Chapter 10
Jamie
Something had changed.
It bothered me that I couldn't place it. It's what I did. I read rooms. I identified dynamics. I tracked the social temperature of any space and adjusted accordingly. But something had changed between Abbott and me on this road trip.
It was day nine and the second-to-last game of the trip, the last city, and the team had settled into the rhythm of a long road stretch. The bus rides and hotel rooms and morning skates all blurred together.
We were winning—two of three so far. The mood was good and the energy high. I was doing my job keeping the room warm, keeping Mikkola connected, and making sure Morrison was included in conversations without making it obvious.
I was on the ice during warm-ups, going through the pre-game routine of stretching and light skating.
It was the ritual of reacquainting yourself with a different sheet of ice.
The arena here was older and smaller, with boards that were slightly softer and ice that ran a fraction warmer than what we were used to at home.
I was stretching at center ice when I felt it.
Abbott was on the bench, backup again. Kieran was back in. Abbott was in full gear and helmet off. He was watching me.
I knew Abbott, through a sense I couldn't have described to anyone else. I'd been tuned to his frequency without realizing it. His attention felt different when it was directed at me, as if I was the only moving object on a surface full of twenty-four other men in motion.
I knew, the way you know the sun is on your back without seeing it. I went through warm-ups, knowing his eyes were on me. It felt warm—and impossible to ignore.
The game was good. I made two assists, one primary, one secondary.
The primary was a backdoor feed to Luca that required me to hold the puck through three strides of heavy traffic, absorb a cross-check from their defenseman, and release the pass at the exact moment the lane opened.
The secondary was a broken play that I salvaged by reading the rebound off the end boards and putting it on Theo's tape before the defense could recover.
Both plays came from the same skill—seeing the pattern before anyone else did.
My line with Luca hummed. We ran plays that felt less like coordination and more like shared consciousness.
The puck moved between us as if it knew its job.
There was a moment in the second period, a cycle play we'd run a hundred times, where I looked up and Luca was already moving to the spot I needed him to be.
I released the pass without looking. The sound of his one-timer hitting the back of the net was pure joy.
The arena didn't like us. The road crowd never did.
We won 4–3 in overtime on an Eriksson goal that came off a beautiful wrist shot from the high slot.
The quiet in the building afterward was satisfying—in the way road wins always were, the silence of other people's disappointment filling the space where their hope had been.
And through all of it, every shift, every board battle, every faceoff and line change, I felt Abbott's attention from the bench.
He wasn't watching the game through me. He was watching me inside the game.
The difference was subtle. I played the entire sixty minutes plus overtime knowing his eyes were on me, humming under my skin like a second pulse.
The hotel room smelled like the clean soap scent of Abbott's recent shower and the takeout we'd ordered earlier in the evening.
He was on his side of the bed, reading a paperback again—wearing those glasses again.
I was sitting against the headboard with my laptop open, pretending to review game film.
I wasn't reviewing game film.
I was sitting three feet from a man who'd been watching me all day with an attention I could no longer pretend was professional.
"You were watching me during warm-ups," I said.
Abbott turned a page. He didn't look up. "I watch everyone during warm-ups."
"Not the same way."
The page-turning stopped. He didn't look up, but the quality of his stillness changed—the difference between calm and held breath.
"How do I watch you?" he asked, his voice almost raw.
"I don't know. That's why I'm asking."
He closed the book. He took off the glasses, and deliberately set both on the nightstand. He was thinking before he answered. Then he looked at me.
"I'm not sure I can explain it."
"Try."
There was another long silence. The room's HVAC hummed. Through the wall, a TV murmured faintly. The light from the bedside lamp cast Abbott's face in warmth. His expression was the most open I'd seen—not vulnerable, exactly, but utterly present.
"I watch you," he said slowly, "because you're worth watching. That's the simplest answer."
"And the complicated answer?"
"The complicated answer is for another time."
He held my gaze. Three seconds. Five. I could see him deciding how much to say, and I could see the moment he decided not to say it.
"Abbott."
"Jamie."
My first name again. The weight of it.
"Are you tired?" he asked.
"No."
"Me neither."
We sat up later than we should have. We talked about the game first. The post-game debrief was a ritual for us, breaking down plays with our combined perspectives.
We talked about Eriksson's overtime goal and Luca's assist record.
We touched on the defensive coverage that had given their power play trouble.
Abbott explained the read on their breakaway attempt, how their forward had telegraphed the deke.
I watched his hands as he gestured, the way his fingers mapped angles in the air, the way a goalie's brain worked through space and geometry so casually.
Then the hockey talk ran out and we kept talking.
We talked about Theo's latest attempt to get Luca into pottery classes.
We talked about Volkov's ongoing feud with Bishop over hotel room protocol and Mikkola finding his footing—how the Finnish connection with Nico was starting to look like real friendship.
"That was you," Abbott said. "You matched them."
"I connected two people who had something in common. It's not engineering."
"It is engineering. You just call it being nice." The corner of his mouth moved up. "You've been doing it your whole career."
"Is that a compliment or a criticism?"
"It's an observation." He looked at me. "You build things. That's what you do. You build the team's social infrastructure the way Luca builds its competitive infrastructure. The team wouldn't be what it is without both of you."
Nobody had ever said that to me before. Not in those terms, not framing what I did as a structural contribution equal to the captain's.
People appreciated me, but nobody had seen the architecture of it—the deliberate and skilled construction of what the Storm had become, and credited me as a builder.
Abbott had. Because Abbott saw things.
Because Abbott had been watching.
At some point his knee touched mine. It wasn't deliberate. It happened when two people were close enough that the boundaries between their bodies blurred.
We stayed like that, talking, until 1 AM, and when we finally turned off the light and lay down, the space between us felt smaller.
"Goodnight, Hayes."
"Goodnight, Abbott."
I lay in the dark and felt his warmth across the space between us. I thought about his answer, I watch you because you're worth watching.
And I knew, with a certainty I had never allowed myself before, that something was going to happen between us tomorrow.
The air had too much weight. The room had too much charge.
We had been circling each other for years.
The orbit was decaying, pulling us inward, and tomorrow was the last night of the road trip.
Whatever we'd been managing was running out of road.