Length8h 59m
About this audiobook
Cole Beckett was ten years old the night he stood with his nose against the glass, watching his brother score into a nearly empty rink. Number nineteen. Red and black. The fastest skater in Granite Falls.
Nate went down in a fight and did not get up. One punch, a skull cracked against the ice, a brain bleeding quietly behind it. That was eight years ago.
Cole is twenty-nine now, and he makes his living the way his brother died. He is the muscle for the Granite Falls Wild, paid to drop the gloves and give the crowd a reason to buy a beer. After a clean win over Des Moines in which he logged sixteen minutes and threw nothing, his coach leans across a creaking desk and tells him exactly what he is. *You're not a scorer, Beckett. You're not a playmaker. You're our muscle.*
But Cole has stopped wanting to hit people. The whole bench has noticed. Tate Kowalski has already taken it to his Instagram story.
Then the team's publicist hands him a profile: three interviews, a week of being shadowed, a warm piece about the human side of professional hockey. The journalist is Sylvie Marchetti, and before she has asked him one question she has already requested the 2015 game film.
Sylvie's father played left wing for the Wild from 2008 to 2015 and scouted afterward, and what killed him took his memory apart from the inside out, down to his daughter's name. In his things she found a single line in his handwriting: *Nate asked me to watch out for his brother.*
She did not come for a puff piece. She thinks the story is not one damaged man but the machine that damages him, and she has a note with a name in it.
What neither of them plans for is what Cole says in a bar, with the pool balls cracking and the neon buzzing and her recorder running. Four words he has not said aloud in eight years. Four words he cannot take back, that will cost him a roster spot, a reputation, and possibly her.
This is a contemporary hockey romance about grief, complicity and what it costs to tell the truth about your own sport, told in alternating first person from the locker room and from the notebook. The romance is closed-door.
Audiobook details
GenreRomance
Length8 hrs 59 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Dedication
2Prologue
3Chapter 1 - The Lie I Built My Life On
4Chapter 2 - The Photograph I Can’t Forget
5Chapter 3 - The Fight I Didn’t Choose
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6Chapter 4 - The Skate That Remembered
7Chapter 5 - The Cheap Seat Confession
8Chapter 6 - The Truth I Can’t Unhear
9Chapter 7 - The Rink at Midnight
10Chapter 8 - The Rumor That Walks
11Chapter 9 - The Trade That Wasn’t Talked About
12Chapter 10 - The Press Room Trap
13Chapter 11 - The Box of Forgotten Years
14Chapter 12 - The Column That Changes Everything
15Chapter 13 - The Flight I Almost Didn’t Take
16Chapter 14 - The Press Conference That Cost Everything
17Chapter 15 - The Deal That We Didn’t See Coming
18Chapter 16 - The Rink That Has No Scoreboard
19Chapter 17 - The Hearing Room’s Long Shadow
20Chapter 18 - The Weight of Winning
21Chapter 19 - The Grand Gesture That Cost His Last Paycheck
22Chapter 20 - The Apology That Requires No Forgive
23Chapter 21 - The Champion Without a Ring
24Chapter 22 - The Call That Almost Broke Us
25Chapter 23 - The Article That Sets Us Free
26Chapter 24 - The Proposal with No Ring
27Chapter 25 - The Vows We Write Ourselves
28Chapter 26 - The Morning After the Ice
29Chapter 27 - The Enforcer’s Legacy
30Chapter 28 - The First Season of Forever
31About the Author
32The End
33About the Author
34Also by Alex Rhodes
35Acknowledgements
36A Note from the Author
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