My smile works on everyone in the league. Then they traded for Grant Hale, and he looked at me like he already knew exactly what I was hiding behind it.

I'm Ollie Reyes — golden boy, top-line winger, the guy the whole room angles toward. Being loved is my superpower and my survival plan; you don't get bounced through seven foster homes without learning how to be easy to keep. It has worked my entire career.

It does not work on Grant Hale.

He's thirty-three, freshly traded, growls one word at a time, and comes with a locker-room-problem reputation I'm ninety percent sure is bad press. Coach has forty-three days to get him integrated before the trade deadline — so he bolts us together. Same line. Same road room. Every hotel between here and March.

The trouble isn't that Grant won't buy the smile. The trouble is what's under it: a guy who's terrified he's one bad season from being sent back, who has never once shown anyone the real thing and gotten to stay. And somehow the grumpiest man in the building is the first person to look straight past the sunshine and actually see me — and not leave.

Turns out getting solved by Grant Hale feels a whole lot less like losing and a whole lot more like being found.

Top Shelf is a bright, low-angst M/M hockey romance: grumpy-sunshine, forced-proximity linemates, a golden boy with a secret and a gruff closeted vet who says everything with an assist, banter for days, and found-family warmth. Standalone with a guaranteed happy ending. Steamy and swoony. Book 1 of the Northport Sentinels.