The Risk (briar U, #2)

The second installment in the Briar U series follows Brenna Jensen, a student at Briar University and the daughter of the school's head hockey coach, Chad Jensen, and Jake Connelly, the captain of the rival Harvard hockey team. Any involvement between them amounts to a betrayal of family loyalty, yet their chemistry proves difficult to resist.

Their paths cross at a diner after Brenna is stood up on a date. Jake slides into her booth uninvited, and the two trade barbs that reveal both rivalry and attraction. Jake has an agenda: He wants Brenna to stop casually hooking up with his teammate Josh McCarthy, a sophomore whose lovesick distraction is hurting Harvard's playoff performance. Brenna refuses, but that night McCarthy sends her a breakup text she immediately recognizes as Jake's doing.

Brenna is navigating more than romantic complications. Her relationship with her father is deeply strained. Coach Jensen has been emotionally distant since Brenna's mother died in a car accident when Brenna was seven, and a painful event during Brenna's teenage years widened the rift further. She is also fielding calls from her ex-boyfriend Eric Royce, a former number-one National Hockey League (NHL) draft pick who developed a substance addiction after their breakup. Eric periodically asks Brenna for money, and though she refuses, she cannot bring herself to cut him off entirely.

Professionally, Brenna is pursuing a summer internship at HockeyNet, a major sports network. Her interviewer, Ed Mulder, head of the production department, is openly sexist: He calls her the wrong name, ignores her answers, and dismisses her qualifications. The only time he engages with enthusiasm is when the conversation turns to Jake Connelly. Desperate, Brenna impulsively tells Mulder that Jake is her boyfriend. Mulder is thrilled and invites "the couple" to a dinner party.

Brenna asks Jake to play her fake boyfriend. He agrees on one condition: For every fake date, he wants a real one. Reluctantly, she accepts. The dinner party proves frustrating. Mulder segregates the women from the hockey talk, and when Brenna contributes sharp analysis, he dismisses it as "cute" coming from a woman. Jake includes her when he can but ultimately follows the men into a private after-dinner session, leaving Brenna furious. Afterward, they decompress at a pub, where Jake apologizes and they share their first real kiss.

Their real date takes place at a nearly empty bowling alley, where the relaxed setting strips away their combativeness. Brenna reveals she is selective about who she sleeps with, deepening Jake's interest. They grow physically closer, but a phone call from Eric interrupts and Brenna pulls away.

Meanwhile, Brenna's basement apartment floods, forcing her to move into her father's house. The arrangement is tense. One night, Jake climbs the drainpipe to her window. After an intimate encounter, Dad hears Jake's voice and confronts Brenna in the hallway. Shaken by Jake witnessing the exchange, Brenna tells Jake they need to stop seeing each other.

Jake's performance dips at practice, and his coach lectures him about women being distractions. His childhood best friend, Hazel Simonson, separately confronts Brenna on campus, accusing her of sabotaging Jake's season. Shortly after, HockeyNet informs Brenna that all three internship slots went to male candidates. Mulder's real purpose in summoning her to Boston was to invite her and Jake to a Bruins game. On her way out, Brenna encounters Georgia Barnes, a prominent female analyst at the network, who encourages her to keep pursuing her goals.

Brenna calls Jake, and they reunite at the Harvard arena during a storm. Jake convinces her to wait it out at the condo he shares with his wealthy teammate and roommate, Brooks Weston. That evening, Eric calls in a panic, high and stranded in New Hampshire after a three-day meth binge. Jake and Brooks drive Brenna to find him. They locate Eric incoherent and in terrible condition, deliver him to his mother, and return to Cambridge. The emotional toll of the night leads Brenna and Jake to sleep together for the first time.

Brenna opens up about her past. At sixteen, she became pregnant by Eric. Before a planned abortion, she began hemorrhaging from an incomplete miscarriage, a condition in which pregnancy tissue is not fully expelled. Eric was two hours away and unreachable. She passed out on the bathroom floor, and her father found her in a pool of blood. She nearly died. The trauma permanently altered their relationship: Dad could no longer look at her without reliving that night, and Brenna interpreted his withdrawal as shame. Jake listens without judgment and lends her his beaded good-luck bracelet to give her courage for an overdue conversation with her father.

The conference finals between Harvard and Briar devolve into chaos when Harvard's Jonah Hemley attacks Briar's Hunter Davenport on the ice, breaking Davenport's wrist. Briar captain Nate Rhodes is ejected for retaliating, and without two key players, Briar loses 4-3. After the game, Harvard's Coach Pedersen publicly accuses Coach Jensen of using Brenna as a "honey trap" to distract Jake, exposing their relationship. Brenna's friends feel betrayed, and her father stops speaking to her.

Brenna moves into Jake's condo, and the couple grows closer. But when Jake oversleeps and misses practice time, he panics. Hazel's pointed questions about whether he is ready for a serious relationship compound his anxiety, triggering a panic attack. He tells Brenna he needs to focus on hockey and asks her to leave. Devastated but refusing to show weakness, Brenna packs her things, still wearing the bracelet.

She goes home for a long-overdue conversation with her father. She apologizes, and Dad breaks down, revealing the real source of his distance: Finding her on the bathroom floor reminded him of identifying her mother's body at the morgue. He was never ashamed of her; he was terrified of losing the only person he has left. They agree to start over. Dad also reveals the origin of his feud with Pedersen: At Yale, Pedersen pursued Brenna's mother Marie, was rejected, and blamed Marie for leading him on.

Days later, Brenna realizes she still has Jake's bracelet and Harvard's regional game is hours away. She and her father drive to Worcester to return it. At the arena, she gives the bracelet to Hazel, who nearly withholds it out of jealousy before returning it. In the locker room, Jake tells Brenna he broke up with her out of fear, not genuine conviction. He tells her he loves her. She tells him she loves him too, and they reconcile.

In the epilogue, Brenna watches from a private box at the Frozen Four, the men's college hockey national championship tournament, in St. Paul, Minnesota, as Harvard defeats Ohio State to win the title. Jake's parents, who first attended his regional game after years of absence, sit beside her alongside Hazel. Brenna receives a voicemail from Georgia, who has left HockeyNet for ESPN and wants to interview Brenna for a personal assistant position. Her relationship with her father is repaired, Eric is out of her life, and her career path is finally opening.