Kwame Mensah is the most-watched man in the league, and the loneliest.
Three million followers. A goal that's trending before he's off the pitch. A second smile that arrives half a beat after the real one and stays for the cameras. Kwame has built a life where being seen feels like being known — and he's never once noticed the difference. Why would he? Everyone's watching. Nobody's looking.
Liam Novak isn't impressed. The club's new physiotherapist is Scottish, dry, and completely immune to the brand — a man who puts his hands on an athlete's body and listens to it instead of the noise around it. In Liam's treatment room there are no cameras, no caption, no performance required. Just a hamstring that's fine, and a man who, for the first time in years, doesn't have to be anyone at all.
What grows in that room is supposed to be temporary. A standing Thursday. Borrowed time. But Liam has spent his whole life as someone's afterthought — the thing that exists in the gaps — and he refuses to be that again. And Kwame is starting to understand that the only place he's ever felt real is the one place he can't put on the grid.
Some things only happen in the minutes nobody planned for. Stoppage time. The part that counts.
Stoppage Time is a slow-burn, hurt/comfort MM soccer romance: a magnetic star striker, a grounded Scottish physio who sees straight through the act, a forbidden standing appointment, and a found family that's been waiting for both of them. Book 4 in the Open Goal series — a complete story with a guaranteed happily-ever-after, readable on its own. No cheating, no cliffhanger.
Genre: Gay Romance
Three million followers. A goal that's trending before he's off the pitch. A second smile that arrives half a beat after the real one and stays for the cameras. Kwame has built a life where being seen feels like being known — and he's never once noticed the difference. Why would he? Everyone's watching. Nobody's looking.
Liam Novak isn't impressed. The club's new physiotherapist is Scottish, dry, and completely immune to the brand — a man who puts his hands on an athlete's body and listens to it instead of the noise around it. In Liam's treatment room there are no cameras, no caption, no performance required. Just a hamstring that's fine, and a man who, for the first time in years, doesn't have to be anyone at all.
What grows in that room is supposed to be temporary. A standing Thursday. Borrowed time. But Liam has spent his whole life as someone's afterthought — the thing that exists in the gaps — and he refuses to be that again. And Kwame is starting to understand that the only place he's ever felt real is the one place he can't put on the grid.
Some things only happen in the minutes nobody planned for. Stoppage time. The part that counts.
Stoppage Time is a slow-burn, hurt/comfort MM soccer romance: a magnetic star striker, a grounded Scottish physio who sees straight through the act, a forbidden standing appointment, and a found family that's been waiting for both of them. Book 4 in the Open Goal series — a complete story with a guaranteed happily-ever-after, readable on its own. No cheating, no cliffhanger.
Genre: Gay Romance
Used availability for Chris Savage's Stoppage Time