Lena Moreau is the medical staffer who treats the Vanguard’s enforcer, Sasha Volkov, like a man with a body worth caring for rather than a hazard, and the two carry the memory of one night they both agreed never happened.

When the owner, Halloran Pryce, begins pressuring the medical staff to keep injuries and player histories quiet — and lets Lena know he can reach her through her five-year-old son — the acquisition of a winger from her past turns the leverage personal.

Lena fights to keep medical authority (and her child) out of the front office’s hands while Volkov, whose whole life has been spent as a thing other men control, has to learn to protect someone without owning them.

The two must decide whether the private thing between them can survive being turned into a weapon.

Tropes: forbidden workplace romance, player/team-staff romance, single mother heroine, protector hero, touch-her-and-die devotion, one night that mattered, secret pregnancy, grumpy stoic hero / competent guarded heroine, he-fell-first / silent longing, forced proximity, enemy-in-power / found family