About This Book
Four years of silence. One unanswered question. When Jamie Canning and Ryan Wesley find themselves on opposite sides of a championship matchup, the old wound tears open again — and Jamie finally starts to wonder if what happened between them that summer night meant something more than he'd let himself believe. Him is a slow-burn second-chance story built around the particular ache of a friendship fractured by feelings neither person knew how to name. The emotional stakes are immediate and real: two people circling the truth they've both been avoiding, on ice and off it.
What makes this collaboration between Bowen and Kennedy so effective is how well they balance competitive drive with emotional vulnerability. The alternating dual POV gives readers full access to both men's internal worlds — their rationalizations, their longing, their carefully constructed denial — and the dramatic irony that creates is genuinely tension-building rather than frustrating. The hockey world feels lived-in without becoming a procedural, and the banter between characters has the specific rhythm of people who have known each other too long to be entirely guarded. It reads fast, but the feeling it leaves behind lingers.
