Caught Offside (Cross Check #2)

The hockey player knows how to take a hit. The baseball player knows how to call the game. Neither of them knows what to do when casual starts feeling like home.

Patrick Fontaine has built his NHL career on being steady, useful, and impossible to rattle. He blocks shots, kills penalties, keeps his head down, and never gives anyone a reason to look too closely.

Then a sharp-mouthed Triple-A catcher slides into his DMs, and Patrick’s carefully quiet life starts getting very loud.

Asher Tucker is used to pressure. As the son of two baseball legends, he’s spent his whole career being measured against expectations he can never quite outrun.

He should be focused on spring training, his sore knee, and finally proving he belongs in the majors.

Instead, he’s driving to Chicago for stolen weekends with a gorgeous, guarded defenseman whose kisses make it dangerously easy to forget this was supposed to stay casual.

It’s supposed to be simple. No labels. No promises. Just two athletes with impossible schedules finding each other when they can.

But as Patrick’s future in Chicago starts to look less certain and Asher gets the call he’s been chasing his whole life, casual stops being enough.

With roster moves, road trips, and old fears pulling them in opposite directions, they’ll have to decide whether protecting themselves is worth losing the one thing neither of them expected to find.