The Rookie's Hidden Truth

Everett Brandle has kept his private life so locked down that no one in the Ironclads organization knows there is a private life to speak of. Then a twenty-one-year-old defenseman gets called up from Providence and looks at him in a way that no one has ever looked at him, and everything Everett built to stay safe starts to crack.

Everett Brandle is the Ironclads' captain, married on paper and managing a life that looks exactly right from the outside. He is methodical, respected, and used to the weight of what he carries, because he has been carrying it in silence for a long time. He knows what the line is. He has been on the right side of it since his first professional contract, and he intends to stay there.

Mikhail Koenig arrives at training camp with a single duffel bag, a hockey stick tube, and the focused certainty of a twenty-one-year-old who knows exactly why he's been called up. He is not here to make noise. He is here to play, and the first time he and Everett share ice, the numbers they put up together make the coaching staff go quiet in the way coaching staffs go quiet when they have just seen something they were not expecting.

The problem isn't the ice. The problem is everything off it. Everett is the captain. Mikhail is the call-up. There is no version of this that costs nothing.

With a trade deadline closing in, a goaltender who has already done the math, and a wife whose lawyer is already making phone calls, Everett is running out of ways to hold the line between the man he promised to be and the man Mikhail already knows he is.

Perfect for fans of Avery Keelan, Sarina Bowen, and Eden Finley. The Rookie's Hidden Truth is a full-length standalone MM Hockey Romance with HEA and no cliffhanger. Contains mature content, steam, and a captain who stopped lying on the day he stopped being able to.