At The Retro Rooster, Celeste keeps her head down and her heart locked away.
She is a single mom raising her son, studying physical therapy, and working shift after shift, with no plan to let a customer past the walls she has built.
Tate Jackson is the late-night regular she never counted on: the blond California golden boy and defensive star of the Ballad U hockey team, who orders the same coffee and burger and flirts without shame.
He tells himself the coffee brings him back, but it is the waitress who barely looks at him that he wants to earn.
Attention has always come easily to him, yet Celeste has more than her own heart to guard.
Stepping out of the neutral zone for the charming defenseman would mean choosing love over the safety she has fought to keep.
