Rafe Mikkelsen says yes to everything.
Yes, sir, to the coaches. Yes to the cameras. Yes when the team's PR people ask him to be seen around town with influencer Max Gregory a few times—fans love it, sponsors love it, it's harmless. At twenty, the league's most polite rookie has never once been the guy who makes trouble, and rumors about his relationship with a handsome celebrity is good for attendance at home games.
The only person who isn't charmed is Max's brother.
Niko's a carpenter who makes real things and has no use for fake ones. He isn't impressed that Rafe is famous. He doesn't care about hands, or points, or the aw-shucks farm-kid thing the whole city has fallen for. What Niko can't stand is watching a decent guy play a role that obviously isn't real—and he keeps saying so, until the afternoon he says the one thing no one else ever has out loud.
My brother isn’t who you want.
Rafe has spent his whole life being agreeable and giving easy answers. He's good at it. It’s what everyone expects from him. But the costume that works on nineteen thousand strangers does nothing on the one man he can't stop thinking about—and sincerity, it turns out, is the only thing Rafe has that Niko might actually want.
A warm, funny, fake-dating hockey romance about a kid who's never told anyone no, the man who refuses to be lied to, and learning that home isn't a city or a farm or a frozen lake back in Saskatchewan.
Home is the one place no one needs you to be anyone but yourself.
Genre: Gay Romance
Yes, sir, to the coaches. Yes to the cameras. Yes when the team's PR people ask him to be seen around town with influencer Max Gregory a few times—fans love it, sponsors love it, it's harmless. At twenty, the league's most polite rookie has never once been the guy who makes trouble, and rumors about his relationship with a handsome celebrity is good for attendance at home games.
The only person who isn't charmed is Max's brother.
Niko's a carpenter who makes real things and has no use for fake ones. He isn't impressed that Rafe is famous. He doesn't care about hands, or points, or the aw-shucks farm-kid thing the whole city has fallen for. What Niko can't stand is watching a decent guy play a role that obviously isn't real—and he keeps saying so, until the afternoon he says the one thing no one else ever has out loud.
My brother isn’t who you want.
Rafe has spent his whole life being agreeable and giving easy answers. He's good at it. It’s what everyone expects from him. But the costume that works on nineteen thousand strangers does nothing on the one man he can't stop thinking about—and sincerity, it turns out, is the only thing Rafe has that Niko might actually want.
A warm, funny, fake-dating hockey romance about a kid who's never told anyone no, the man who refuses to be lied to, and learning that home isn't a city or a farm or a frozen lake back in Saskatchewan.
Home is the one place no one needs you to be anyone but yourself.
Genre: Gay Romance