Borrow My Calm

Chapter 1

JACE

I was seven minutes late to the first team meeting with our new head coach, which was not my worst first impression, but it was definitely in the top five.

In my defense, the elevator at Ball Arena had stopped on every floor, my phone had buzzed fourteen times in three minutes, I’d forgotten my notebook in my car, gone back for it, found a protein bar from last week under the passenger seat, realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast, eaten half of it, remembered the meeting, and sprinted through a service hallway with my laces untied and my heart trying to climb out of my throat.

Also, I had been awake since four.

Not on purpose. My brain just liked to open all the tabs at once before sunrise.

Hockey. Vanessa’s dinner tonight. The new coach.

My dad’s knee appointment. Whether Harper had paid her electricity bill or was being stubborn about letting me help.

The sound the hotel AC had made during last week’s road trip.

A power-play adjustment from three games ago.

The fact that I needed to buy laundry detergent.

The weird certainty that I’d left my stove on, even though I hadn’t cooked anything in two days.

By the time I pushed through the conference room door, the entire Denver Blizzard roster turned to look at me.

Great.

Perfect.

Exactly the amount of attention I wanted while wearing one sneaker tied and the other trying to murder me.

Roman Vega, our veteran goalie and my best friend, didn’t even turn his head. He just lifted his coffee cup and muttered, “There he is. The organization’s punctuality ambassador.”

A couple guys laughed.

I flipped him off low by my thigh and scanned for an empty chair.

That was when I saw Declan Reid.

Our new head coach stood at the front of the room beside a screen showing our logo, hands loosely clasped in front of him, quiet in a way that made the room feel smaller.

He was bigger than I expected. Six-five, maybe.

Broad in the shoulders, dark hair clipped short, beard heavy enough to make him look like he’d been carved out of bad decisions and discipline.

Tattoos ran down both arms beneath the sleeves of a black Blizzard quarter-zip, ink disappearing under the fabric like there was more he didn’t show.

His eyes were gray.

Not soft gray. Not stormy, poetic bullshit gray.

Sharp gray. Assessing gray.

They landed on me, and every frantic tab in my brain froze for half a second.

Then they all reopened louder.

“Mr. Holloway,” he said.

Not Jace. Not Holloway. Mr. Holloway.

My mouth, because it had never once considered saving my life, said, “Coach.”

His expression didn’t change. “Take a seat.”

That was it. No lecture. No joke. No public execution. Somehow, that was worse.

I dropped into the empty chair beside Roman, my knee bouncing immediately under the table. I grabbed the pen in front of me and clicked it once. Twice. Three times.

Roman reached over without looking and took it out of my hand.

I leaned toward him. “Thief.”

“Public servant.”

Coach Reid waited until the room settled again. He didn’t rush. He didn’t fill the silence because he was uncomfortable with it. He let us sit in it until every guy in the room had no choice but to look at him.

I hated that I noticed.

“I’m not here to reinvent hockey,” he said. His voice was deep, even, controlled. “I’m not interested in speeches about culture or sacrifice or any other word that gets printed on training camp T-shirts. You’re professionals. You know what’s expected.”

Beside me, Roman whispered, “I like him.”

“Traitor,” I whispered back.

Coach Reid’s eyes flicked to us.

Roman stared forward like an altar boy. I grinned before I could stop myself.

Wrong move.

Reid kept talking, but now I felt watched in a way that got under my skin. Not the usual kind of watched. I was used to cameras, fans, reporters, coaches, opponents, Vanessa filming me while pretending not to film me. Attention didn’t bother me.

This did.

Because Declan Reid didn’t look at me like I was a star center, a walking contract, a highlight reel, or a problem the organization had decided to tolerate because I could score.

He looked at me like he was collecting information.

That made me want to give him bad information just to see what he’d do with it.

“We’ll keep today simple,” Reid said. “Video, practice, individual check-ins. I expect you on time. I expect you prepared. If there’s an issue, communicate it before it becomes someone else’s problem.”

My knee bounced harder.

Prepared. On time. Communicate.

Sure. Great. Easy. Maybe he could also expect the moon to answer emails.

The meeting rolled into video. I tried. I actually did.

I watched the first clip, made a note about our weak-side entry, then noticed a smudge on the table shaped like Florida, then remembered I hadn’t answered Vanessa’s text about whether I preferred the navy dress or the white one for dinner, which was a trap because there was no correct answer unless I knew what she wanted me to say.

My phone was face down, but I could feel it buzzing in my pocket like a living thing.

Don’t check it.

Don’t.

Don’t be that guy on day one.

My fingers twitched.

Roman slid his own notebook halfway over the edge of mine. On it he’d written, Pay attention or the new guy will eat you.

I wrote back, He looks like he meal preps human bones.

Roman’s shoulders shook once.

“Something to add?” Coach Reid asked.

The room went still again.

I looked up. He stood with the remote in one hand, gaze fixed on me. Not angry. Not amused.

“Yeah,” I said, because apparently I had chosen death. “On that entry, if Lowell cuts inside instead of delaying at the wall, their D has to turn his feet. Opens the seam.”

A few guys shifted. Lowell, sitting two rows ahead, glanced back.

Coach Reid studied me for a long second, then looked at the screen. He rewound the clip. Played it again.

The lane was there.

“Good read,” he said.

Two words.

Calm. Direct. No surprise in them. No backhanded jab about me being late or disruptive. Just good read, like he’d expected me to have one.

My chest did something weird.

I looked down fast and started clicking Roman’s stolen pen, then realized I didn’t have it anymore and was clicking nothing with my thumb.

After the meeting, everyone spilled toward the locker room with the restless energy of guys released from school. I shoved my notebook into my bag, found three loose tape balls, one receipt, no phone, then panicked for four seconds before realizing the phone was in my hand.

Normal. Very normal.

Roman waited by the door. He was thirty-one, divorced, and had the exhausted patience of a man who had seen every possible way hockey players could embarrass themselves. “You’re going to poke him.”

“I’m not going to poke him.”

“You’ve already picked up the stick.”

“I contributed.”

“You heckled.”

“I whispered.”

“You whispered with your whole face.”

I shouldered past him. “He’ll survive.”

“Will you?”

I didn’t answer because my phone lit up.

Vanessa: Dinner at 7. Please don’t wear the gray suit. It photographs weird.

Then another.

Vanessa: Also can you post the restaurant story before we get there? They comped the reservation.

I stared at the messages too long, the words blurring because three different responses tried to get through the same doorway in my head.

Fine. Sure. Why does everything have to be content?

I hate the navy suit. Did I pay my parking ticket?

Don’t be an asshole. She’s working. This is her job. You said yes to dinner.

“You good?” Roman asked.

“Yeah.” I locked my phone. “Influencer diplomacy.”

He made a sympathetic noise. “Godspeed.”

Practice should have settled me. Usually, the second my skates hit ice, the noise narrowed. Lines. Speed. Edges. Breath. Bodies moving where they were supposed to move. Hockey was the one place my brain and body agreed on something.

Not today.

Today, I felt Declan Reid everywhere.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t perform. He watched drills from the boards with an assistant beside him and spoke only when he needed to. Somehow that made every correction land harder.

“Holloway,” he called during transition work.

I circled back, spraying ice harder than necessary. “Yeah?”

He stepped onto the ice, no skates, just shoes on the mat by the bench, still managing to look like he belonged in the middle of all of us. “Again. You’re cheating early.”

“I’m anticipating.”

“You’re leaving your winger unsupported.”

“I’m creating speed through the neutral zone.”

“You’re creating a turnover if Vega doesn’t bail you out.”

From the crease, Roman lifted his glove. “Please stop making me a better person than I am.”

A few guys laughed.

I looked at Reid. “You want slower?”

“I want responsible.”

Something hot flashed under my ribs. Too fast to catch, too familiar to trust. I heard criticism where maybe there wasn’t any. I heard too much, again. Reckless. Difficult. Brilliant when he feels like it. The same tired commentary dressed in new clothes.

I smiled because smiling was easier than letting my face show the hit. “Responsible. Got it. Should I knit something too, or just dump and chase until everyone feels safe?”

The laughter died before it started.

Reid’s jaw shifted once.

Not clenched. Not quite.

“Again,” he said.

My pulse kicked.

I skated the drill again and did it his way. Of course it worked. That annoyed me more.

After practice, Tessa Moreno caught me outside the locker room with a tablet tucked under one arm and the expression of a woman who had already solved three disasters before lunch.

“Two minutes for social,” she said.

I groaned. “Tessa.”

“Don’t Tessa me. You missed media availability yesterday.”

“I had treatment.”

“You had treatment for twenty minutes. Media waited forty.”

“I forgot.”