RELEASE TOUR: A Rookie Mistake By Wren HamiltonLength: 85,000 words
Series: standalone
Prior Reading: n/a
Genre: Contemporary M/M Hockey Romance
Tropes: Hurt/Comfort, Rookie/Assistant Coach, Age Gap (7 years), Bi-Sexual MC, Queer Awakening Trigger/Content Warnings: Brief on page physical and emotional abuse by parent, chronic autoimmune disease (MS) mentioned for one MC parent, anxiety representation
Designer: Silver Grace @ Bitter Sage Designs, Illustration: Angk.i_
Caden Kelly
They all say I was born with a natural talent. But skill isn’t the same as passion, and I’ve never loved hockey. Not the spotlight, not the pressure, and definitely not the expectations that come with being my father’s son.
I dream of a quieter life—one where I build and create instead of perform for a crowd. But in my father’s world, dreams are irrelevant. Control is everything. And he’s a ruthless expert at keeping me in line. So when he pushes me to sign with a new team far from home, I don’t argue. I never do.
Then Asher “The Ace” Landry steps onto the ice and into my life. I’ve seen his face on screens countless times, Stanley Cup champion turned assistant coach. But in person, he’s nothing like I imagined. Thoughtful. Attentive. Safe. And somehow, he sees me, even when I’m trying my hardest to disappear.
The truth is, I’m lost. On the ice. In my family. And in these new, confusing feelings Ash stirs in me. But something’s shifting, and as the pressure builds to a breaking point, I realize maybe it’s time I start fighting for my life, not the one planned out for me.
Caden sneaks into the Hammerheads’ practice arena to escape interacting with his new roommates:
A quick tie of my laces, and I was marring the freshly Zambonied ice with my skates that needed sharpening. I didn’t know how long I’d been skating for, but I’d been desperately trying to zone out with the repetition of my back-and-forth motion across the rink. It must have been a while, as I was drenched in sweat and I could feel the cold arena air seeping through the damp fabric of my T-shirt.
Even if my father had beaten every positive feeling I had toward hockey out of me, I had an uncanny ability to essentially check out of my own brain once I stepped foot on the ice. Yeah, because you spent your formative years with Frank Kelly screaming how worthless you were as your rink-side soundtrack. Bile made its way into my throat before I could swallow it back down. Fuck, that shit burned.
Thoughts of my dad had escalated to making me physically ill—such was the weight of his presence in my life. That’s what you get for punishing yourself on an empty stomach, idiot. The bang of a heavy arena door pulled me out of my self-hatred spiral before I could sink too deeply into my own head.
I slowed my speed to a more leisurely pace, as if me ripping up the rink in the off-hours would somehow become less noticeable if my skates weren’t hitting the ice as hard.
Since I was trying to avoid notice, I didn’t dare look in the direction from which the booming sound had come. Best-case scenario, it was a member of the maintenance staff who was too preoccupied with finishing their shift and couldn’t care less about some nobody hockey player on the ice. I’m sure they saw weirder shit in here than a late-afternoon skate.
Before I could consider the worst-case scenario, the telltale scraping noise of the players’ door being swung open and then the bang of it shutting set me on edge, but I schooled my expression and continued skating with my head down.
“Hey! Rookie!” A deep voice rumbled from behind me.
Ah, fuck.
With extensive experience in questionable choices, bad ideas and entirely too much caffeine, Wren Hamilton is pursuing her dream of writing complex, genuine characters who find partners who love them for exactly who they are. Wren lives outside Toronto, Canada with her family and two incredibly cheeky rescue dogs.
Instagram: @wrenhamilton.writes
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