Beckett

I'm the team's captain, and captains don't limp. They don't miss practice, and they definitely don't let anyone see the shoulder that's one bad hit away from ending my draft year before it starts. So when the too-quiet transfer student catches me hiding an ice pack under my jersey in an empty locker room, I don't need a girlfriend. I need her silence. What I get instead is a girl who won't be bought, bribed, or charmed into looking away — and somehow that's the first honest conversation I've had in three years.

Nora

I came to Kessler to be invisible. Invisible doesn't get laughed at. Invisible doesn't get hurt. So the deal is simple: I keep Beckett Hale's secret, he stops the whole athletic department from finding a tutor who'll actually make him show up to study hall, and neither of us has to explain why the campus's most-watched guy is suddenly eating lunch with the girl nobody remembers the name of. It works, right up until it doesn't — until he's the one person who looks at me and doesn't flinch, and I'm the one person he doesn't perform for. That's the problem. I know exactly what happens to girls who let themselves be seen by boys like him. I just didn't expect it to feel like this.

Beckett has a career to protect and a reputation to keep. Nora has a scholarship to hold onto and a heart she's spent four years keeping out of reach. Neither of them planned on falling — but one locker-room secret, one fake-tutoring arrangement, and one championship season later, staying hidden might cost them both a lot more than staying safe ever did.

The Breakaway is a standalone, angsty, slow-burn New Adult sports romance with a moderate heat level, a happy ever after, and all the found-family chaos of a college locker room.

Tropes: Sports Romance • Friends-to-Lovers • Opposites Attract • Dual POV • He Falls First • Hidden Injury / Secret-Keeping