Over Time - Dark MMM Hockey Romance with Three Rivals, Age Gap and Forced Proximity #979166

At thirty-six, Nate Reeves has twelve minutes of ice time per night and a contract nobody is rushing to renew. He has been useful his entire career. He is running out of season to figure out whether useful is enough. Then Portland acquires Mikhail Volkov — and the man who has spent three years watching Marcus Chen beside him starts to understand that the thing he has been calling hockey is also something else.

Nate Reeves has been an enforcer for the Portland Steelheads for three seasons — not a star, not a liability, a man who holds space, absorbs damage, and protects the men around him without requiring them to acknowledge it. His agent has told him, in the careful language of eleven-year relationships, that the front office is not planning to extend him at his current number. Thirty games left, an expiring contract, and the wild card math hanging on every shift. He has been building his identity around being useful for so long that the architecture of it is the only identity he has. He does not think of himself as a man who needs anything. He is wrong. Mikhail Volkov arrives from Ottawa's AHL affiliate with a reputation, a chip on his shoulder the size of a misread career, and twenty-five words in a parking lot that do what fourteen years of professional hockey never managed: he looks at Nate and sees a person rather than a function.

Marcus Chen is twenty-eight and has been on Nate's left for two seasons, long enough that they share a physical language that doesn't require conversation. He watched Volkov's footage before the trade was announced. He has a shoulder he has not mentioned to anyone. He is the one standing in the middle when the math stops being about hockey.

Last season feeling. Expiring contract. A man who has spent his career absorbing damage learning what it means to need someone.The standings don't stop ticking.

The Steelheads need one point to clinch. The playoff push has exposed everything the three of them have been performing around — Nate's ceiling, Volkov's history, Marcus's position as the man between them who has been watching this longer than either of them knew. A photograph taken outside the training facility lands in the Oregonian's sports section. Three men laughing in a parking lot.Nothing about it is damaging. Everything about it is visible. And the front office has eyes.

Perfect for fans of Avery Keelan, Eden Finley, and Helena Hunting.

Over Time is a full-length standalone MM Hockey Romance with HEA and no cliffhanger. Contains mature content, steam, and a veteran enforcer in his final season who spent fourteen years being useful and one winter learning to be seen.

If you love MM sports romance with slow burn tension, locker room heat, and endings that make you want to start over from page one — this one was written for you.

✦ Age gap romance ✦ Rivals to lovers ✦ Forced proximity ✦ Closeted player ✦ Sports romance ✦ Teammates to lovers ✦ HEA guaranteed ✦

Click now — one read is all it takes to find out if rivals make the best teammates.