Vince Mercer is thirty-four, a veteran defenseman approaching his thousandth NHL game, and a man who has perfected the art of saying nothing. Seven years ago, a conversation at a team gala left him holding a cocktail napkin and a feeling he never acted on. Elara Vasquez is thirty-three, an event producer, and a single mom to Leo, who sorts dinosaurs by geological period and has never met an adult he can't see through. When the Wolves hire her to produce the Heritage Season celebration, the contract puts them in the same rooms, the same travel schedule, the same slow accumulation of proximity that neither of them planned for.