Hoyt Wilhelm: Life Of A Knuckleballer

She swore she’d never touch a hockey stick again. Not after the boy she loved humiliated her on the ice in front of the whole school. But when Ryder Hayes, the new goalie with a criminal record, a reckless grin, and a habit of getting under her skin, asks her to pretend to be his girlfriend, she says yes… for one reason. He’ll help her win a scholarship that could change her life. The deal is simple: she teaches him how to handle the pressure of big games, and he pretends to be the perfect boyfriend in front of the cameras. But the closer they get, the harder it is to tell what’s fake and what’s not. And the more she learns about the secrets behind his smirk, the more dangerous this game becomes.

They were supposed to be on the same team. Santos Khyle arrived in Seattle as the Soul Reapers' most anticipated rookie in years, a natural-born scorer with something to prove and a chip on his shoulder the size of a regulation puck. Gunner Jäger had been tearing up the ice as the team's feared enforcer for two seasons, and he had zero interest in sharing his spotlight with some orange-haired twenty-one year old who looked at him like he was a problem to be managed. From the moment they met, it was war. On the ice, they were a disaster. Off it, they were worse. Screaming matches in corridors. Fists through locker room walls. A live on-air brawl that made every highlight reel in North America and earned them both a suspension, a lecture from their furious coach, and the undivided attention of the entire hockey world. Nobody could stand to watch them together. Nobody could look away either. Because underneath the fury and the bruises and the months of spectacular mutual destruction, something else was building. Something neither of them had language for yet. Something that felt uncomfortably like the only fight either of them was actually afraid to lose. The Soul Reapers are one playoff run away from everything. Gunner and Khyle are one honest conversation away from falling apart completely. Or maybe, just maybe, from finally figuring out what they are to each other. Pucking Up the Ice is a slow burn MM romance set in the brutal and beautiful world of professional hockey. It contains explicit language, on-ice violence, emotional gut punches, two men who are absolutely terrible at feelings, and a love story that had to break everything before it could build something worth keeping.

Maya Adams has a type… Anyone who isn’t Hunter Callum. To the rest of the world, he’s the God of Hockey..a cold, arrogant, shirtless-on-every-billboard legend. To Maya, he’s the prude, stuck-up asshole who just got her suspended from her dream job at a top New York publishing firm. When a drunken night of trash-talking Hunter at a club ends in a bloody brawl and a viral scandal, Maya wakes up in the one place she never thought she’d be…Hunter’s penthouse. Now, his agent is offering her a deal she can’t afford to refuse Play the part of the doting, supportive girlfriend for five months. Curb the temper of the league's most volatile player. Walk away with $3.5 million and her career back. The rules are simple: keep it professional in private and convincing in public. But as the "God of Hockey" starts showing Maya a side of himself the cameras never see, the lines between their contract and their chemistry begin to blur. Maya is supposed to be faking it. But Hunter? He stopped playing a game the moment he laid eyes on her. Falling for the enemy wasn't in the contract. But obsessed gods don't play by the rules.

Nora Jensen has a plan for everything. Senior year? Mapped out. College applications? Done. Feelings for Cole Whitaker, Millbrook High's infuriatingly charming hockey star? Absolutely, categorically, not part of the plan. But when Cole shows up at her locker with that look — the desperate one he'd never admit to — and says you owe me one, Nora finds herself agreeing to the most ridiculous favor of her life. One family dinner. One fake girlfriend. Simple, clean, transactional. Except nothing about Cole Whitaker turns out to be simple. Not the way he remembers her coffee order without being asked. Not the way he describes his favorite color as pre-game ice, before they turn the main lights on. Not the way he looks at her on the porch after dinner like she's something worth keeping — and she's supposed to be pretending he isn't looking at all. Nora made a deal. She just didn't read the fine print. The part where fake dinners turn into real conversations. Where negotiated terms start feeling a lot like feelings. Where the boy you agreed to pretend to love somehow becomes the one person you can't imagine pretending about. The rules were simple. Don't hold his hand. Don't look at him like you like him. Don't fall. Two out of three isn't bad.

When NHL captain Ethan Brooks becomes the center of a career-ending scandal, the last thing he expects is to find comfort in a neighborhood bakery. Emma Carter has spent years rebuilding her life after losing her parents, pouring everything she has into North & Rye. She doesn’t care about celebrity gossip or billionaire families. She only knows that the quiet man who comes in every morning for coffee seems exhausted by the weight of the world. As their friendship grows into something deeper, Ethan begins finding pieces of himself he thought he’d lost. But falling in love with him comes at a cost Emma never imagined. Her bakery becomes the target of public outrage, her neighborhood is threatened by the very company Ethan’s father controls, and every decision they make seems to pull them further into the spotlight they both wish they could escape. With Ethan chasing one final chance at the Stanley Cup and Emma fighting to save the place that has always felt like home, they’ll have to decide whether love is enough when the entire world seems determined to tear them apart. In the end, Ethan discovers that redemption isn’t found in winning championships or changing public opinion. It’s found every morning inside a little bakery called North & Rye, where one woman believed in him long before anyone else did.

Dr. Liam Hart has been fantasizing about hockey star Kai Anderson for months—until Kai shows up at his clinic with a humiliating problem. He can’t get hard. Not for his fiancée, not for anyone. Until Liam touches him. The exam becomes explosive. Kai’s cock responds to Liam’s hands in ways it never has for women. Terrified and confused, Kai reports Liam for inappropriate conduct. Liam loses his medical license. His career is destroyed. Broke and desperate, Liam becomes assistant hockey coach at Kai’s university. Now he has authority over the cocky Alpha who ruined his life. On the ice, Liam makes Kai suffer—brutal drills, harsh criticism, no mercy. Off the ice, the sexual tension is suffocating. Late one night in the locker room, their hatred explodes into a brutal kiss. Kai is engaged to Cerise Leonard. The wedding is in three months. It’s a billion-dollar merger that will make him Alpha and his father’s heir. But he can’t stop thinking about his coach. He can’t stop wanting Liam’s hands on him, Liam’s mouth on him, Liam inside him. He makes Liam an offer: $100,000. Three months of secret sex lessons. Teach him everything before he’s locked into heterosexual marriage forever. Liam knows it’s a terrible idea. He agrees anyway. What starts as angry fucking becomes something dangerous. Kai falls in love with the man he’s supposed to hate. But his father discovers everything. The scandal explodes across campus. Liam is under fire. Kai is trapped between duty and desire. The wedding is in one week. At the altar, Kai must choose: the billion-dollar bride waiting in white, or the man who taught him what love actually feels like. Who will he choose?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​