Faceoff -- A Cutter Gauthier Story

This story follows Grace Jacobs, a nineteen-year-old British girl who lost her parents at sixteen and rebuilt her life in Anaheim with her grandfather - Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville - landing an internship with the team's nutrition staff and absolutely not planning to fall for cocky forward Cutter Gauthier. What starts as mutual irritation slowly becomes hotel hallways at 1am, notes in the margins of nutrition sheets, and two people who keep ending up in the same places until they stop pretending that's an accident. It's a slow burn with found family at its heart - grief that doesn't resolve neatly, a grandfather learning to let someone in, a best friend who steals chips and tracks your laugh-to-day ratio, and a team that runs a prediction spreadsheet about your love life.