When Ryan enters a local pharmacy in order to get a prescription filled, he’s surprised to see Fabian Salah working there. He’s lonely, the medication he’s on is screwing up his libido and… it sucks. Sex hasn’t often been a positive experience for him he hasn’t had many partners, and those he has had haven’t really been interested in him as a person, or been able to see past his size or their own preconceptions of what he should like and want. Ryan is openly – albeit quietly – gay but that’s never been an issue, partly, he suspects, because he’s moved too often for anyone to really notice or care, and with a few other players – notably Scott Hunter ( Game Changer) – coming out recently, it hasn’t seemed necessary to hide it. This is the ninth team Ryan has played for in almost as many years he’s never played anywhere long enough to put down roots or make any real friends, but this time he’s determined to change that, and finds himself an apartment in the vibrant, LGBTQ part of town. Anxiety, self-esteem issues and finding social situations hard to deal with mean Ryan has always found it difficult to connect personally and professionally, and a well-publicised “freak out” the previous season (a panic attack) has made him even more self-conscious. When the story begins, Ryan has just been traded – yet again – this time to the Toronto Guardians, and is being urged – ordered, really – by his coach to be more of a team player both on and off the ice, and unsubtly quizzed about his mental health.

But it’s an image and a job that Ryan wrestles with, and which has been weighing down on him more and more as the years have passed, because that’s not who he is at all. On the ice, he’s an enforcer, someone other players actually aspire to fight with – especially rookies, for whom “paying the Price” is something of a rite of passage.

While I wasn’t as utterly caught up in the romance here as I was in the previous book ( Heated Rivalry – which made my Best of 2019 list), I nonetheless enjoyed the novel, and appreciated the way the author flips the stereotype of the confident, ripped jock so often found in sports romances (both m/f and m/m) and creates instead an endearing, gentle-giant-type character with severe self-esteem issues who struggles to reconcile the person he truly is with the one he’s expected to be on the ice.Īt six-feet-seven inches, with a build like a bulldozer, Ryan Price knows how to intimidate. Tough Guy is book three in Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, set in the world of professional hockey.

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