Pressure Play

By Declan Rhodes

Deal Ends: Mon 21st September

Heath Donnelly scores ugly goals and sends every paycheck home.A late-season call-up to the Chicago Ironhawks wasn’t supposed to stick. But Heath stuck—through training camp, through opening night, through the kind of net-front chaos that makes highlight reels and terrifies him in equal measure. At twenty-two, his NHL contract is the only thing standing between his family and the bills that keep arriving. He can’t afford a mistake.He definitely can’t afford to fall for a teammate.Kieran Mathers is the mistake.First-round draft pick. Hockey royalty. The kind of player coaches call mature beyond his years—which is a polite way of saying he’s never been young. Kieran has spent his entire life performing a career he didn’t choose, and he has an exit strategy: one more season, then graduate school, then a life where no one knows his father’s name.The plan is flawless.The plan doesn’t account for Heath Donnelly asking him a simple, honest question in a stalled elevator—and seven years of control coming apart in the space between floors.What starts in that elevator doesn’t stop.It turns into a secret neither of them can afford.Road trips. Locked doors. Late nights in a narrow apartment where the radiator ticks and the bed is too small for two hockey players. In a league that still treats coming out as career-ending—and a locker room where privacy is an illusion—every moment together is borrowed time.Heath needs to stay.Kieran needs to leave.The city is watching. The closet is thinning. And the trade deadline is coming fast.When it hits, they’ll have to choose between the futures they planned—and the one they’ve found together.Because the hardest thing in hockey isn’t taking the hit.It’s staying visible after.Dual-POV MM hockey romance. On-page intimacy. Guaranteed HEA.forced proximity - closeted athletes - first time - hurt/comfort