Rachel Reid’s The Shots You Take (2025) is a standalone second-chance queer hockey romance. The novel centers on two former NHL teammates, Riley Tuck and Adam Sheppard, who were once inseparable friends and secret lovers. Adam breaks their 12-year silence when he unexpectedly appears at Riley’s father’s funeral in the small Nova Scotia town of Avery River. Adam’s return forces both men to confront their complicated history of desire, regret, and heartbreak. The narrative explores themes of Reckoning With the Past to Earn a Second Chance, The Conflict Between Public Persona and Private Identity, and Grief as a Catalyst for Connection and Change.

Rachel Reid is a USA Today and New York Times bestselling author known for her popular Game Changers series of queer hockey romances. A lifelong resident of Nova Scotia and an avid hockey fan, Reid sets this novel in a fictionalized version of a small Nova Scotian town. The novel’s central conflict is shaped by the real-world climate of professional men’s sports. The characters’ secret relationship in the 2000s reflects the intense pressure faced by LGBTQ+ athletes in the NHL, an environment where no active player had publicly come out. This institutional hostility is contrasted with the supportive, small-town sanctuary of Avery River, where authenticity is celebrated.

This guide refers to the 2025 Carina Press edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of sexual content, cursing, illness, mental illness, suicidal ideation, substance use, addiction, antigay bias, and death.

Plot Summary

The story follows two former NHL defense partners, Riley Tuck and Adam Sheppard, whose decades-long bond of friendship, desire, and heartbreak reignites when Adam appears unexpectedly at the funeral of Riley’s father. The narrative alternates between their present-day reunion in April 2024 and flashbacks to pivotal moments in their shared past.

Riley, a retired hockey player, lives in his small hometown of Avery River, Nova Scotia, where he helps run the family sporting goods store, Tuck’s Sporting Goods. His father, Harvey Tuck, a beloved community figure who coached youth hockey, dies suddenly of a heart attack. At the funeral, Adam, Riley’s former best friend and defense partner on the Toronto Northmen, walks into the church. They have not spoken in 12 years. Riley delivers a eulogy, then confronts Adam outside and tells him to leave.

Flashbacks reveal the full arc of Riley and Adam’s relationship. For clarity, this plot summary will present the narrative chronologically, though the flashbacks occur out of sequence in the source text and in the guide’s chapter summaries. 

During their rookie season in 2003, after a win in New York, Adam and Riley explore the city together. When they stumble upon a neighborhood with a gay bar and see two men kissing, Adam freezes before pulling them away. In the hotel room, Adam asks Riley about his experience of being gay, and Riley nearly confesses his love for Adam. The two have been having sex since their first kiss when they were 21, but neither has been willing to discuss their relationship. Riley is deeply in love but keeps his feelings to himself, while Adam appears to treat the encounters as casual. During a summer visit to Avery River in 2006, they share a magical evening on a secluded beach, building a bonfire, stargazing, and kissing for the first time outside Toronto. Back in the city in January 2007,  Riley tells Adam he loves him after a night of unusual tenderness. Adam laughs and dismisses the idea, devastating Riley.

Adam soon marries Maggie. In June 2010, after the Northmen win the Stanley Cup, Adam comes back to Riley’s apartment and initiates sex. Riley briefly believes Adam might finally choose him, but Adam panics immediately after the encounter, declares it a mistake, and leaves. A devastated Riley secretly requests a trade to the Dallas Stars. In Dallas, he experiences severe depression, alcohol use, and suicidal ideation. His sister, Lindsay Tuck, convinces him to come home. Riley quits the NHL, a decision the hockey world dismisses as the failure of an unstable player. Back in Avery River, he quits drinking, finds a therapist, starts antidepressants, buys a fixer-upper by the ocean, adopts a dog named Lucky, and slowly rebuilds his life.

The narrative shifts to Adam’s perspective. He comes out to Maggie as gay nearly 15 years into their marriage. She is relieved, having long sensed that something was wrong with their marriage. They divorce amicably. Now in his 40s, Adam is retired, lonely, and cautiously exploring relationships with men, though he is not yet ready to come out publicly. Maggie urges him to attend Riley’s father’s funeral because she believes Riley needs him.

In the present, Adam keeps trying to see Riley despite his hostility. He visits the Tuck family home, where Lindsay warns him not to cause Riley more pain. Adam promises not to, bringing Riley lunch at the shop, where Riley has torn apart every display in a compulsive reorganizing episode. That night, Riley shows up at Adam’s motel, volatile and angry, but eventually admits that the week has been unbearable. 

Over the following days, Adam continues showing up at the shop, bringing Riley coffee, working alongside him, and quietly making himself useful. A phone call meant for Riley’s late father forces Riley to say aloud for the first time that Harvey has died, and he nearly breaks down. Adam places a hand on his shoulder, and Riley lets him.

Riley confides in his close friends, Darren and Tom, a married couple who run a maple syrup farm. Darren, Riley’s oldest friend and a fellow queer man, pushes Riley to book a therapy appointment, and Riley does. 

At the shop, Adam tells Riley he is gay. Riley bursts into laughter, overcome by the overwhelming irony of hearing those words after so many years. When Adam’s shoulder injury from hockey acts up due to manual labor at the shop, Riley offers him the guest room at his house for the duration of his stay in Avery River.

Adam is awed by Riley’s beautifully renovated home, with its vintage furniture, jewel-toned wallpaper, and record collection. Throughout Adam’s stay, his and Riley’s relationship deepens, but friction persists. At the local bar one night, their conversation turns bitter when Adam says he wishes Riley had stayed in the league. At Riley’s house afterward, their most explosive argument unfolds. Riley kisses Adam. Adam kisses back but stops, saying he wants to do things right and earn Riley’s affection. Interpreting this as rejection, Riley breaks down. Adam holds him, insisting he is not rejecting Riley. He spoons Riley in bed until Riley falls asleep peacefully for the first time in over a week.

The next morning, Riley tells Adam about his diagnoses: clinical depression and an emotional dysregulation disorder. Adam listens without judgment. At a dinner party hosted by Darren and Tom a few nights later, Adam meets Riley’s circle of queer friends. Emboldened by their warmth, Adam announces to the group that he is gay. The room cheers. That evening, Adam puts on a record at Riley’s house, and they dance in the living room. The dancing leads to their first mutual, sober kiss, and then to the bedroom, where they have sex.

In the days that follow, they grow closer. Adam hosts a youth hockey banquet, reading each child’s achievements with enormous enthusiasm while Riley watches, moved. Then Adam visits Harvey’s grave alone, where he confesses his love for Riley and promises not to hurt him again. In the days following, their physical relationship deepens as Adam trusts Riley with new vulnerabilities. On the morning Adam must leave, Riley asks for time processing their new intimacy, explaining that he is still grieving. Adam says he can wait as long as it takes. Riley asks him not to let them drift apart again.

Back in Toronto, Adam tells his teenage children, Lucy and Cole, that he is seeing Riley. They are surprised but supportive. Back home in Avery River, Riley manages his grief by staying busy and texting Adam daily. Weeks later, Adam tells Riley that a publisher has offered him a book deal, but he wants to wait because he doesn’t want to come out via the memoir and hopes his and Riley’s story will have a different ending. He also informs Riley of his upcoming shoulder surgery. Riley immediately offers to come to Toronto to care for Adam.

In the days following Adam’s surgery, Riley nurses Adam through recovery. By the pool one afternoon, Adam tells Riley he wants to be together for real. He has always loved Riley and is finally able to commit to him the way he deserves. Riley says he loves Adam too, and they kiss.

An epilogue set five years later reveals that Riley and Adam are married, living in Riley’s house by the sea. Adam came out publicly, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, where he described Riley as the love of his life, and published a bestselling autobiography. Riley expanded the family store. On their first wedding anniversary, they return to the same secluded beach where they first kissed nearly 25 years earlier. They build a bonfire and swim naked in the ocean, echoing the night that changed their relationship years prior. Lying under the stars, Riley realizes he cannot think of a single thing left to wish for.