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The Concussion Protocol: A Halloran Ironmen Hockey Romance
Paperback
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Jul 24 2026
Pages: 328
Weight: 0.97
Height: 0.69 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
POV: you're the only person in the building qualified to end the career of the man you're falling for. A forbidden-workplace, secret-relationship hockey romance with a broken enforcer, the neuropsychologist who has to be his conscience, and a slow burn that turns the right thing into the cruelest thing.
Cole Brennan is the Halloran Ironmen's wall. Number forty-four, fourth-line enforcer, the man who drops the gloves so the stars never have to bleed, beloved by a steel town that has always worshipped whoever takes the hit. He is eleven games from the four-hundredth of his career, the one that vests his contract and finally pays for his mother's house and his kid brother's tuition. He is also quietly failing the cognitive tests that would end everything, and he has decided that a man who can't take the hit is worth nothing at all.
Mara Sadowski grew up on the east side of the same mill city, first in her family with a doctorate, and she is the Ironmen's first staff neuropsychologist. She is precise, rule-bound, and the only person cleared to read the baseline scores Cole is hiding behind. She learned young what silence costs. When she stays quiet to protect someone, people get hurt, and she has built her entire careful life around never being that girl again.
There is no contract between them, only the thing that is worse: she is the clinician assigned to clear him, and the graduated monitoring plan she offers instead of reporting him is already a betrayal of everything she believes. The rules are simple. Keep it professional. Keep it documented. Never, under any circumstances, let the man she is supposed to be judging become the man she takes home. But the first night the armor comes off, every rule she wrote goes quiet.
Behind a locked door their sharp, careful distance turns into something neither of them can file away, and for the first time the Wall lets someone see the cracks underneath. When the symptoms worsen and the season closes in, it is the supposedly untouchable enforcer who needs holding together, and the rule-bound clinician who has to decide whether love is a reason to look away.
Then the no-fraternization line detonates in public, the truth curdles into a lie that she falsified his tests, and Mara is suspended while a city that once cheered her turns. Loving Cole means being the one who takes hockey from him. Protecting her means he has to do the one thing he has never survived: be seen on the way down.
Can a love built on a secret survive the one truth that will cost them both everything?
When the right thing hurts the people you love, you do it anyway.
The Concussion Protocol is a full-length hockey romance with a slow burn and a scorching back half, a grumpy protective hero, a brilliant heroine who saves him by refusing to lie for him, found family, hurt/comfort, and a hard-won happily ever after. Halloran Ironmen, Book 1.
Please read with care.This is an adult contemporary hockey romance with a guaranteed happily ever after. It is written for readers 18 and older and contains explicit, open-door sexual content and strong language throughout.
It also handles head injury with intention. On the page you will find concussion and progressive post-concussion symptoms; a former player living with a degenerative brain condition, portrayed with dignity and without graphic decline; grief over a parent's death; a workplace power imbalance and a broken no-fraternization rule; and public shaming built on a false accusation of professional misconduct.
There is no sexual assault, no cheating between the leads, and no harm to children or animals. If any of these themes are difficult for you, please take care of yourself as you read.
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