Of all the people who could have seen me when I was at my most vulnerable, it had to be him. Caleb. My stepbrother and the golden child of our messed up blended family. We barely know each other, but for some reason, he takes care of me when an incident at the club leaves me helpless and alone. He hates me as much as I hate him, but something about his bossy attitude and unflappable calm soothes me. I don't want to want him, but no one has ever made me feel the way he does.

Charles Preston Carmichael is the most infuriating man I've ever met. I want to sock the golden boy of college hockey right in the mouth. He enjoys telling me everything I'm messing up—publicly. And since he's my roommate for the next year, I can't avoid him. Yet there's something about him that makes me watch him. Something dark. A secret I want to uncover. When he returns from a weekend away, broken and haunted, I can't keep my distance anymore. He needs someone, and I'll be damned if it's not me.

Every bartender should follow one simple rule—don't go home with the customers. That’s been easy for me to stick to, until the night a cocky, confident, and sinfully charming hockey star walks into my bar. This sexy athlete is too hard to resist, especially when he makes it clear how much he wants the “sarcastic, witty, hot AF” guy behind the bar—also known as me.

When it comes to hockey, I'm all about the game. I've worked for years to be one of the best in the league, and l've done it without splashing my orientation all over the tabloids. My hockey image is one I've carefully cultivated, and after one night with Ezra Palaszczuk, I risk it all. He's cocky, obnoxious, and has an ego bigger than Massachusetts. And okay, maybe he's the sexiest man I've ever known. We'll never get along. Not when we sleep together. Not even when my possessive streak awakens. That doesn't stop us from falling into bed together over and over again.

There’s a lot I’ve never told my best friend. The fact that I love him. That I miss him every day he’s gone. That, sometimes, I ache for him with a ferocity that leaves me breathless. Lucky Buchanan tore into my life as a boy, wild and daring, my opposite in every way. He drew me in, stole my heart without trying. He hears me, even though I rarely speak a word. But I always knew this place wouldn’t be enough for my free-spirited friend. I knew he wasn’t mine to keep.