Chapter 4
DECLAN
By the third replay, the pattern stopped looking like coincidence.
I sat alone in my office with practice footage running on the wall monitor, coffee untouched beside my keyboard, and Jace Holloway frozen mid-stride on the screen.
His left skate was angled wrong for the route we’d drawn up.
His shoulders were already turned toward open ice.
His head had moved before Lowell had full control of the puck.
I clicked back ten seconds.
The drill started again.
The first rep, I’d given the line a broad correction. Tighter support. Better timing. Holloway drifted high on the next attempt, hunting space that wasn’t available yet.
The second rep, I’d snapped too hard. Not yelling, but sharper than necessary.
“Stop freelancing.” He pushed back immediately, mouth moving, shoulders set, eyes bright with irritation.
The next attempt was fast but angry, technically correct and still useless because he was proving a point instead of reading the play.
The third rep, I’d changed it.
“Holloway. Start lower. Wait until Lowell’s second touch. Then go.”
Specific. Firm. Direct.
He locked in.
Not perfectly. He still wanted to leave early. I could see the fight in his body. But he stayed. Lowell made the pass, the timing opened, and the whole line moved clean through the neutral zone.
I backed it up again.
There were plenty of players who responded to clear instruction. That wasn’t unusual. Hockey at this level was full of men who had spent their lives being told where to be and when to move. Structure was part of the job.
This was different enough to hold my attention.
When I softened the correction, Holloway filled the empty space with noise. When I came down too hard, he braced against me. When I gave him a clear expectation and left him no room to turn it into a fight, he got better.
Not calmer, exactly.
Focused.
I made a note in his file.
Best response: private, specific, immediate. Avoid vague criticism. Avoid public escalation. Define task.
I looked at the words for longer than I should have.
Private mattered.
I had seen enough in two days to know public correction turned Holloway into a performer. Give him an audience and he’d hide embarrassment behind speed, humor, or defiance. Sometimes all three. Alone, he still challenged, but he listened underneath it.
A knock hit my doorframe.
Tessa Moreno stood there with a tablet in one hand and the expression of a woman who had already been disappointed by three adults before nine in the morning.
“If you’re busy, pretend I’m not here,” she said.
“I’m busy.”
“Great. Milo just posted a video from the locker room where you can clearly see Sokolov changing in the background, Lowell agreed to a youth clinic he’s not actually available for, and Jace missed my reminder about the afternoon media hit.”
I leaned back. “Missed it how?”
“He replied with a thumbs-up at 11:48 last night, then asked me ten minutes ago what time media was.”
That sounded about right. “When is it?”
“One-fifteen. It was in the team schedule, the individual schedule, and the calendar invite he accepted.”
“Who else is on it?”
“Roman, Milo, and Eli. Which means Roman will be on time and annoyed, Milo will say something that makes legal sweat, and Eli will answer every question like he’s being deposed.”
“You love this job.”
“I love competence. This job is where I come to grieve it.”
I almost smiled. “I’ll handle Holloway.”
Her gaze flicked to the monitor, where Jace was still frozen on the screen. Tessa saw too much. She always did. “He’s not doing it on purpose.”
“I know.”
That earned me a sharper look. Not surprised, exactly. Recalibrating.
“Good,” she said. “The last staff treated every missed detail like a character flaw. It made him worse.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Of course you have.” She tapped her tablet against her palm. “Also, your dog is in the equipment hallway.”
I closed my eyes for one second. “He was in my office.”
“He is no longer in your office.”
Tiny had come with me because the dog walker had canceled and because Olivia was still in Atlanta, delayed by weather and client demands.
Bringing a bull mastiff to an NHL arena was not ideal, but leaving him alone for fourteen hours was worse.
I’d shut him in my office with water, his bed, and enough toys to entertain a less entitled animal.
Apparently, Tiny had chosen crime.
I found him ten minutes later sitting outside the stick room while our equipment manager, Benny, fed him what looked suspiciously like part of a breakfast sandwich.
“Don’t feed my dog,” I said.
Benny, a fifty-year-old man with three daughters and no fear of authority, looked me dead in the eye. “He looked faint.”
Tiny licked egg off his jowls.
“He weighs more than you.”
“And yet, fragile.”
I took the leash from the hook by the door. “Come on.”
Tiny did not move.
From down the hall came the sound of players spilling toward the locker room. Voices, laughter, the scrape of sneakers on concrete. Milo appeared first, wearing sunglasses indoors and carrying two sticks like he’d forgotten he only had two hands.
“Coach, why is there a horse in the hallway?”
Tiny stood immediately, tail sweeping with enough force to hit the wall.
“See?” Benny said. “Miraculous recovery.”
Lowell stopped beside Milo, eyes wide. “Can I pet him?”
“If he lets you.”
Tiny allowed Lowell one polite pat, ignored Milo completely, then turned his massive head toward the next person rounding the corner.
Holloway.
Of course.
Jace came in with his hair damp, hoodie half-zipped, practice sheet in one hand, coffee in the other. He was talking to Roman over his shoulder and not watching where he was going until Tiny lunged forward with the enthusiasm of a dog who had found a long-lost brother.
“Huge baby,” Jace said, instantly brightening.
Tiny shoved his head into Jace’s stomach. Coffee sloshed onto the floor.
“Fantastic,” Roman said. “Even the dog has poor judgment.”
Jace scratched both sides of Tiny’s face, laughing under his breath. “He knows quality when he sees it.”
“He knows who drops food,” I said.
Jace looked up at me then. The laughter didn’t vanish, but it changed, tucked itself into something more guarded. “Morning, Coach.”
“You have the right drill sheet?”
The question was out before I dressed it up.
Jace looked down at the paper in his hand, then at the board posted outside the locker room. His face went blank for half a second.
Not careless. Not indifferent.
Caught.
He flipped the sheet over, as if the correct one might appear on the back. “This is yesterday’s.”
Milo made an ooooh sound because he had the survival instincts of a moth near a porch light.
Roman said, “Shut up, Brooks.”
Jace’s shoulders lifted, his mouth already shaping some joke or defense.
I cut it off before the hallway became a stage. “My office. Two minutes.”
His eyes snapped to mine.
The team went quiet in that subtle way men did when they pretended not to listen.
I turned to Benny. “Can Tiny stay with you for five?”
Benny looked delighted. “I’ll protect him with my life.”
“Do not feed him.”
“I heard maybe feed him.”
I pointed at him.
He held up both hands.
Jace followed me without a word, which told me more than his arguing would have.
In my office, I closed the door but didn’t sit behind the desk. I kept the conversation on neutral ground, near the small table by the wall. Jace stood with yesterday’s drill sheet curled in his fist, bouncing once on the balls of his feet before forcing himself still.
“You knew we updated the sheets this morning,” I said.
His chin lifted. “I thought I grabbed the new one.”
“You didn’t.”
“I know that now.”
“I’m not asking for an explanation unless there’s something I need to know.”
That seemed to throw him off. He looked toward the window, then back at me. “No. I just grabbed the wrong paper.”
“All right.”
His fingers tightened around the sheet until it wrinkled. “That’s it?”
“No.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face, but under it was something else. Anticipation, maybe. Not fear. He wasn’t afraid of me. I didn’t want him afraid of me.
I wanted him to hear me.
“You’re better than this,” I said.
His expression changed so quickly I almost stopped.
Not dramatic. Not wounded in a way meant to manipulate. The color left his face a little, and his gaze dropped to the paper in his hand as if the mistake had suddenly become heavier.
“I know,” he said.
The words were quiet.
I kept my voice even. “Then build a system that makes it harder to miss. Don’t rely on remembering in the moment. That’s not working.”
“I’m trying.”
“I believe you.”
His eyes came back to mine, sharp and unsettled.
I went on before either of us could sit too long in that.
“Trying is not the same as having a plan. Starting today, after practice, you take the next day’s sheet, put it in your notebook, and put the old one in recycling before you leave the building.
Not in your bag. Not in your car. Done here. Clear?”
He swallowed. “Clear.”
“If media is on your schedule, you confirm with Tessa before noon. Not with an emoji at midnight. Words.”
A faint wince. “Yeah.”
“And if something changes, you ask. You do not guess.”
His jaw worked once. “Got it.”
I let the silence sit for a beat, then lowered the pressure. “This doesn’t need to be a big problem.”
“It feels like one.”
That was too honest. It landed between us with more weight than a wrong drill sheet deserved.
I studied him carefully. “Because I corrected you?”
His eyes moved away. “Because I hate giving people more proof.”
“Proof of what?”
He let out a humorless breath. “Pick a file. I’m sure there are options.”
There it was. The old staff in the room with us. Every lazy note, every public callout, every time talent had been treated like it canceled out effort or made struggle unacceptable.