 Role Model, by Rachel Reid.
The first scene has Ilya Rozanov and a puppy. How much better can a book get? This is book 5 in Rachel Reid's Game Changer series, and the books have ranged from okay to excellent. This one lands closer to the excellent end for me. It's a redemption arc for Troy Barrett, who was a minor villain in Tough Guy. Reid's books have more depth when they're about something else in addition to the romance. Troy had always played henchman to his teammate Dallas Kent, a bigoted bully. But now several women have come forward to accuse Kent of sexual assault, and while Troy never directly witnessed anything, he believes the women, and he stands up to Kent. The world of professional sports being what it is, Troy is targeted for outrage by fans (including his own father), and traded to the league's worst team. The very closeted Troy quickly falls for the team's sunny-natured social media manager, Harris Drover. Harris has survived multiple surgeries for a heart defect, and is very much into seizing all the joy life can bring. And his heart condition doesn't interfere with the explicit sex scenes that are the hallmark of every book in this series. Part of the fun of this series is the way the characters' lives overlap, and all four couples from the previous books appear at least briefly in this one. Troy gets the chance to apologize to former teammate Ryan from Tough Guy. Ilya Rozanov from Heated Rivalry is on Troy's new team, and Ilya steals every scene he's in, including one where he and Shane are doing their uniquely hostile form of flirting. There's a moment during an emergency when we glimpse Ilya frantically texting, and I'm sure we'll find out what he was saying to Shane in The Long Game. And Harris adopts the puppy, because of course he does. Trigger warnings for homophobia and mentions of sexual assault.
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