Back to Center Ice

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She left. She came back. She’s not leaving again.

Emily “Em” Dawson has spent twelve years keeping the Birch Lake Community Arena alive by sheer force of will. She runs the programs, coaches the kids, fixes the pipes, and hasn’t taken a day off since she was twenty-one. She’s competent, steady, and fine. Completely fine. She does not need anyone — especially not the woman who left her eleven years ago.

Alex Rivers was a star. A pro hockey forward with a jersey on TV and a highlight reel that could make you cry. Then her knee exploded, her career ended, and she spent fourteen months alone in a Montreal apartment watching her own clips and wondering when she’d stopped feeling anything. So she did the only thing left: she went home. To the rink. To the town. To her.

Em isn’t interested in second chances. She’s been the one who stayed — through her mother’s death, through the budget cuts, through the nights alone with a Zamboni and a building that needed her more than any person ever had. But Alex is different now. Alex shows up at 5:30 a.m. with coffee and donuts. Alex coaches kids and builds shelves and names the ice plant. Alex kneels on a bad knee to fix the boards, and when the ice plant dies at 3 a.m., Alex is there. Every time. Without being asked.

The problem is, Em’s body remembers what her brain is trying to forget. And when forced proximity, late nights, and eleven years of unresolved tension finally combust, “just physical” becomes the most dangerous lie either of them has ever told.

You’ll love this book if you enjoy:

✅ Second-chance sapphic romance with maximum heat
✅ Retired pro athlete x small-town rink manager
✅ “She left / she stayed” with real consequences and real repair
✅ Praise kink that will ruin you (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, emotional)
✅ Found family including a nonbinary Zamboni driver who steals every scene
✅ A heroine who learns she was the protagonist all along
✅ HEA guaranteed