Breakaway Hearts

Curtis Williams can read a shooter's shoulders from forty feet out, but the man guarding the other crease is a language he never learned.As the Chicago Wolves' starting goaltender, Curtis has built a career on staying two steps ahead of everyone else's intentions. On ice, nothing surprises him. Off it, he's spent years making sure nothing gets close enough to try. So when a slow, unplanned week at a lakeside cabin turns into something unexpectedly tender with a stranger who never gave his last name, Curtis lets himself have it. Just once. Just for those few nights when the noise in his head finally went quiet.Then the season starts.Across the ice on opening night, staring back at him from the Minnesota Frost's net, is the man who spent a week memorizing the sound of his laugh.Aksel didn't cross an ocean to fall for an American goalie. He came to win. But some things aren't a distraction, they're a discovery, and Aksel isn't in the business of walking away from the one player who ever made him feel unguarded.With both teams clawing toward the same title, Curtis and Aksel are forced onto a collision course between the game that defines them and the man who might finally complete them. Every save keeps them tied to the ice. Every glance keeps pulling them back to each other.