From USA Today best-selling author Ellie Wade comes a brother's best friend and second-chance hockey romance. Cade Richards is the starting forward of the NHL team the Cranes. He's at the top of his game and scoring like a champ. On a quick trip home, he runs into Iris, the woman he's spent his adult life striving to be good enough for, the one who holds his heart. Iris Feldmore's life is in shambles. Everything she's worked for has crumbled. Her brother returns home with his best friend—her first love, Cade—in tow. The hockey team gave Cade the nickname of Heartbreaker, and it's fitting because he broke hers. If she's honest with herself, she's never gotten over it. Now Cade's back and offering to help her in a way only he can. He's always known what she needed, yet she's terrified to let him in. She wouldn't survive his loss again. This time, though, something feels different. Their chemistry is off the charts, but she's been fooled...

Leni Turner I learned very young that love had the power to destroy us and vowed never to lose myself to love another. I escaped Texas and broke his heart to save myself. Five years later, my dreams shattered, I’m on a bus, back to the place I never wanted to be. Liam Moore After years without contact, I Rnd her green eyes staring back at me, and I realize how much I’ve missed her. She doesn’t want me in her life, but I don’t know how I’ll make it without her in mine. Sometimes, the thing you’re most scared of has the power to save you in the end.

Alma Weber He told me that he’d destroy me. I knew he wasn’t lying, and I loved him anyway. I believed in love—in him. I just wasn’t prepared to carry the weight of his demons. I wanted forever with him, but life showed me love was temporary, and forever was a dream. Despite everything that happened, even now, I wouldn’t change any of it. For a love to have the capacity to destroy you, it has to be extraordinarily powerful—and that kind of love is impossible to walk away from. Leo Harding I warned her that I’d ruin her. I knew that I’d taint her innocence with my bad intentions. I was weak. She was perfection. I was nothing. The truth is that I loved her, and I selfishly wanted to hold on—to her, to the man she had made me, to the life we could have. I wanted to dance with her in the light despite knowing that the darkness would find me anyway. Heartbreak was inevitable. Yet I held on to the sliver of hope that I was wrong, that love really was enough. Destiny isn’t something I buy into, but she makes me want to believe.

A Grateful Kind of Love