The Lasagna Calculation

When Walker Blackmore is assigned to write about college hockey's most difficult star, she expects a story; not a grieving boy with a brilliant mind, a broken heart, and a dangerous way of getting under her skin.
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Eric Lemhurst sees the open before anyone else.

A hockey savant with a mind built for patterns, numbers, and split-second calculations, Eric is one of the most dangerous amateur players in the country. On the ice, he understands exactly where he belongs. The rink has rules. The game has patterns. The world outside it has always been harder: too loud, too bright, too unpredictable for a boy who learned early that being different meant being misunderstood.

When his older brother is killed overseas, Eric is left with a kind of grief no routine, number, or calculation can remedy.

Walker Blackmore is supposed to be a student journalist chasing a story at Michigan's prestigious Crestmont University, not the girl who learns Eric's routines, protects his vulnerability, and sees the grief everyone else keeps trying to manage. But Walker has scars of her own, and getting close to Eric means risking the life she has been trying to build beyond her damage.

As hockey pressure, family expectations, trauma, and loss close in around them, Eric wants the one thing he has never known how to ask for: someone who stays. But loving Walker may be the most dangerous calculation of all.