Love Me, Goaltender

Mandy Fate

Description

"The competitive world of professional hockey can be cold, but this series brings the heat!"


New goaltender Riley Warren is determined to make her first season with the New York Blizzards perfect. As a young female hockey player, she knows she has to prove herself to the league if she wants to earn a permanent spot. Her plan is to break some records, but she may end up breaking some hearts instead.


One of the only females in a male-dominated sport, Riley figured it was easier for them to think she was a lesbian. She isn’t. But the typically proud bisexual was willing to hide her identity in order to make progress in the league ... until she met teammate and assistant captain Sebastian Kingston. He is charming, handsome, and exactly what Riley doesn’t want standing between her and her career.


Now the young goaltender is questioning everything. Can she achieve the success everyone in her life wants for her and keep the man she is falling in love with? With pucks flying at her from every direction, Riley can expertly guard the Blizzards’ net, but it may be her emotions that need protection.

Sujets

• Bisexual
• LGBTQ+
• National Hockey League
• Romance
• Ligue nationale de hockey
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: 4 Horsemen Publications, Inc.
• Date de parution: 12 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781644504543
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table o f Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
BookClub Questions
About the Author







Love Me, Go altender
Copyright © 2022 Mandy Fate. All rights re served.


4 Horsemen Publication s, Inc.
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Typesetting by Niki T antillo
Cover by 4 Horsemen Publicatio ns, Inc.
Editor: Sie nna Skye
All rights to the work within are reserved to the author and publisher. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 International Copyright Act, without prior written permission except in brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please contact either the Publisher or Author to gain per mission.
This book is meant as a reference guide. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. All brands, quotes, and cited work respectfully belong to the original rights holders and bear no affiliation to the authors or pu blisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 20 21951210
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-644 50-455-0
Audiobook ISBN-13: 978-1-644 50-453-6
Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-644 50-454-3
To anyone and everyone who believed in me, even when I didn’t. You keep me going.
Chapter 1
I stared up at the Snow Globe Arena as if I hadn’t practically grown up in the place. I had been inside the walls of the hockey arena countless times over the past twenty-one years. Almost every home game during the regular season, my family and I were in the stands, cheering on the New York Blizzards. It was my home away from home, and I was fin ally back.
Except I wasn’t walking through the big, arching entrance at the front. I was taking the players’ entrance because I was the New York Blizzards’ first fema le goalie.
Okay, I realized I was being a little dramatic. Hell, I had already been inside the stadium this morning to sign my contract and for morning skate, but it was finally happening! I was going to play my first NHL game. After spending my rookie year riding the bench with the Seattle Blades and barely setting foot on the ice, it was looking like I would be doing the same this season. Then I got traded to New York, and not just any New York team—the Blizzards. I held in my girli sh shriek.
A car alarm beeped, followed by the sound of a grumbling man-child. Ah, right, the reason I was staring up at the building and not en tering it.
“Come on, Mason,” I shouted, my breath puffing out in the c hilly air.
Mason shot me a withering look as he grabbed his backpack and slammed the back of his neon green Jee p closed.
“Hold your fucking horses, Riley. And don’t call me that,” he ye lled back.
While he slowly got himself together, I took a quick selfie in front of the sign and sent it off to my brother. Drew hadn’t been to the stadium in years. We’d stopped going to games after the plane crash that took our parents away five years ago, but now that I was part of the Blizzards, he was coming back. He wouldn’t miss my first time starting for anything.
Just as I was about to say, “fuck it” and ditch Mason, he caught up to me, backpack over his shoulder, sipping his coffee, and looking nowhere near as excited as I was.
Since my car was still in Seattle, I recruited Mason as my reluctant chaperone. But had I known waking him from his nap two hours ahead of his regular schedule would be like dragging a corpse across town, I would have just taken a cab. The guy looked like he was about to keel over, but that may have had something to do with him trying to follow my mad dash from his car to the doors. Mason didn’t like to exercise when he didn’t have to. Ironic, for a professiona l athlete.
Not willing to wait a second more, I grabbed his arm and towed him toward the entrance reserved for players and staff. Two guards opened the doors, and the arena underground unfolded before us. The large concrete tunnels bounced dozens of echoing voices across the space. I shivered at the blast of warmth, happy to escape the freezing February air, and clenched Maso n tighter.
“Shit, Riles. I know I’m not the best player on the team, but we really don’t need another injury right now.” He shook his arm. I loosened my grip but didn’t let go. He had a point; Blizzard players had been dropping like flies lately. The only reason I was traded was because Travis Hall, the Blizzards’ backup goalie, tor e his ACL.
I smiled up at him. “You’re totally right. You’re not the best player.”
He snorted and wrestled me off him. “Rude,” he said, but his dimples flashed with his perfect smile. He looked out of place in the chilly New York weather. With his sun-tanned skin, longish brown hair with light highlights, and sparkling green eyes, Mason was your stereotypical Californian surfer boy. Except for the fact that he had never been to California nor touched a surfboard in his life.
Security wanded us and our bags as we passed, heading toward the locker rooms. “It’s weird being back here with you,” I said as I took in the tunnels for the second t ime today.
“I know. I feel like we’re kids again. Do you remember that day?”
“Of course. New York vs Colorado. Goss made that beautiful diving save against Brockovich in the second. It was gorgeous.” Damn, just remembering it gave me chills. I hadn’t even gotten close to stopping a shot that legendary in my short career, but that was going to change. And soon.
“What? No, you asshole! Whe n we met.”
I snapped back to reality and smirked. “Oh. Yeah. That was g ood too.”
Mason socked me in the arm playfully, and I scrunched my nose at the sting.
We had met that day. Midway through the first period, I wanted a closer view than I had from my family’s box. So I escaped and ran down to the rink, where I found a twelve-year-old Mason with his face smooshed against the glass. I joined him, and when the period ended, I took him up to our suite for milkshakes. By the time my mom called his, apologizing that I kidnapped her son and inviting her up to join us, we were best friends and there was no separ ating us.
After I found out we were the same age, I abandoned my pee-wee hockey team and made the hour trip to the Bronx three times a week to join his. Then, with a little help from my lawyer parents, I transferred to his middle school, and we had continued our careers and lives together ever since. That was until we got drafted to different cities. I went to the Seattle Blades’ farm team, and Mason got to stay home in New York to play for the Blizzards.
But Lady Luck was on my side, and I was back and ready to kick ass.
I followed a step behind Mason as we made our way through the circular hallways. The tunnels down here were confusing, even after the short tour I had been given this morning by management. We took a left at the 1962 team poster, and the players’ lounge entrance appeared.
I stopped before the lounge doors like I had at the arena entrance a few minutes ago and earlier this morning. “I don’t think I’m ever going to get used to this. I thought my star-struck days were over with my rookie sea son. But…”
Mason chuckled. “It’s just because it’s our home team. Go on, take a picture. You know you want to.”
“Not with this many peopl e around.”
We looked around and caught the eyes of more than a f ew people.
“Right. You’re still a novelty,” Mason said under his breath and raised an eyebrow at an arena worker whose gaze didn’t flick away from us fa st enough.
As much as Mason was used to playing with me, women were still new to the NHL. Rachel McCarthy, Vancouver’s backup goalie, had only joined the league four years ago, breaking the glass ceiling on her way and opening the doors for the rest of us. I was drafted to Seattle’s farm team a year after her and called up the next season, but no other women had been selected the past couple years. And as I hadn’t been on the ice for more than fifteen minutes since I was drafted, progress was s low-going.
So, as acclimated to famous hockey players as the stadium workers were, I was still a rarity. I could feel their eyes tracking me from the moment I walked into the building. But I was used to it, and shaking off the discomfort, I swiped my newly ac quired ID.
I smiled politely at the staff as we made our way through the large space, past the lounge and food areas, and into the main locker room. The room was circular, with several dozen wooden cubbies around the perimeter. It was pristine and blissfully empty. And then I saw it.
I couldn’t hold in my squeak this time as I ran, avoiding stepping on the team logo in the middle of the floor, to the cubby that had a freshly pressed sweater hanging in it. “Warren” stretched across the shoulders in black, my lucky number 88 sitting dead center. They hadn’t had it ready this morning, so it was the first time I was seeing my new uniform. It was like I was a rookie all over again. It was the same name and number from Seattle, but they looked infinitely better affixed to this new blue-and-white sweater instead of my old green one from t he Blades.
I dropped my small duffle bag on the seat and touched the sweater in reverence, and Mason laughed behind me.
“Really, Riles?” he asked.