Body Check Offside Hearts Book 1 – Quinn Ashby (1)

Not waiting. Not hovering. There. Like the boards. The boards don’t move, Rhodes. They just stay where they are, and when you hit them, they hold.” “You want me to be the boards.” “I want you to be the boards.” “That is the most romantic metaphor anyone has ever given me and I need you to know that I’m going to think about it every time I get checked now.”

Suki peeled off the sheet mask and grinned at me—that wide, brilliant grin that made them look like a person who found the world endlessly entertaining and was grateful to be part of the entertainment. “You’re going to be fine, Castellano. You’re annoying and you have no chill and you flirt like a fourteen-year-old, but you’re also—and I mean this—the first person I’ve seen make Mara forget to be afraid.

That’s not nothing. That’s everything.” I drank my beer. Scratched Biscuit. Let the words settle. The first person I’ve seen make Mara forget to be afraid. I thought about the smile after the goal. The kiss she’d initiated. The fitted shirt. The two mugs on the drying rack that she’d told me about the morning after, in a text that had tried to sound casual—I put your mug on the rack next to mine, in case you’re back for coffee sometime—and had been the least casual sentence ever written.

She wasn’t afraid right now. She was standing at the edge, deciding whether to jump, and she needed to look down and see not a net but a person. A person who would catch her and hold her and not drop her and not leave. I could be that person. I was that person. I just had to be the boards. Stay put. Hold steady. Let her come to me at whatever speed she needed.

Offside Hearts, Book One Copyright © 2026 Quinn Ashby All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations in book reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Content Notice: This book contains explicit sexual content and is intended for mature readers (18+). Cover design by Ethereal Dreamscapes 1kitap1.com/en CHAPTER ONE RHODES The first thing I noticed about Boston was that it smelled like someone had boiled the ocean and forgot to turn off the stove.

Okay, that wasn’t fair. It was mid-January, and the whole city was locked under a skin of gray ice, and I was standing outside Logan Airport in a leather jacket that had absolutely no business being north of the Mason- Dixon line. The cold hit me like a check from behind—sudden, total, the kind that makes your teeth ache before your brain catches up.

I should have worn a real coat. I owned real coats. But I’d packed in a fog at three a.m. after getting the call from my agent, and somewhere between pulling clothes off hangers and trying not to cry into my suitcase, I’d prioritized looking hot over not dying of exposure. Priorities. I had them. My phone buzzed for the eleventh time in the last hour.

Ma’s name on the screen, followed by a wall of texts in alternating English and Spanish that I could summarize as: “Are you okay? Call me. Why haven’t you called me? Titi Rosa says Boston has good cannoli. Are you eating? CALL ME.” I sent back a heart emoji and shoved the phone in my pocket.

I’d call her later, when I could do it without my voice cracking. Right now I needed to hold it together.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: fb929f48f1716119
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,172,777 bytes (1.118 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 246
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 389.02 minutes
• Total Words: 77,805
• Total Characters: 438,155
• Average Words per Page: 316.28
• Average Characters per Page: 1781.12

Most Frequent Words

like (411), said (377), something (277), mara (269), one (252), way (249), thing (235), didn’t (231), rhodes (223), body (220), person (211), i’d (187), every (187), room (174), everything (167), looked (159), face (154), made (152), two (147), i’m (145), back (144), time (140), still (140), without (137), see (129), team (127), going (125), eyes (120), know (116), first (114), she’d (114), now (111), someone (111), felt (110), people (109), let (104), kind (103), between (101), don’t (101), suki (101), against (100), voice (98), want (98), enough (98), hands (98), knee (97), look (97), game (95), wasn’t (93), ice (91), space (90), right (88), wanted (84), world (84), feel (83), always (83), it’s (81), hand (80), things (80), looking (79), knew (76), captain (75), words (75), three (74), never (74), ever (74), real (73), front (72), part (71), wall (71), you’re (71), love (71), seen (71), myself (70), say (70), warm (70), good (69), life (69), thought (69), mouth (68), meant (68), apartment (67), came (65), woman (64), even (64), word (64), quiet (64), day (64), told (63), doing (63), full (63), needed (62), held (62), nothing (62), put (61), that’s (60), small (60), sat (60), open (60), mug (59).

PDF Download