Off-Side

My partner reads romance and I picked this up off the nightstand on a slow Sunday and finished it before Monday. I am not the target audience and Sloane Ashford got me anyway.

The thing that makes Off-Side work is the green notebook. Sage Maren has been her own logistics manager since she was fourteen and that notebook is every single thing she is going to handle herself, in her own handwriting, because nobody has ever once handled anything for her. Crash Riordan does not take the notebook away. He just starts quietly being ten steps ahead of it. He locates the financial-aid file the office lost. He writes down the license plate of the car crossing the Maine state line in violation of her restraining order. He pays for the Subaru repair before she has finished the police report.

And the entire emotional engine of the book is that being handled and being seen are not the same thing, and Sage has to learn the difference while staying furious about it. She does not melt. She stays sharp. The day-twelve scene, when Crash calls her his girl, lands because she has spent twelve days refusing to be handled and he has spent twelve days handling it gently and on purpose anyway.

The father in the Vermont hospice is the part I was not ready for. Sage's father dies on the page in the third act and it is handled with so much care that I had to set the book down. The CWs at the front are honest about all of it. If you want college hockey with an actual dark edge, the way Chloe Walsh writes rugby, this is it. Four chilies. I get the hype now.

I read Off-Side in one sitting and then went straight back to the start and annotated the whole thing, which I have not done since Boys of Tommen. This book rewards a second pass because once you know Crash decided on day one, every early scene reads completely differently.

The setup is simple and lethal. Easton Crash Riordan, senior captain of the Halverson Hawks, runs transfer student Sage Maren's Subaru off the icy hill behind the hockey arena on her first Tuesday. He apologizes. He decides she is his. He tells nobody. Then for twelve days he is quietly, immovably ten steps ahead of her: the car repair paid before her police report, her exact coffee order delivered to her dorm, the lost financial-aid file located, the license plate of the car crossing the Maine state line against her restraining order written down. He calls her baby on day six. His girl on day twelve.

On the second read you see Sloane Ashford planting it all. The way Crash looks at the green notebook. The way he never asks about the two trash bags. The way he says far less than he means in every single scene. His chapters are quieter than his locker-room voice and on a reread that quiet is deafening.

Sage keeps the book honest. She has run her own life from that green notebook since fourteen and she is furious that a stranger in a Halverson hoodie keeps fixing things uninvited. The found-family team, the stalker-ex Crash handles without weapons in week three, the father dying in a Vermont hospice, all of it lands with care. Spice four, dark-coded, consensual. For Chloe Walsh and Elle Kennedy readers. The Halverson Hawks are forever now.

If Chloe Walsh wrote college hockey it would read like this. Off-Side takes the warmth and found-family of an Elle Kennedy locker room and runs it under a genuinely dark hood, and the result is the book I have been describing to my book club for two weeks straight.

Crash Riordan is the captain of the Halverson Hawks, twenty-two, graduating in May, and he has never asked a girl for her number in four years. Then he runs Sage Maren's car off the icy hill behind the arena on her first Tuesday and something in him simply locks. He decides she is his on day one. He does not tell her. He just starts handling everything. The Subaru repair, paid before her police report is done. The coffee, her exact order. The financial-aid file the office lost. The restraining-order plate crossing the state line. By day six she is baby. By day twelve she is his girl, and that scene is the screenshot the whole internet is sharing.

What keeps this from being a rescue fantasy is Sage. She is sharp and tired and she has been her own logistics manager since fourteen, and she is correctly enraged that a stranger keeps solving her problems uninvited. You don't get to handle me, she says in the snow. The book is her slowly, furiously learning that he is not handling her, he is choosing her, and the difference is everything.

The stalker-ex thread, the boy who used to be her best friend, escalates, and Crash handles it in week three without a single weapon. The hospice subplot with Sage's dying father gutted me. Spice four, open door, dark-coded but always consensual, Crash narrating what he will do and waiting for the word. Halverson Hawks forever. I need Knox's book yesterday.

I went into this expecting another sunshine college hockey book and what I got was a captain who ran a girl's Subaru off an icy hill and then quietly reorganized her entire life before she could object. Easton Riordan, Crash to everyone who fears him, is not a cinnamon roll. He is the boy who texts his defenseman from the parking lot, deal with the car, full repair, on me, do not ask the girl, and then shows up at her dorm the next morning with her exact coffee order. A guess the first time. Documented intel by the third. That detail broke me.

Sage Maren is the heroine I have wanted for years. She shows up at Halverson with two trash bags and a green notebook of every single thing she is going to handle herself, and she is furious, rightly, that a stranger in a Halverson hoodie keeps solving her problems before she finishes naming them. Her father is dying four hours south in a Vermont hospice and Sloane Ashford writes that grief without ever using it as a prop. The anxiety rep is the most accurate I have read in the lane.

The day-twelve scene where Crash calls her his girl is the page-find of the year and I screenshotted it twice. He handled the financial-aid file. He handled the restraining-order plate crossing the Maine line. He handled the boy who used to be her best friend without weapons and without making her ask. If you came up on Elle Kennedy and graduated through Chloe Walsh, the Halverson Hawks are your next team. Four chilies, dark-coded, asked and answered every single time. I will gatekeep this captain.

The day-twelve scene is the BookTok page-find of the year and I am not being dramatic. I literally screenshotted it before I had finished reading the page, then went back and read it three more times. Off-Side earns that moment with twelve full days of build.

Here is the build. Easton Crash Riordan, senior captain of the Halverson Hawks, runs Sage Maren's Subaru off the icy hill behind the hockey arena on her first Tuesday on campus. He decides, that morning, in the quiet way he decides everything, that she is his. He tells no one and especially not her. He just starts handling things. He pays for the car repair before her police report is finished. He turns up at her dorm with her exact coffee order. He finds the financial-aid file the office lost. He writes down the license plate of the car crossing the Maine state line in violation of her restraining order. He calls her baby on day six.

Then day twelve, he calls her his girl, and because the reader has watched all twelve days from both sides, that two-word phrase detonates.

Sage is the reason none of this curdles. She has been her own logistics manager since fourteen, she carries a green notebook of every single thing she will handle herself, and she is genuinely furious that a stranger in a Halverson hoodie keeps fixing her life uninvited. You don't get to handle me, she tells him in the snow. He handled it anyway, gently and on purpose, and the book makes her decide what that means.

The found-family team, the hospice thread with her dying father, the stalker-ex Crash handles without weapons in week three, all of it is handled with care. Four chilies, dark-coded, consensual. For Hannah Grace and Boys of Tommen readers. Gatekeeping this captain forever.