He's the save. She's the fixer. They're the two people everyone needs — and the two who've never once let themselves be wanted.
June Park is the reason the Calder hockey team is still standing. She tapes the wrists, reads the injuries nobody will admit to, knows where every player hurts before he does. She is indispensable — and she has a quiet plan to leave at the end of the year, because if you stay essential, you never have to find out whether anyone would choose you for anything but what you can do.
Theo Vance is the heart of the room who says about nine words a day. Calder's senior goalie: the last line, the one who keeps the bad thing out, who loves the people around him by showing up and never once reaching for anything of his own.
For three years, the safest thing either of them has owned is each other. Best friends. A bubble. A ritual where she tapes his stick and he pretends he can't manage it himself, just to keep her close. Neither of them would risk that for anything.
Then the team starts chasing the one title the program has never won — the drought the whole town measures in heartbreak — and the harder everyone grips, the clearer the choice becomes: keep the safe thing exactly as it is, or risk it to be chosen out loud.
Because the bravest save Theo will ever make won't be in net. And the hardest thing June has ever done is set down I've got it and let someone hold her, for once.
The Sweetest Save is a sweet, closed-door, best-friends-to-lovers college hockey romance — Book Five of the Home Ice Sweethearts series, and the book the whole series has been skating toward. The championship Calder's never won, a found family coming home, and two people who only know how to be useful discovering they were wanted all along. Fully closed-door; happily ever after — and one very overdue celebration — guaranteed.
Tropes: best friends to lovers · the quiet one & the caretaker · mutual pining · needed vs. wanted · slow burn · strong-and-silent hero · found family · championship payoff · closed-door / clean · reads as a standalone
Genre: Romance
June Park is the reason the Calder hockey team is still standing. She tapes the wrists, reads the injuries nobody will admit to, knows where every player hurts before he does. She is indispensable — and she has a quiet plan to leave at the end of the year, because if you stay essential, you never have to find out whether anyone would choose you for anything but what you can do.
Theo Vance is the heart of the room who says about nine words a day. Calder's senior goalie: the last line, the one who keeps the bad thing out, who loves the people around him by showing up and never once reaching for anything of his own.
For three years, the safest thing either of them has owned is each other. Best friends. A bubble. A ritual where she tapes his stick and he pretends he can't manage it himself, just to keep her close. Neither of them would risk that for anything.
Then the team starts chasing the one title the program has never won — the drought the whole town measures in heartbreak — and the harder everyone grips, the clearer the choice becomes: keep the safe thing exactly as it is, or risk it to be chosen out loud.
Because the bravest save Theo will ever make won't be in net. And the hardest thing June has ever done is set down I've got it and let someone hold her, for once.
The Sweetest Save is a sweet, closed-door, best-friends-to-lovers college hockey romance — Book Five of the Home Ice Sweethearts series, and the book the whole series has been skating toward. The championship Calder's never won, a found family coming home, and two people who only know how to be useful discovering they were wanted all along. Fully closed-door; happily ever after — and one very overdue celebration — guaranteed.
Tropes: best friends to lovers · the quiet one & the caretaker · mutual pining · needed vs. wanted · slow burn · strong-and-silent hero · found family · championship payoff · closed-door / clean · reads as a standalone
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Cassie Rivers's The Sweetest Save