenaline coursing through me. “Take it easy, Rhys—just breathe.”

“Where’s my dad? I can’t see anything.”

My voice is like this foreign thing echoing in a cavern. Am I speaking or is it in my head? Why can’t I see?

Everything starts to muddle together again, and the pain throbs in my head even harder. I want to open my eyes. I want to push my tongue against my teeth to check that they’re all there, and swear I’ll wear a mouth guard next time. I want to go back and pay attention, keep my fucking head up against that hit. I don’t want to be here.

I don’t want to be here.

I don’t want to be here.

The voices around me start to muddle to nothing as I slump into the thick darkness entrapping me.

“Just try it today, and if you still feel like shit, I won’t ask you to do it again. Okay?”

Even with the volume on my phone turned so low it should be silent, my father’s voice is a booming echo through the speaker. I wince lightly, using muscle memory to pull the black joggers over my legs in the darkness of my bedroom. After gently shrugging a hoodie over my head, I swipe the phone from where it lies on the dresser.

“I’m fine,” I say. It’s not really an answer, but I know what he’s really asking beneath his command.

We’re cut from the same cloth, my father and I—both calm under pressure, both “dipped like Achilles into a pool of confidence” as my mother so often puts it. I’ve been compared to him all my life—for the way I look, the way I skate, the way I play—and unlike many of the other NHL legacies I’ve played with, I don’t mind it.

My dad has always been my hero.

Which is why I know he’s asked me to work with the First Line Foundation today—a charity my father started after retiring from the NHL—purely as a way to check up on me. Where we used to talk hockey for hours, we barely share surface-level conversations now and I know he knows I’ve started avoiding him altogether.

The foundation funds scholarship programs for kids who want to play hockey but don’t have the means to do so. I’ve worked with the program before, I’ve even enjoyed it before, but now . . .

It feels daunting, like I know even now that the smiles of children won’t drive away the constant dread filling up the void of my body.

“Rhys,” he calls again, his voice still too loud. I huff a breath, sliding my shoes on and grabbing my bag before heading into the warm June air. “Just . . . try it today. And then, if you feel like it, take the keys tomorrow morning to run a few drills before the rink opens.”

I nod, tossing the bag into the backseat of my BMW. I’ve been cleared to drive for a month or so but have barely left the house in all that time.

“I will,” I finally say, tightening my hands on the steering wheel in the silence that follows. The swishing sound through my father’s crackling speaker tells me he’s driving with the windows down in his ancient truck that my mom refers to as “that thing.”

“And if you’re not ready this year, there’s no reason to push yourself. An extra year might be good, to make a better impression on the scouts before the next draft—”

While the PR department has the delightful privilege of putting out public-image fires, I do the day-to-day groundwork of cultivating our team’s social media presence. Glued to the team, iPhone in hand, I make the guys accessible to fans by implementing PR-sanctioned hype—informal interviews, jokes, tame pranks, photo ops, gifs, even the occasional viral meme.

I also document informal charitable outings geared toward our most underrepresented fans.

It’s not in my exact job description, but I’m a big believer in breaking down stigma around differences we tend to ostracize, so I wormed my way into the process. I don’t just want to make our hockey team more accessible to its fans; I want us to be a team that leads its fans in advancing accessibility itself.

That makes me sound sweet, doesn’t it? But the truth is nobody on the team would call me that. In fact, my reputation is quite the opposite: Frank the Crank. And while this bad rap is formed on partial truths and ample misunderstandings, I’ve taken the moniker and run with it. In the end, it makes everyone’s lives easier.

I do my job with resting bitch face. I’m blunt, all business. I like my routines, I focus on my work, and I sure as shit don’t get close with the players. Yes, we get along for the most part. But you have to have boundaries when you’re a woman in the near-constant company of two dozen testosterone-soaked male athletes—athletes who know I’m in their corner but who also know Frankie is a thundercloud you don’t get too close to, unless you want to get zapped.

Just like rain clouds and sunshine share the sky, Ren and I work well together. Whenever PR has a killer concept and I come up with a social media home run—pardon my mixing sports metaphors—Ren is my man.

Campy skit in the locker room to raise money for the inner-city sports programs? There’s Ren and his megawatt smile, delivering lines with effortless charm. Photo shoot for the local animal shelter’s fundraiser? Ren’s laughing as kitties claw up his massive shoulders and puppies whine for his attention, lapping his chin while he lavishes them with that wide, sunny grin.

So, yes. Sometimes I’m a little feisty. I’m scrappy and hardworking, and I like to win. I don’t settle. I won’t give up. Nothing gets in my way.

Which is why I seriously need to get my shit together, because something is about to get in my way.

My eligibility for next week’s match against our biggest rival hangs by a thread, thanks to the Business Mathematics course and the professor from hell.

I’m late to class, trying not to limp because of how much my muscles ache after a brutal practice. As I scurry down the ramp in the massive lecture hall, it takes everything in me not to say ouch-ouch-ouch with every single step I take.

The room’s packed, only a few stray seats remaining in the very first row.

A groan leaves me. Great. I get to show up late and make that super obvious by sitting front and center. As quietly as I can manage with muscles that are screaming for ibuprofen and a hot bath, I slip into an empty spot and silently extract my notebook.

Professor MacCormack continues scribbling equations on the board. Maybe my late entrance went undetected.

“Miss Sutter.” He drops the chalk and spins, dusting off his hands. “Good of you to join us.” Dammit.

“Sorry, Professor.”

“Get caught up from Ryder.” Completely sidestepping my apology, MacCormack spins back to the board and throws a thumb over his shoulder to the right of me. “He has my notes.”

My jaw drops. I’ve asked Mac for notes three times so far this semester, when I had to miss due to traveling games. He’d shrugged, then said I needed to “problem solve and figure out my priorities.” This Ryder guy just gets them?

That temper of mine turns my cheeks red. The tips of my ears grow hot, and if flames could burst out of my head, they would.

Finally, I turn to where Mac gestured, sickly curious to see this guy that my professor favors with lecture notes while I’m left scrambling to catch up with no help whatsoever. And I really need that help. I’m barely holding a C minus that’s about to become a D, unless God looks with favor on his lowly maiden Willa Rose Sutter and does her a solid on our upcoming midterm.

As if sensing her curious gaze, the young man’s head turned and caught her staring from the kitchen window. Apart from a slight widening of his eyes—what color were they?—his expression didn’t change. But those hands completed their curl at his sides. Quickly, Eve looked away, surprised to feel goose bumps lifting on her arms inside her sweater sleeves, no idea she’d spend the next eight years holding back four words from being said aloud. Four words that would keep her awake at night, choking her at times.

I saw him first.

“Who is that?” Eve asked her best friend, Skylar, who was the only freshman at Cumberland High with an At-a-Glance business planner—and she had her nose buried in it now.

“Who is who?” Skylar asked, distracted by her color-coded to-do list.

“That big dude with your brother.”

Skylar’s brunette head popped up. “Huh?” She turned in her chair to follow Eve’s line of sight out the window. “I have no idea. Wait. Why is he kind of hot?”

Eve snorted and sat, ripping open her chip bag. “The hot ones are always the biggest assholes.”

The other girl snorted too. “If he’s hanging out with my stepbrother, that definitely tracks.”

Eve woke up the home screen of her iPad.

“Maybe he’s on Elton’s travel team,” she murmured, once more glancing out the window.

“Uh, yeah. No. Look at his form. Is this, like, the first time he’s ever thrown a baseball?”

“Maybe he’s a cousin on your stepdad’s side,” Eve suggested, refusing to be caught staring again. Although keeping her attention glued to her iPad screen was annoyingly difficult.

“Imagine you just called your new cousin hot.”

“Stop.”

“Stop being a pervert.”

They ducked their heads to muffle the sound of their laughter, though Eve put an end to her mirth a lot sooner than Skylar, not wanting to make it weird. Or make it seem like she was too invested. Their friendship was still new, right? Skylar might welcome Eve at her kitchen table to do homework today, but girls their age were fickle. They switched up friend groups as often as they changed their nail polish color. Skylar was already getting teased for hanging out with Eve and it was only a matter of time before that got old.

Ignoring the dread that sank low in her stomach, Eve fished out another Frito curl and popped the chip into her mouth.

“What do you think is going to be on the quiz tomo—”

“Oh my god, they’re coming in here.”

“What? Oh.” Eve clapped her hands together to get rid of the Frito salt, then ran what she hoped were five nonchalant fingers through her chin-length blond hair, surprised to find her pulse being weird. “Whatever.”

“Yeah,” Skylar breathed, her casual shrug looking more like a flinch. “Whatever.”

“Coming right up,” the wedding planner says, jumping into action.

The tight photographer-staged ball of our family dissolves into easy mingling—quick laughter and steady conversation. Before someone can rope me into it, I scamper away across the sand, sandals hooked on my fingers, making a beeline for the elegant venue that boasts grand doors opened wide to the sights and sounds of the beach, the dwindling light mingling with ivory candles and floral centerpieces.

Trying to be circumspect, I follow the edge of the room, racking my memory for the nearest bathroom, though, at this point, I will take a closet, nook, the first private space available, to lose these horrible panties, because I’m about to crawl out of my skin.

Not everyone gets this upset about their underwear riding up their butt; however, I’m autistic, and I have a lot of sensory issues. Itchy seams, fabric bunched where it shouldn’t be, send me spiraling if I don’t address the issue promptly. I need to find somewhere to deal with my sensory misery immediately.

As I finally locate the restroom and stumble into the lounge area—an art deco ode to shell-pink velvet and bronze accents—I come to an abrupt stop, encountering the one thing that could distract me from the underwear from hell:

People talking about me.

“Don’t get me wrong, Ziggy’s sweet. She really is.” I can’t see her, but I recognize that voice. It’s Bridget, one of our just-retired midfielders from the National Team, whose spot I filled on our starting lineup. “She’s just so—”

“Young,” offers a voice I recognize, too. Martina, another recently retired player and former starting defender.

“Exactly,” Bridget says. “Frankly, I was surprised she made the roster at all. When Mal asked what I thought about her place on the team, I told him, she’s talented, but she doesn’t have the confidence, the… poise for a starting position, for the exposure and pressure that puts on you.”

“She really doesn’t,” Martina agrees.