Cross-Check

Two captains. Two rival jerseys. One photograph that says everything their mouths won't.
MM hockey rivals-to-lovers · Out captain meets closeted captain · Fake engagement · Forced proximity · Heat 4/5 · Standalone in series

Rémi St-Amour has been playing against Jack Harrow for seven years. He knows Jack's game at the cellular level — the blade rotation on the overtime deflection, the captain-voice turned on for the cameras, the specific exhaustion in a man who has been performing the same careful version of himself for thirteen years. Rémi knows all of it. He is not supposed to know any of it. Jack Harrow is the face of the Halstead Sentinels, a fake engagement on his left hand, and a life he has built to be airtight. When an NHLPA anti-bullying initiative puts them in the same room for a week, the captains of two rival teams make a quiet, devastating mistake: they stop performing. Rémi is already out — and what he wants is Jack. Jack has spent thirteen years building a room with no door in it, and Rémi St-Amour is the first person who has looked at the room and asked what it costs to live in there. A slow-burn rivals-to-lovers MM hockey romance with an out/closeted pairing, dual close-third-person POV, and a hard-earned happy ending. The Beaumont Fortress, Book 1. Standalone. Enrolled in this complete series.