I was three glasses of wine in on a Tuesday night, scrolling past yet another hockey romance where the hero’s trauma is just a decorative tattoo. Then Preston Armstrong called himself “the most depraved bastard you’ll ever meet” and I rolled my eyes so hard I almost missed the point. I almost missed that this book wasn’t about another violent pretty boy. It was about something I didn’t expect to find here at all.
Preston Armstrong and Marcus Osborn are captains of rival hockey teams. They have hated each other since childhood. Preston is chaos wearing a human suit. He steals Marcus’s bike, sabotages his games, and calls his date “Dropbox” just to watch him fume. Marcus is the calm one. The patient one. The one who looks at Preston like he’s something precious.
Their rivalry is violent and electric. They crash into each other on the ice and off it. They threaten murder and mean it. But somewhere between the hate and the biting, something shifts. Preston’s denial becomes louder. Marcus’s patience becomes thinner. And the question that drives the whole book is this: what happens when two people who believe they’re unlovable find someone who refuses to let them go?
The Problem with Preston Armstrong
I’ll be honest. I hated him for the first 40 percent of this book. He was exhausting. Every step forward with Marcus meant two steps back. The denial, the deflection, the constant pushing away. I kept thinking, just stop. Just let him in. But here’s the thing about Preston—his trauma isn’t decorative. It’s structural.
He has bipolar disorder. He has abandonment wounds that go so deep they’ve become part of his skeleton. He believes he ruins everything he touches. And the book doesn’t use this as a quick fix for sympathy. Rina Kent makes you sit in the discomfort of his behavior first. She makes you frustrated with him. Then she shows you why.
There’s a scene where Preston is in therapy with Dr. Duret and he casually mentions stealing Marcus’s bike. The therapist asks him why. And Preston’s answer is so childish, so honest, that I laughed out loud. But later, when you understand what that bike meant to him, you realize the laughter was covering something else entirely.
Marcus Osborn is the other half of this equation. He’s the calm to Preston’s storm. But he’s not a savior. He’s obsessed, possessive, and patient in a way that borders on pathological. He calls Preston “my prince” and “fairy prince” and it should feel ridiculous. It doesn’t. Because Marcus means it. He sees Preston as something magical, not something broken.
The Craft and the Cracks
This book is too long. I’ll say it. The middle section drags. From about 30 percent to 60 percent, the plot barely moves. It’s just tension and denial and more tension. Some readers will love this. I found it repetitive.
But here’s what Rina Kent does well. She writes chemistry that feels alive. The banter between these two is genuinely funny. Preston calling Marcus’s date wrong names on purpose, the way Marcus blocks him on text when he’s being insulting, the mango candy as a recurring symbol of care. These small details build something real.
The core image that stayed with me is Marcus tapping his fingers. It’s a small thing. A nervous habit. But it appears at key moments. When he’s holding back. When he’s about to lose control. It became a visual anchor for his character. The storm beneath the stillness.
The mental health representation is handled with more care than I expected from this genre. Preston’s bipolar disorder isn’t a plot twist. It’s a reality he navigates daily. The therapy scenes feel authentic. The medication isn’t treated as a weakness. And when Preston says, “I think I’ve been in love with you for a long time. I loved you when I thought love was pain,” it lands because the book earned it.
What This Book Won’t Do for You
It won’t fix the pacing issues. It won’t make you love every character. The side characters feel flat if you haven’t read the previous books. And Preston’s internalized homophobia, while realistic, becomes frustrating to sit through.
But here’s what it will do. It will make you understand why someone who pushes everyone away still deserves to be held. It will make you believe that two broken people can fit together without fixing each other. And it will make you want a Marcus Osborn in your life, even though you know he only exists between these pages.
Who Should Read This
If you love dark romance with real emotional stakes. If you’re tired of trauma as decoration and want to see a character actually struggle and grow. If you can tolerate a slow middle for a satisfying ending.
Who should skip this? If you need fast plot progression. If internalized homophobia triggers you. If you prefer your romance heroes to be immediately sympathetic.
I finished it at 3 AM. My wine glass was empty. And I sat there thinking about Preston Armstrong, who I hated and then loved and then cried over. That’s the trick of this book. It makes you care about someone who tried so hard to be unlovable.
