Falling Forward ✔

Three things I live my life by: parties, puck bunnies, and playing my heart out on the ice.

Becoming the new forward for the Cincinnati Cyclones means meeting new people, exploring a new city, and finding new things to occupy my time. Or, rather, people to keep me occupied.

Falling for a girl never even entered the equation. Until I met Reece Reagan. Scars, tattoos, and a dark past all wrapped up in a neat little package of blonde hair and bewitching brown eyes.

She's stronger than anyone I've ever met; makes my reasons for staying away from relationships seem shallow and insignificant. The emotions she triggers make me feel alive in ways I didn't know were possible.

If only I could convince her of that. Because, without her, my world just might shatter.

**

Three things hold my life together: Sharpies, sweatshirts, and scars that remind me I'm alive.

Within the comfort of the Anarchy Immortal Café, I draw out the darkness that haunts me. Expel my demons and exorcise the pain from my heart. I keep to myself, resigned to the fact that while people come and go, they never stay once they've figured me out.

Having a rough and tumble hockey player fixate on me was the last thing I expected. Bastien Killfeather is charismatic, sexy, and irritatingly determined to get my attention.

Worse, he makes the fear I've coddled for so long feel like chains instead of armor. The feelings he invokes are terrifying. They also set me ablaze in ways I no longer thought myself capable of. Bringing color to an existence so confined in black and white.

The problem is, I can't let him know that. Or else he'll bring my world crashing down.

**

Co-written with WriterNat_A.

Trigger warnings: domestic violence, self-harm, flashbacks of abuse.