Tripping

Five seasons taking care of everyone. One fight - and the two men assigned to evaluate me are already each other's.

I'm Jake Brennan, 27, the player who tapes everyone's sticks, adjusts everyone's shin guards, and texts the rookie at midnight about icing protocol. My team calls me Mom. When a single out-of-character fight triggers a mandatory behavioral assessment, the team psychologist asks one question that unravels everything: You just described six people's routines. What's yours?

Callum Voss - retired enforcer turned Director of Player Wellbeing - carries fourteen seasons of damage across his knuckles and a voice that settles into you before you hear it. His hand on my nape doesn't ask. It stays. Reid Langford is the sports psychologist who tracks patterns no one else sees - precise, clinical, devastating without his glasses. They've been together for six years. They've been watching me for eight months.

If the front office discovers a player-staff relationship, I lose the contract keeping me on this team. Callum and Reid lose the careers they rebuilt after hockey broke them. And I have to decide whether wanting something for myself is worth the wreckage - when the only two people who've ever handed me a glass of water instead of the other way around are the same two people who could end everything.

• MMM age gap (27 / 37 / 41)
• Established couple + third
• Straight-to-gay awakening
• Forbidden player-staff romance
• Compulsive caretaker forced to receive
• Touch-starved hero
• Forced proximity (mandatory assessment)
• HEA guaranteed

TRIPPING is a full-length forbidden MMM hockey romance where the hardest check isn't on the ice - it's letting someone see what's underneath the tape. Each book in the Experienced Hands can be read as a standalone.