Between Periods: A College Sports Romance Where Every Stolen Moment Brings Them Closer

She's the coach's daughter drowning in grief. He's the star captain who refuses to let her hide. One injury. Eight stitches. A connection that changes everything.

Cassidy Moran has spent eighteen months invisible. After her mom died, she ran from everything—her father, her grief, the life she was supposed to live. Now she's back at Whitmore University as a grad assistant athletic trainer, living in her childhood bedroom, and trying so hard not to be seen that she's become a ghost in her own life. Nik Volkov notices. The team captain, NHL draft prospect, and the one person on campus who refuses to let her fade into the shadows. He's been watching her for three weeks, and when he corners her with an invitation to a game—actually use the tickets, sit behind the bench, let people see you—she's too exhausted to keep running.

What starts as coffee at The Grind and stolen glances at practice becomes late-night conversations in empty arenas. He lost his mom too. He knows what it's like to shut down, to push everyone away, to exist in the gray fog where nothing matters. Their connection sparks in the spaces between—between periods, between practices, between the structured hours of their separate lives. But when he takes a brutal stick to the face during a game, Cassidy sprints through the tunnel and stitches him up herself, her hands steady even as her heart shatters. He's leaving in April for the NHL draft. She's terrified of being left again. And when the secret of their relationship explodes in front of the entire team, they'll have to face her father—the coach who's been distant since his wife died—and decide if loving each other is worth risking the futures they're both too scared to want.

A deeply emotional college hockey romance packed with forbidden love, coach's daughter tension, hidden injury stakes, grief healing, a golden retriever hero who sees her when no one else does, and a hard-won HEA spanning distance and drafts. Perfect for fans of Elle Kennedy, Hannah Grace, and anyone who loves a story where the quietest person in the room finally finds someone worth being seen for. Listen now.