Title: Two for Holding
Series: Minor Penalties, Book One
Author: S.B. Barnes
Cover Artist: Tuisku Hiltunen
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 10/28/2025
Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 280
Genre: Contemporary, gay, athletes, coming out, enemies/rivals to lovers, in the closet, slow burn/UST, San Francisco, sports/ice hockey, self-esteem issues, “practice with me” trope, anxiety attacks
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Description
Tom Crowler has been captain of the San Francisco Sea Lions for a decade of failures. With no cups or trophies to show for his time in the NHL, Tom retreated into himself a long time ago, and that’s exactly where he intends to stay until he retires. But when he catches the new team superstar, Jaxon Grant, in a compromising position, Tom finds it impossible to continue hiding his deepest secret behind a bland, pleasant mask.
Jax is everything Tom isn’t: loud, flashy, the winner of multiple NHL Awards, and—oh, yeah—gay enough to get traded to San Francisco because of a potential PR scandal with his old team. At first, he thinks Tom catching him means the next trade, the next rejection for being just a little too much for other people to take. When it turns out the two of them have more in common than talent on the ice, though, Jax finds himself drawn in by pulling Tom out.
As animosity gives way to a partnership neither of them saw coming, Tom and Jax are left facing new challenges. Will Jax’s impulsive nature put Tom’s deeply valued privacy at risk? Or will Tom’s reticence force Jax into pretending to be someone he isn’t? And if they can’t even figure each other out, how can they save a struggling NHL team from bad coaching and internal division?
Excerpt
Two for Holding
S.B. Barnes © 2025
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
Kayleigh: Hi everyone, I’m Kayleigh, your San Francisco Sea Lions media gal, and I’m here in the Sea Lions’ home base, Cyberian Arena, with the team’s newest addition, Jaxon Grant! Jax, how does it feel to be on the West Coast?
Jaxon: Um, good, yeah. Different. Less humid than in Philly.
Kayleigh: [leans in toward the camera] So, Jax—I can call you Jax, right?
Jaxon: Yeah, of course.
Kayleigh: Your trade came as a bit of a surprise, and so close to preseason. Can you tell us what brought you here?
Jaxon: [laughs] Uh. Good question. Honestly, if I could answer it, I might not be here.
Top comments:
sealions4lyfe: I know we had an offensive gap but…this guy? Really? He’s good, but does that make up for his personality?
Jefferson Howard: In my day, hockey players played hockey instead of dyeing their hair and buying designer watches.
(Video posted in The Rookery, the direct-to-consumer streaming service of the San Francisco Sea Lions and all associated teams, on 09/18/2024)
*
Joining a new team was always nerve-wracking.
The last time Jax had to do it, he’d been drafted third overall by the Philadelphia Magpies and had already gone through development and rookie camps. He’d earned his place. At the time, he was also eighteen and making more money playing hockey than his parents’ house had cost. He might have been slightly overconfident.
Now, Jax knew he was exactly the right amount of confident. He had six years in the NHL under his belt as well as the Calder his rookie year and an Art Ross two years ago. Any team would be lucky to have him.
As he walked into the San Francisco Sea Lions’ locker room for the first time at the tail end of training camp, he kept his shoulders back and his chin up, projecting all the confidence he could muster. No one had seen his trade coming, least of all Jax, and he’d missed all the team bonding events to start the season, but he was used to coming in as the underdog. He could make this work for him. He would make this work for him.
With that in mind, he strolled up to Tom Crowler, team captain, absolute beast on the ice and averaging comfortably over a point per game for the last decade. “Hi. Nice to meet you. Tom, right? I’m Jax, I’ll be—”
“I know who you are,” Crowler said.
“Um. Okay. So—”
“They’re probably going to give you an A. Phil can tell you what you need to know about your responsibilities.” Crowler waved vaguely in the direction of Phil “East” Easton, the only other person who’d been on the team as long as him.
Then, Crowler got up and walked out of the locker room.
Jax stared at his retreating back. Had he said something wrong? Accidentally worn a Magpies jersey out of habit? He looked down at himself. No, there was the stupid Sea Lions logo, a stylized swirl of lines only vaguely reminiscent of a real animal.
“Don’t worry about it.” A man roughly twice as broad as most humans came up to Jax and slapped him on the back, hard enough he had to brace for impact. “Captain’s always like that.”
“Seriously?”
“I’d been on the team for a month before he talked to me. I wasn’t even sure he knew my name.” The man smiled toothily. “Chris, by the way. Chris Calabrese. But everyone calls me Breezy.”
Right, a junior defenseman who’d gotten more and more minutes toward the end of last season and a lot of buzz in the press.
“Nice to meet you,” Jax said.
“You too, man. Excited to have you. We need some more young guys around here, you know? It’s just me and the rookies.” Breezy nodded over at two other guys in his corner of the locker room, both staring down at their phones.
Did no one in this locker room talk to one another? Chat?
“Sounds awesome,” Jax said weakly. Then he rallied. He’d make it work here. He would make himself integral to the team so he wouldn’t have the rug pulled out from under him with another goddamn trade. “What do y’all do for fun?”
Breezy made an odd face as if no one had ever spoken the word “fun” in the locker room before. “We don’t really do much as a team. But, hey, we should totally change it up!”
They absolutely should. They would be spending the next seven to ten months sharing a locker room and a charter plane and a team bus. What did they do, sit quietly next to one another, not talking? Jax wouldn’t survive for ten minutes, let alone eighty-two hockey games.
Breezy could definitely see his trepidation. “Here, come meet East. He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
Twice now, someone had referred him to Easton for guidance, though he wasn’t the captain of this team. As Breezy led him across the locker room, Jax peeked out through the door. On the fresh, empty ice, Crowler drew circles around and around, all by himself, skating faster and faster as he went.
He was so good. Why was he so alone?
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Meet the Author
S. B. Barnes attended college in the Hudson Valley, studying English Language and Literature and Anthropology (although unlike her characters, her time there was not interrupted by crime-solving). She grew up split between the USA and Germany, attending university in both countries before eventually settling in Germany. Today, she works as a teacher and lives with her husband and two cats in an apartment with too little shelf space. Fiction has always been one of her greatest loves, as a reader, as a teacher, and as a writer. While S.B. has been writing for most of her life, this is her first foray into publishing her work.X | Instagram | Tumblr
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Ornery Owl's Review
Five out of Five Stars
If you like a slow burn, opposites attract romance with plenty of angst and banter, this is the book for you.
Sensible Tom doesn't want to acknowledge what he's feeling for hotshot Jax, but he can't help it. The smallest things have team captain Tom feeling crazy for the new assistant captain who drives him crazy.
This book had me smiling from the start and chuckling at the zingers the guys on the team throw at each other. There's plenty of lustful longing growing into real love and plenty of heartwarming platonic interaction as well.
Grab this story and score a fun afternoon or evening of sweet and sexy romantic fun. Highly recommended!
