The Early Shelf

Romance, Contemporary Fiction

The Gaffer's Crush

by Astrid Billings

About the book

Lily Everett and Hamish Allen are both very good at loving people without asking for anything in return. Lily, a family therapist at Louisville’s children’s hospital, is everyone’s calm place to land. Hamish, head coach of Bluegrass Union Football Club, Louisville’s favorite hometown soccer team, is “the gaffer” to his players and puts family and duty before everything, including himself. After eleven years of friendship, each is sure the other deserves more than they can give. So they keep their distance, even as the pull between them grows impossible to ignore. A slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance about caretakers who finally learn to let themselves be loved.

Synopsis

Lily Everett and Hamish Allen are both very good at loving people without asking for anything in return. They’re even better at refusing anything when it’s offered. As a family therapist at Louisville’s children’s hospital, Lily spends her days helping kids, and the families who love them, through pain, fear, and loss. She believes in steadiness. In showing up. In being the calm place others can land. Wanting more for herself was never part of the plan, especially when she’s worked so hard to make peace with what her own body has taken off the table. Hamish is the gaffer of Bluegrass Union Football Club, Louisville’s favorite hometown soccer team, and a man built on responsibility. His marriage couldn’t survive how much of him belonged to his family, especially his younger brother, Rob, an adult with Down syndrome who has his own job, his own apartment, and a life he’s rightly proud of. Hamish learned the hard way that loving fiercely comes with a cost. Family is everything. Duty is nonnegotiable. And desire, when it threatens either, has learned to wait. For eleven years, they’ve been friends. Monday-night company for their favorite period drama. Two people who understand each other better than almost anyone. That’s the problem. Because the same devotion that draws them together is what keeps them apart. Lily is sure Hamish wants a future she can’t give him, and she’d never ask him to settle. Hamish is sure Lily deserves a man who can give her all of himself, and he’d never ask her to share. Each is so busy protecting the other that neither stops to ask what the other actually wants. So they keep a careful distance, even as the quiet moments grow heavier and an almost-kiss gets harder to explain. The Gaffer’s Crush is a slow-burn, friends-to-lovers sports romance about caretakers who forget to care for themselves, the weight and gift of chosen family, and the love that grows when two people finally let themselves receive what they’ve always given, and trust that what they have, right now, might already be enough.