Liz Tomforde’s contemporary sports romance, The Right Move (2023), is the second installment in the interconnected standalone Windy City series. The novel follows Ryan Shay, the intensely private and newly appointed captain of Chicago’s NBA team, and Indigo “Indy” Ivers, a flight attendant for the city’s NHL team. After a devastating breakup leaves Indy without a home, Ryan reluctantly allows her to move into his apartment at the behest of his twin sister, who is Indy’s best friend. To improve Ryan’s public image and provide Indy with a date for an upcoming wedding, the two enter a fake-dating arrangement that forces them to confront their past traumas and developing feelings. The novel explores themes of Vulnerability as a Prerequisite for Healing, The Redefinition of Family Through Found Connections, and The Conflict Between Public Persona and Private Authenticity.

A New York Times bestseller and a nominee for the 2023 Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance, The Right Move gained significant popularity on social media platforms like TikTok. Tomforde draws on her own experience as a former private flight attendant for an NHL team to create an authentic portrayal of the world of professional sports. The novel employs popular romance tropes, including fake dating and forced proximity, to examine the intense pressures faced by modern athletes. The Windy City series creates a shared universe in which characters from previous books, such as Ryan’s sister, Stevie, the protagonist of Mile High, play significant roles in subsequent stories.

This guide is based on the 2023 Entangled Publishing e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of substance use, illness, sexual content, cursing, bullying, and mental illness.

Plot Summary

The second installment of the Windy City series follows Ryan Shay, the 27-year-old point guard and newly named captain of the Chicago Devils NBA team, and Indigo “Indy” Ivers, a flight attendant for the Chicago Raptors hockey team, as a reluctant roommate arrangement evolves into a fake relationship and then into genuine love.

Ryan is intensely private, controlling, and dedicated to basketball at the expense of personal connections. He hasn’t dated since college, trusts almost no one outside his twin sister, Stevie, and treats his apartment as his only refuge from public scrutiny. When Stevie asks Ryan to let her best friend, Indy, move in, he initially refuses. Stevie explains that Indy was cheated on by Alex, her boyfriend of six years and a childhood friend of 22 years. Indy lost her apartment, cannot afford to live alone in Chicago, and will have to leave the city and forfeit a recent promotion if she has nowhere to stay. Ryan relents out of guilt, knowing his fame has made it difficult for Stevie to maintain genuine friendships.

Indy moves in reluctantly, aware that Ryan was cold to her the two times they previously met. Their contrasts are immediate: Ryan’s apartment is minimalist, monochromatic, and obsessively ordered, while Indy is colorful, cluttered, and emotionally expressive. On her first night, Ryan tells her he doesn’t want her there. Indy cries, overwhelmed by the collapse of her life, and Ryan, unable to ignore her distress, reverses course and tells her to stay. The next morning, he cooks her breakfast as a peace offering. They draft a lease agreement with one firm rule: She can’t have guests over, since the apartment is Ryan’s only private space. Over the following days, Indy adds plants, throw pillows, and colorful curtains to the space. After some initial resistance, Ryan allows most of the changes to remain. A quiet domesticity develops between them through shared breakfasts and small acts of care.

The fake-dating arrangement begins when Ryan’s General Manager, Ron Morgan, tells him he is not suited for the captaincy because he is a lone wolf who lacks personal warmth. Panicking, Ryan blurts out that he has a girlfriend and points to Indy, who happens to be at the practice facility. Indy is blindsided but plays along. Ryan proposes a deal: Indy will pretend to be his girlfriend at team events to secure Ron’s approval, and in return, Ryan will be her date to her friend Maggie’s February wedding so she doesn’t have to face Alex alone. They create bucket lists for each other. Indy’s list coaches Ryan on being a believable boyfriend with items like practicing casual touching, showing jealousy, and slow dancing with her. Ryan’s list pushes Indy toward independence with tasks including eating dinner alone, grocery shopping only for herself, and removing the wall of pillows on the empty side of her bed.

Their first public test at a fall banquet reveals an imbalance. Indy charms Ron and his wife, Caroline, effortlessly, while Ryan can barely bring himself to touch her. Through a video call, Ryan meets Indy’s parents. Her father, Tim, is deaf, and he asks Ryan to look out for his daughter. An overnight camping trip with the Morgans forces Ryan and Indy to share a bed, and their emotional intimacy deepens. Ryan reveals that the last woman he dated tried to get pregnant to secure child support, which is why he stopped dating. Indy reveals she’s saving money to freeze her eggs because she has Diminished Ovarian Reserve, a condition in which her eggs are aging faster than normal, and she wants to preserve the chance to have biological children.

The physical tension between Indy and Ryan escalates steadily. At a home game, an opposing player crashes into Indy courtside, and Ryan shoves him, earning his first-ever technical foul. After the game, Alex approaches Indy outside the arena. Ryan strides over and kisses her deeply in front of Alex, then introduces himself as her boyfriend. Later, Ryan tells Indy the kiss was acting, but his behavior suggests otherwise. When Indy later goes on a disastrous date with a stranger, Ryan drives to the bar to bring her home. She confesses she has been unable to orgasm for eight months because the traumatic image of catching Alex cheating invades her mind. Ryan kisses her, helps her through the barrier, and tells her to come to him whenever she needs help finding release.

A knee injury sidelines Ryan for a month, and the vulnerability of losing basketball causes him to spiral. As Indy cares for him, Ryan tells her the full story of his past. In college, his girlfriend, Marissa, became pregnant. Ryan was drafted first overall, bought the Chicago apartment, and rushed to the hospital with an engagement ring, only to realize the baby was not his. Marissa confessed that the entire relationship was a scheme to secure child support. Ryan describes the two-year depression that followed and explains that basketball became his only reason to keep going. Indy misunderstands what Ryan is trying to tell her and says she’ll move out so he doesn’t feel taken advantage of. Ryan protests, but Stevie interrupts before he can explain. Stevie later gives her blessing for a real relationship between Indy and her brother. Stevie’s partner, Zanders, proposes to her, and Ryan and Indy sleep together after the engagement party.

The Devils and the Raptors both play in Phoenix on the same day, and Indy attends Ryan’s game. She watches Ryan use American Sign Language (ASL) with a child who is deaf during a pre-game ceremony and learns he has been secretly studying the language for months so he can communicate with her father. The realization that no one else in her life, not Alex, not her lifelong friends, ever made this effort overwhelms her. Caroline observes that Ryan’s love is quiet but powerful, expressed through actions rather than words. At Maggie’s wedding, Ryan and Indy confess their love for the first time. When Alex asks her to give him another chance, she tells him his betrayal was the best thing that happened to her and that her home is with Ryan.

The conflict peaks when Ryan finds a positive pregnancy test in the apartment and assumes it is Indy’s. His panicked reaction convinces Indy that he doesn’t want the future she desires most. She tells him she isn’t pregnant, that it may be a miracle if she ever is, and leaves. Stevie arrives and reveals the test is hers. Ryan realizes his mistake, but Indy has already gone to stay at a friend’s house.

Ryan resolves the crisis by bringing Indy to a luxurious house outside Chicago. He shows her the deed, which bears both their names and is dated from January, months before their relationship became real. He reveals he also secretly paid for her fertility treatments in December, immediately after she first told him about her condition. Indy returns to the house and transforms it into a home. At a press conference, Ryan breaks from his scripted persona to admit publicly that he has struggled with depression. Ron praises this honest version of Ryan as the leader he always wanted. Ryan also confesses that his relationship with Indy began as a fake arrangement, and Ron reveals that Caroline knew all along. The Devils clinch their first playoff berth in six years, and Indy hosts a celebration at their new home with Ryan’s teammates, their friends, and her parents.

A bonus chapter set one year after the main storyline reveals that Indy is pregnant after a successful embryo transfer. The epilogue, set four years later, shows Ryan and Indy with two toddlers, their biological son, Iverson, and their adopted daughter, Navy. The Devils have won a championship, Ryan has two MVP titles, and Indy runs The Ryan Shay Foundation, which is a year-round organization supporting Chicago’s public-school children. The family gathers at the United Center, representing Ryan’s journey from isolation to connection and Indy’s journey from heartbreak to the family she always wanted.