His Hockey Team's Last Season

Senior season is slipping away in January, and three of the boys at Hawthorne House are about to graduate, leaving a calm college hockey defenseman with a shrinking window to repair his play and decide what comes after the final horn.

Gianna Reeve is not supposed to complicate either task.

His captain's sister fills every room with talk, sits at their kitchen table, cheers from the stands, and still expects him to answer every question she throws at him.

When she tells him she likes him, he admits he had not known, and that mistake rewires his attention until he tracks her arrivals, her nerves, and the quiet she leaves behind.

Crossing a line with her would tangle the friendships and the house he is about to lose, but doing nothing would mean pretending he can stop thinking about her.

The team is still fighting for one last championship while Hawthorne already begins to change, and every time she gets close, the future he cannot name grows harder to ignore.