Rink Rivals

An MM Hockey Romance by Chase Power

Two bitter hockey rivals. One bed. Three weeks that will change everything.

Casey Thorne is hockey royalty—the golden boy with the perfect stats, the perfect smile, and the perfect life controlled by his domineering father. The last thing he needs is to be trapped on a charity bus tour with Daxon “The Reaper” Miller, the enforcer who’s hated him for a decade.

Dax Miller has spent ten years despising everything Casey represents: privilege, entitlement, and the silence that nearly destroyed his career. When a booking error forces them to share the back lounge of a converted tour bus, he’s determined to survive the trip without killing the prince of the ice.

But hate has a way of burning into something else entirely.

When their explosive chemistry ignites both on and off the ice, they strike a dangerous deal: whoever wins on the rink takes control in the bedroom. No feelings. No complications. Just three weeks of competitive passion with a clean break at the end.

Except nothing about this is clean. And as the games blur into something real, they’ll have to choose between the careers they’ve built and the love they never expected—before a secret morality clause destroys them both.

RINK RIVALS is a high-heat MM hockey romance featuring enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, only one bed, a golden boy learning to fight back, a reformed bad boy with a heart of gold, and an HEA worth melting for.

Tropes You’ll Love

🏒 Enemies to Lovers
🛏️ Only One Bed
🚌 Forced Proximity
🔥 Rivals to Lovers
😤 Grumpy/Sunshine
💔 Hurt/Comfort
🏆 Competitive Romance
⚡ “Winner Tops” Arrangement

Read Chapter One Free

CASEY

Three weeks.

Twenty-one days of forced smiles, meet-and-greets with sticky-fingered kids, and sleeping on a bus with eleven other grown men who thought “shower” was a suggestion rather than a requirement.

This was my punishment. My penance for the sin of being good at hockey and bad at saying no to my father.

It’s great PR, he’d said. The fans love a redemption arc.

I didn’t need redemption. I needed a spa day and a therapist, but here I was, standing in a Denver parking lot at six in the morning, staring at what would be my prison for the next three weeks.

The “Ice & Asphalt” tour bus gleamed under the gray winter sky—a forty-five-foot monstrosity wrapped in the league’s charity graphics. Smiling children. Hockey sticks. The slogan Giving Back, One City at a Time splashed across the side in cheerful blue letters.

I wanted to set it on fire.

“Thorne! You’re early.” Coach Mike Rearden—”Iron Mike” to anyone who’d ever been on the receiving end of his death glare—emerged from the bus’s accordion door. He was built like a refrigerator someone had taught to scowl, with a clipboard perpetually fused to his meaty hand. “Grab a bunk. First come, first served.”

First come, first served.

Finally, something going my way.

I climbed aboard, rolling my Louis Vuitton carry-on behind me like a lifeline to civilization. The interior was nicer than I’d expected—leather seats in the front lounge, a small kitchen area, flat-screens mounted on the walls. But I wasn’t here for the common areas. I was here to secure the best sleeping arrangement possible before the rest of these animals showed up.

The bunks lined both sides of the narrow hallway past the kitchen. Twelve pods stacked in twos, each with a privacy curtain and just enough room for a professional athlete to lie flat without his feet hanging off the edge. I tested the first top bunk, then the second. The third had a weird smell. The fourth was directly across from the tiny bathroom.

Hard pass.

I kept moving toward the back of the bus, where a door separated the main cabin from what the tour coordinator had called the “VIP lounge.” I pushed it open.

And stopped.

The back lounge was smaller than I’d expected—maybe eight feet by ten—but it was private. A curved leather couch wrapped around three walls, currently configured as seating but clearly designed to convert into a bed. There was a mini-fridge, a mounted TV, and most importantly, a door that locked.

This was it. My sanctuary.

I dragged my suitcase inside and began unpacking my essentials: La Mer moisturizer, vitamin C serum, the jade roller my aesthetician swore would reduce puffiness from travel. I arranged them on the small counter like soldiers preparing for battle. If I was going to spend three weeks in hockey purgatory, I was going to do it with hydrated skin.

I was midway through my mental inventory when voices drifted from the front of the bus. The others were arriving.

I stayed in my claimed territory, scrolling through emails on my phone, listening to the bunks being assigned through a series of negotiations and complaints.

And then the bus went quiet.

Not silent—there were still sounds, shuffling and murmurs—but the energy shifted. Like a current running through the air, making the hairs on my arms stand up.

I knew that shift.

I’d been feeling it for ten years.

“Miller.” Someone said his name, and I felt it land in my chest like a puck.

No.

Heavy footsteps moved down the center aisle. Getting closer.

I stepped into the hallway.

And there he was.

Daxon Miller.

The Reaper.

He stood in the narrow aisle like he’d been carved from granite and bad decisions, a duffel bag slung over one massive shoulder. Six-foot-four of muscle, stubble, and tattoos that crept up his neck and disappeared under the collar of his worn black henley. His dark hair was shorter than I remembered, buzzed close on the sides, and there was a new scar above his left eyebrow—probably from a fight, because that’s all Dax Miller was good for.

Fighting. Checking. Destroying pretty things that got in his way.

His eyes found mine.

Dark brown. Almost black. The color of coffee left too long on the burner, bitter and burnt.

“Thorne.” His voice was gravel and smoke. “Of course you’re here.”

“Miller.” I kept my tone flat, bored. “I’d say it’s good to see you, but I was raised not to lie.”

His jaw tightened. A small victory.

“Still got that smart mouth,” he said.

“Still got that limited vocabulary. Good for you.”

Behind him, I heard someone whisper, “Twenty bucks says they fight before Denver.”

“Make it fifty,” another voice responded.

“Alright, listen up!” Coach’s voice boomed through the bus. “I’ve got the room assignments, and before anyone starts whining, these came from the league, not me. You don’t like it, take it up with PR.”

“—and finally, Miller and Thorne. You two are in the back lounge.”

The bus went dead silent.

I turned to Coach so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. “Excuse me?”

“The back lounge,” he repeated, checking his clipboard like he hadn’t just detonated a bomb. “It’s got a convertible bed. Sleeps two.”

“I am not—” I started.

“The fuck I am—” Dax said at the same time.

Coach looked up. His expression could have frozen Lake Michigan. “Did I stutter?”

Later that night, we lay in the dark on opposite edges of the bed, as far apart as physically possible, neither willing to give an inch.

Twenty-one days.

I could survive three weeks with Daxon Miller without committing murder or doing something even stupider.

I had to.

* * *

I couldn’t.

It was one in the morning, and I was lying on what might generously be called a bed, staring at the ceiling and trying not to scream.

The problem wasn’t the bed. The bed was fine.

The problem was the six-foot-four furnace lying two inches away from me, radiating heat like a dying star and breathing in a slow, steady rhythm that I could feel in my bones.

Every time he shifted, I felt it. Every breath he took moved the mattress. At one point, his foot had crossed the pillow barrier, and his calf had brushed mine, and I’d nearly levitated off the bed.

This was insane. I hated him. I’d hated him for a decade.

So why was I hyper-aware of every single thing he did?

“I hate you,” I whispered into the darkness.

“Hate you too,” he said back, and for a moment—just a moment—his gaze dropped to my mouth.

Then he rolled over, turning his back to me.

“Get some sleep, Thorne. We’ve got a long three weeks.”

I lay there for another hour, listening to his breathing even out, feeling the heat of him even through the pillow barrier.

Twenty days and twenty-three hours.

I was so fucked.

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