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Book safety, content warnings, and tropes down below.

Black holes. Emptiness. Loneliness. My name etched into eternity is a cold comfort. I cannot sleep beside the Cup. I cannot wrap my arms around it and feel its heartbeat, or feel its breath move through my hair. I may love this sport, and love the chase of this championship, but it will not love me back.

I think this was my fourth time reading this book. The chemistry between these characters is through the damn roof. The kind that gives you butterflies, makes your cheeks ache from smiling so much, and makes you kick your feet like a silly teenager. It’s oh-so good.

It’s a beautiful, relatively uncomplicated sexual awakening, where the focus is on how to reach your dreams and live up to (massive) expectations, while also being true to yourself and finding that someone who can be there outside of the sport. Hunter and Bryce find that perfect fit with each other. It is also just straight up adorable that Hunter 100% fangirls over Bryce the first time they meet.

Holy shit, he knows my name.

I could faint. I could also puke, right onto the ice, right between his skates. “Hi,�� I squeak. “I wear your number.�� “E�Գ��󲹲Գ�é.�� Bryce's grin grows. “I wear your number, too.��

There’s not a lot of relationship angst, and the book will lull you into a false sense of security, and then kick you in the teeth - true Talbert style. It’s so worth it though.

Obviously, as it’s a Tal Bauer book, the writing is freaking gorgeous. I can’t say anything about the accuracy of the French-Canadian phrases, but I do know there’s *a lot* of it, so definitely have a means of translation handy while reading.

I projected my dreams onto the curve of his smile and the warmth of his shoulder when he leaned against me and laughed.

⬇️ Blanket spoiler warning ⬇️

⚠️ Tropes & tags ⚠️
Hockey players
Sexual awakening
Secret relationship
Fan to friends to lovers
Size difference
Great chemistry
Closeted MC
French-Canadian MC
First times

⚠️ Content warning ⚠️
Severely injured MC
MC hospitalized
Unsafe sex
Graphic injury
Explicit sexual content
Alcohol consumption

⚠️Book safety ⚠️
Cheating: No
Other person drama: No
Breakup: No
POV: 1st person, dual POV
Genre: Contemporary sports romance, M/M
Strict roles or versatile: Strict roles
Main characters�� age: 22 and 26
Pages: 273
KU: Yes
Happy ending: Yes

This is the man I have been missing. Not my hero. Not the man from the posters on my teenage walls. The real Bryce, the man from midnights and empty drives and lonely rivers, and the man who looked me in the eyes and dared to risk everything because, somehow, I made his heart beat faster.

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