Third Man In - MMM Gay Hockey Romance with a Grumpy/Sunshine Dynamic and Shared Second Chance #979164

He built his whole career on control. The trade that brought Remy Deschênes back into his life didn't ask permission. And Cole Ashby has been in love with Nate Calloway for eighteen months — long enough to know exactly how much that silence costs.

Nate Calloway runs the Hartford Falcons' first line the way he runs everything: with absolute precision and nothing left exposed. Thirty-one years old, the best defensive center in the AHL's Eastern Conference, he has kept every important thing behind glass for so long that the glass has become his architecture. He played with Remy Deschênes four years ago in Syracuse — one season, one almost, one silent summer — and when Remy signed elsewhere, Nate filed it under things that were not his to keep. He filed Cole Ashby's warmth the same way. He has been doing this for a long time. He is very good at it. Then Belcourt blows the whistle mid-drill on a Tuesday morning and tells the room they made a trade, and the name is Deschênes, and the filing system stops working.

Remy Deschênes reads rooms the way most men read defenses — fast, accurate, and without flattering himself about what he finds. He was traded to Hartford because he had thirty-three points in thirty-eight games on a team that didn't deserve them, and the Falcons needed exactly what he provides. He knows Nate Calloway is in this room. He has known, for four years, exactly what that means and exactly what he chose not to do about it. What he did not know until his second practice at the XL Center is that Cole Ashby exists, and that Cole and Nate have built something between them that is precise and unspoken and running out of room.

Sealed behind glass. Six weeks from the wild card cutoff. Three men who each know exactly what they want. And one of them has been choosing the architecture over the truth for the entire season.

The Hartford Falcons need this playoff push to hold. The line chemistry is the best it's been all year — Nate's positioning, Remy's physical edge, Cole's read so clean it borders on unfair. The standings math is fragile. The front office is watching every shift.And Nate Calloway is running out of season to keep being the man who has everything organized and nothing real. The gap between the architecture and the truth is not closing. It is collapsing. And the two men most likely to be standing in it when it goes are the ones he cannot afford to lose.

Perfect for fans of Eden Finley, Sarina Bowen, and Jay Bell.

Third Man In is a full-length standalone MM Hockey Romance with HEA and no cliffhanger. Contains mature content, steam, and a captain who has been filing the most important things in his life under not his to keep.

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.

✦ Rivals to lovers ✦ Second chance ✦ Teammates to lovers ✦ Forced proximity ✦ Closeted player ✦ Grumpy sunshine ✦ HEA guaranteed ✦

Click to read now and find out if some penalties are worth every consequence.