10. Rhys
Rhys
"Ackerman, you want Maddox on first line or second?"
"First." I didn't look up from the clipboard. "Hudson anchors second with Parker."
"Got it."
The whiteboard in front of me showed our power play setup—lines I'd redrawn three times already because something felt off about the spacing. I erased the left wing position again, repositioned it.
Better.
Maybe.
"Rhys—do we have enough tape in the supply room?"
"Check the cabinet. Bottom shelf."
"Thanks."
Skates scraped ice beyond the glass. Voices echoed off concrete.
The usual pre-game chaos—questions, equipment checks, nervous energy burning itself out through movement.
I'd lived this routine for twenty years.
Could navigate it blind. Which meant my hands kept working while my brain did something monumentally stupid. Wandered back to the café. To her.
Focus.
I gripped the marker harder, added another X to the offensive zone coverage. We needed tighter rotation on the penalty kill. Wyatt could handle the short side if Sam pressured high—
"Hey Coach, Crown's asking about rotation minutes."
"Tell him he gets what he earns in practice."
"Copy."
The door opened. Closed. Someone laughed. The familiar rhythm of organized chaos that usually grounded me.
Today it just felt like noise.
It's game day.
I should be locked in. Reviewing every adjustment, every potential matchup, every weak point in the other team's defense. Instead, I kept seeing the way Olivia's fingers trembled when she handed me coffee this morning. The shadow under her eyes that hadn't been there yesterday.
The way she'd looked at that rookie—caught off guard, uncomfortable, trying to be polite when she should've felt safe enough to tell him to back off immediately.
My jaw tightened.
She's not your problem.
I knew that. Logically, rationally, I understood that Olivia Bennett was a part-time café employee I had no business thinking about. No claim to. No right to worry over just because I'd pulled her out of a nightmare fifteen years ago.
She was an adult. Capable. Handling her own life.
And I was her boss's colleague with a two-decade age gap and enough emotional damage to keep a therapist employed for years. The math wasn't complicated. So why couldn't I stop replaying the moment our fingers brushed over a coffee cup?
"Ackerman—Barrett wants the final lineup in five."
"Tell him it's ready." I grabbed the sheet, scanned it one last time. Everyone was positioned correctly. The matchups made sense. We'd drilled these plays until they were muscle memory. I handed it off without meeting anyone's eyes.
Get it together.
Another skate scrape. Another shout. The clock ticking down toward puck drop.
I turned back to the board, pretended to study strategies I'd memorized hours ago, and tried to ignore the fact that my mind kept circling back to one question: What had put that fear back in her eyes? And why did every instinct I possessed scream at me to find out?
I happened to glance up. Mistake.
She sat alone in the stands—her small frame hunched forward, elbows on knees, watching the ice with an intensity that didn't match her quiet demeanor. The arena lights hadn't come up fully yet, leaving her half-shadowed in the dimness. Most people wouldn't have noticed her there.
I noticed.
And then—worse—she looked at me. Not a casual glance. Not the quick, nervous dart of eyes I'd seen from her before. This was different. Direct. Unguarded.
Something tightened low in my stomach.
Heat spread through my chest—unwanted, unwelcome, impossible to ignore.
The kind of awareness that had no business existing between a man my age and a girl barely past twenty.
Between a coach and a café employee. Between someone who'd carried her out of hell and someone who shouldn't remember what her scared eyes looked like at seven years old.
I should look away.
Look away.
But her gaze held mine, and for three seconds that stretched too long, we just… stared.
I watched recognition flicker across her face—the same recognition that had made her drop my coffee. Watched something else chase it. Something that made my pulse kick despite every logical reason it shouldn't.
Guilt slammed into me.
This was wrong. The heat in my veins, the tightness in my chest, the way my entire focus narrowed to her face in the half-dark—all of it crossed lines I'd spent my life respecting.
She was too young. Too fragile. Too tangled in my past for me to feel anything but distant responsibility.
And yet.
The protectiveness that surged through me wasn't distant. Wasn't professional. It was sharp and possessive and far too visceral for comfort.
I forced my expression flat. Wiped every trace of whatever the hell this was off my face before she could read it. Before I gave myself away completely.
Her lips parted slightly—like she wanted to say something, or maybe just breathe.
Break it. Now.
I tore my gaze away first, heart hammering harder than it had any right to. Turned back to the board with mechanical precision, jaw locked tight enough to ache.
The marker squeaked against the whiteboard. I drew a line that didn't need drawing, repositioned a player who was already in the right spot.
Anything to look busy. Anything to pretend the last ten seconds hadn't happened. But my pulse still raced. My chest still felt too tight. And I knew—with absolute certainty—that if I looked up again, I'd find her still watching.
So I didn't look up.
Because if I did, I wasn't sure I'd be able to look away a second time.
I gripped the marker until plastic bit into my palm.
You have no right.
The words beat steady in my skull, a mantra I needed tattooed somewhere visible. On my forearm, maybe. Across my knuckles, where I'd see it every time I reached for something I shouldn't want.
She was twenty-one. Twenty-two at most.
I was forty-three.
The math alone should've killed whatever this was. Should've smothered it before it drew breath.
It didn't.
She's not for you.
I knew her history—fragments of it, anyway. Knew what kind of home I'd pulled her from. What kind of fear she'd learned to carry in her bones. She needed safety. Stability. Someone gentle who hadn't spent twenty years turning himself into a weapon.
Not me.
Never me.
You'd ruin her.
That was the truth underneath everything else. Even if the age gap didn't exist, even if she wanted this—which she didn't, couldn't, shouldn't—I'd destroy whatever softness she'd managed to keep.
I was good at destruction.
The ice blurred in front of me. Players moved through drills I'd designed, executing plays I'd taught them, and I saw none of it. Just her face in the half-dark. The way she'd looked at me. Like maybe—
Stop.
Barrett's clipboard snapped open. "Let's run the forecheck pattern one more time."
The words cut through my spiral like a blade.
I inhaled once—slow, deliberate. Let the air fill my lungs completely. Held it. Released.
Click.
Everything else dropped away.
The café. The coffee. The girl in the stands with eyes too familiar and a fear I recognized down to my bones. Gone. Locked behind a wall I'd built years ago, reinforced through thousands of hours exactly like this one.
The ice sharpened into focus. Players repositioned themselves—sloppy transitions, lazy stick placement, angles that would get exploited the second we faced real pressure.
I stepped onto the ice.
The cold bit through my clothes immediately. Familiar. Grounding. This was my territory. The one place where everything made sense, where cause and effect followed predictable patterns, where I controlled every variable that mattered.
No messy emotions. No impossible attractions. Just physics and strategy, and muscle memory.
"Maddox." My voice cut across the rink—low, calm, absolute. "You're too high. Drop back three feet."
He adjusted without argument. Good.
I skated along the boards, eyes tracking every position, every gap in coverage.
Crown drifted too far left—I tapped his stick with mine, pointed to the correct lane.
He moved. Hudson's posture was wrong—shoulders too square, weight distributed poorly.
I demonstrated the correction once. He mirrored it immediately.
The team shifted around me like a living organism responding to pressure. No one joked. No one questioned. When I spoke, they listened.
Because here, I was something they understood. Not the damaged man avoiding human connection. Not the coach with too many ghosts. Just the enforcer who'd survived two decades in the league by reading plays three steps ahead and never hesitating when violence was required.
"Parker—tighten up on the weak side. Sam, you're pressuring too early. Wait for the commit."
They adjusted. Better.
"Again."
The whistle blew. Skates carved ice. Bodies moved through the pattern with increasing precision. I watched every detail, cataloging weaknesses, identifying improvements, my brain operating in that cold analytical space where nothing existed except the game.
This was control. This was certainty. This was the only place I didn't question every decision, didn't second-guess every instinct.
The drill ran clean. Smooth. Exactly how I'd designed it.
"Good. One more time—game speed."
They exploded into motion.
And for thirty perfect seconds, I forgot about everything else.
Maddox's outside edge wobbled on the crossover—barely noticeable, split-second sloppiness most coaches would miss.
I didn't miss anything.
Our eyes met across the ice. I didn't speak. Didn't need to. Just held his gaze with the same expressionless intensity that had ended fights before they started, the look that said I saw that, and we both know better.
His jaw tightened. He reset his stance and ran the drill again—edges clean, transitions sharp, no wasted movement.
Better.
"Harding." My voice carried across the ice without rising. "You're drifting. Plant yourself two feet closer to the net."
Sam adjusted immediately; that golden-boy grin wiped clean by focus. He knew better than to argue when I used that tone. They all did.