Breathe With Me

The fifth and final installment of the Playing for Keeps hockey romance series follows Cara and Emmett Brodie through a love story tested by infertility, self-doubt, and the unexpected path to parenthood.

The novel opens with a flashback to New Year's Day three and a half years before the main timeline. Cara Hunter, a 24-year-old event planner, is coordinating a charity fundraiser on behalf of the Vancouver Vipers hockey team for The Family Project, an organization supporting a local children's home called Second Chance Home. Her gaze locks onto Emmett Brodie, the team's left-winger, and the attraction is instant. Emmett hands Cara his phone with a new contact entry filled in as "Mrs. Brodie." He returns at midnight, his 27th birthday, and the two share an intense encounter in the event kitchen, where he asks if she wants to be a mother one day. She says yes.

Flashbacks trace their rapid courtship. On their first date, Emmett reveals that his father was verbally abusive and his mother emotionally neglectful; Cara is the first person to name his father's behavior as abuse. After three weeks together, he tells her he loves her while they are ice skating on a frozen lake. She says it back. He buys them a house in North Vancouver, and on his 28th birthday, New Year's Day, he proposes with a custom ring matching specifications Cara described when they first met.

The main timeline picks up after the couple's marriage, when they have been trying to conceive for over two years. A fertility specialist delivers a devastating diagnosis: Cara has diminished ovarian reserve, meaning her egg quantity and likely quality resemble those of a woman in her late forties. He recommends going straight to in vitro fertilization (IVF) or considering embryo donation and surrogacy, stating bluntly that he does not see Cara conceiving with her own eggs. That evening, their tight-knit group of friends, fellow Vipers couples Carter and Olivia Beckett, Garrett and Jennie Andersen, Adam and Rosie Lockwood, and Jaxon and Lennon Riley, arrive and embrace them without a word.

Despite the doctor's recommendation, Cara and Emmett begin with intrauterine insemination (IUI), a less invasive protocol involving daily hormone injections and timed insemination. Cara is terrified of needles, and Emmett coaxes her through each injection by listing things he loves about her. Their first IUI fails. At a dinner with Emmett's family, his brother Craig's girlfriend Sasha makes careless remarks, asking which of them is "the issue." Cara quietly identifies herself as the problem, and Emmett firmly corrects that they are in this together. Their second and third IUIs also fail.

A montage spanning two years traces 24 consecutive negative pregnancy tests, charting Cara's emotional deterioration from optimism to despair and self-loathing. She moves from taking tests alongside Emmett to hiding results and sobbing alone. Olivia offers to serve as a surrogate if needed. At a summer gathering, both Olivia and Rosie reveal they are pregnant, and Cara forces a smile while an internal voice whispers: "Inadequate. Defective. Failure."

The couple moves to IVF, in which eggs are retrieved, fertilized in a lab, and transferred as embryos. The retrieval yields only five eggs, and over the following days embryos arrest one by one until two remain. The clinic recommends canceling the transfer to stockpile more embryos, but Cara refuses. Emmett flies home from a road trip to be present, and their friends organize a "mental health day" with cozy socks, fries, and a bracelet with two crystal beads representing the embryos.

The transfer fails. Cara experiences symptoms she interprets as pregnancy, but her blood results confirm she is not pregnant. One embryo remains frozen in storage. Minutes later, Craig and Sasha arrive unannounced to announce they are expecting. Cara goes numb. Over the following days, she withdraws entirely, telling Emmett for the first time that she hates herself. Their housekeeper Natasha makes a pass at Emmett, suggesting she could give him what Cara cannot. Emmett fires her. A catastrophic fight erupts in which Cara articulates the full scope of her pain: the jealousy, the shame, the conviction that her body does not work. She grabs her keys and heads for the door, intending to leave so Emmett can find someone who can give him a child.

Cara spends the night at Olivia's house. Carter, Olivia's husband, finds her sobbing and tells her that infertility mirrors grief and that love makes life worth living even in the face of loss. Olivia confronts Cara's pattern of self-sabotage: Cara has decided she is not enough before Emmett can, believing it will hurt less if she controls the outcome. Emmett arrives in the middle of the night and in the morning tells Cara he is taking her home because they do not quit on each other.

Back at the house, Emmett has strung photos of their relationship across the living room, each captioned with how Cara has shaped his life. After a raw exchange, he tells her that her heart is "a mosaic" and that the beauty of being broken is the space it creates for light. Cara surrenders her need to handle everything alone, deletes her cycle-tracking app, and they agree to pause treatments to rebuild their marriage.

Cara begins therapy with a specialist in fertility-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On New Year's Day, Emmett's birthday, the couple visits Second Chance Home, the same children's home Cara's charity work has long supported. Emmett notices a newly arrived three-year-old boy named Abel, who has been separated from his teenage mother, Catharine, after her grandparents kicked them both out. Emmett gives Abel his Vipers beanie. Over the following weeks, the couple returns repeatedly, and Abel bonds fiercely with Emmett and gradually warms to Cara, eventually climbing into her lap and falling asleep for the first time since arriving at the home.

After conversations with friends who have adopted and with Emily, a child psychologist at the home, Cara and Emmett decide to foster Abel. He arrives frightened, but they meet him with patience, establishing a "family promise" to communicate calmly and never call him a bad boy. Abel blossoms, his stutter improving and his confidence growing, and he begins calling them "my Emmett" and "my Cara." The couple also meets Catharine, whom Cara encourages to apply to the University of British Columbia's (UBC) creative writing program.

Catharine is accepted to UBC and secures a job at the campus library. She announces her decision to sign over parental rights directly to Cara and Emmett, explaining that Abel deserves parents who love him because they want to, not because they have to. Abel, now calling them Mommy and Daddy, tells them he wished for them on the stars. Cara reflects that she would endure every moment of her journey again if it meant arriving here.

The couple decides to use their last frozen embryo at a new clinic. On New Year's Day, Emmett's birthday, Abel presents Cara with a painting of their family of four, including a baby. Emmett reveals the transfer was successful: Cara is pregnant. She promptly vomits.

The epilogue jumps seven and a half years forward. The five couples have retired from hockey and raise their children together. Cara and Emmett's daughter, Lana Olivia Brodie, named after Cara's grandmother and her best friend Olivia, is six years old. Abel is a thriving preteen. Emmett reflects that everything they endured led them to the family they have.