Chapter 12
DECLAN
I watched Jace leave the video room and did not follow him.
That was the first lie I told myself about control.
The second was that I had let him go because it was the right professional choice. In truth, I stayed where I was because if I took one step after him, I did not trust what my hand would do when it reached him.
Coach.
Player.
Those words should have been enough. They had held weight my entire adult life. I understood hierarchy, responsibility, restraint. I had built a second career out of being the man in the room who did not react first.
Then Jace Holloway looked at my mouth like he wanted to fight it or put his teeth on it, and every rule I had ever respected went thin.
I went back to my office. Tiny was sprawled across the rug with a tennis ball tucked under one heavy paw, offended that I had been gone longer than his patience allowed. He lifted his head when I walked in, jowls drooping, eyes soft with accusation.
“Don’t start,” I said.
His tail thumped once.
I sat behind my desk and opened the practice notes.
Neutral zone regroup. Second power-play unit timing. Lowell’s release under pressure.
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
Jace had been hard.
I had seen it. Not because I was looking for it.
Because the room had shrunk to the space between his breath and mine, and every reaction in him had become impossible to miss.
The panic afterward had been just as clear.
He had wanted to run from me, from himself, from the shape of the thought neither of us had spoken.
I should have been relieved.
Instead, I sat in my office with my hands folded on the desk, my body still too aware of his, and understood with brutal clarity that I was not managing this.
I was waiting for it to happen.
Olivia called as I was driving home.
I almost let it go to voicemail, which told me enough about the man I was becoming to make my stomach turn. I answered through the car speakers.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hi. Bad time?”
“No. I’m on my way home.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am.”
She was quiet for a second. “Long practice?”
“Complicated practice.”
“That means Holloway.”
I kept my eyes on the road. “Among other things.”
“I saw a clip from media yesterday. He looks younger than I expected.”
“He’s twenty-three.”
“I know, but there’s twenty-three and then there’s still figuring out how to be in his own skin.” Her voice softened. Olivia was good at that, seeing people from a distance and naming things cleanly. “Is he difficult, or is he struggling?”
The question hit too close.
“Both,” I said.
“That sounds honest.”
I turned into our neighborhood. “How’s Dallas?”
“Fine. Meetings were endless. The hotel gym is terrible, but the room service has decent soup, so I’m surviving.”
Comfortable. Polite. Familiar.
We used to talk for an hour about nothing.
Early in my playing days, I would call her from hotel rooms and she would describe whatever office disaster she had navigated that day, and I would tell her which rookie had lost his passport or which veteran refused to eat anything green.
There had been ease once. Interest. A life we shared even when we were in different cities.
Now we exchanged updates like people maintaining a calendar.
“You home tonight?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be back Friday morning, I think. Maybe Thursday night if I can move a call.”
“Okay.”
Another pause.
“Dec,” she said, quieter now. “Are we okay?”
My hands tightened on the wheel.
There it was. Not accusation. Not drama. Just a woman I had promised a life to, hearing distance through a phone line.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The silence after that had weight.
“I appreciate you not saying yes just to end the conversation,” she said finally.
I closed my eyes briefly at a red light. “I wouldn’t do that.”
“No. You’d just get very busy and hope the answer changed by itself.”
Fair. Deserved.
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not asking for an apology tonight.” She sounded tired too. “Come home safe. Feed the horse masquerading as a dog.”
Tiny’s head lifted from the back seat at the word dog.
“I will.”
We hung up gently.
Somehow that made it worse.
At home, Olivia’s side of the bathroom counter was clean except for a moisturizer she had forgotten to pack. Her robe hung on the back of the door. The apartment was warm and quiet, high-end furniture arranged by two people who rarely sat in the same room long enough to make it messy.
Tiny ate like I had starved him for weeks, then followed me to the kitchen and planted himself directly in the path between the sink and the refrigerator.
“You are an obstacle,” I told him.
He leaned his entire massive body into my leg.
I put a hand on his head and stood there longer than necessary.
My phone stayed on the counter. I did not pick it up. I did not check whether Jace had texted, though I knew he hadn’t because I would have felt the vibration from across the apartment. I made dinner, ate half of it, put the rest away. I reviewed lines for tomorrow. I slept badly.
By morning, I had decided on distance.
Clear, professional, consistent distance.
That lasted until Jace stepped onto the ice and missed the first pass clean off his blade.
Not badly enough for most people to clock it as anything more than rust. Roman clocked it. I did too.
Jace retrieved the puck with a sharp turn, lips moving before he reached the line again. Talking to himself. Too fast to catch. His shoulders were tight, but his hands were restless. Stick tap. Glove adjustment. Mouthguard in, mouthguard out, chew, stop, chew again. He was there, but not anchored.
Roman slid into his crease and watched him through the cage.
The next rep, Jace anticipated a whistle that did not come and pulled up half a second early.
“Holloway,” I called.
He snapped his head toward me.
“Finish the route.”
“I thought you were stopping it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah, I know. I heard the skate cut and thought, never mind.”
His words came too quickly, explanation stacking on explanation before anyone had asked for one.
I kept my voice even. “Again.”
He went again. Better.
Not right.
For twenty minutes, I tried to coach him normally. Small corrections. Specific tasks. Limited attention. None of it held. He was chasing plays that were not his, overchecking, talking over Milo when Milo asked a simple timing question. Not malicious. Not arrogant. Overloaded.
During a three-on-two transition drill, he broke early, circled back, then snapped at Lowell for not filling a lane Lowell had no reason to fill.
Lowell’s face went blank.
Roman came out of the crease. “Jace.”
“I know,” Jace said immediately. “I know, I know. That was on me. I saw the weak side cheating and thought if I pushed, Brooks had the drop, but Brooks was late because he was supposed to be late, because that was the read, and I fucked the spacing.”
Milo blinked. “I was just standing there, man.”
“Exactly,” Jace said, then dragged both hands over his helmet. “Fuck.”
The team got too quiet.
I blew the whistle. “Water.”
Players scattered with the forced casualness of men pretending they were not paying attention.
Roman did not move right away. He looked at Jace, then at me. There was no accusation in it yet. Concern, getting sharper by the hour.
I pointed toward the tunnel. “Holloway. With me.”
Jace’s laugh was small and ugly. “Perfect.”
“Now.”
He skated off ahead of me, yanked off his helmet in the tunnel, and carried it under one arm like he wanted to throw it. I led him to the small equipment office off the back hall. No windows. No cameras. Racks of spare gear and the smell of tape and rubber.
I closed the door.
Jace spun before I said a word.
“I know. I’m a mess today. You don’t have to do the whole responsible leadership thing.
I’m aware. I’m so aware it’s making me worse, actually.
I know where I’m supposed to be, and then I’m thinking about where I’m supposed to be, and then I’m thinking about whether you’re watching me think about where I’m supposed to be, and then I miss the actual fucking play. ”
“Stop.”
He kept going. “And Roman’s staring at me like I’m about to drive into traffic, Lowell thinks I’m pissed at him, Milo’s pretending he doesn’t notice, which might be the most alarming part of the morning, and you’re standing there acting like if you say the right three words, I’ll just snap back into place. ”
“Jace.”
“No, because that’s the problem, isn’t it? Sometimes I do. Sometimes you say something and everything lines up, and I hate that. I hate that you can do that. I hate that I want you to.”
“Stop.”
This time my voice cut harder.
He shut his mouth, but his body did not stop. His chest moved too fast. His fingers flexed around the edge of his helmet. His attention jumped from my face to the door to the floor to my hands and back again.
“Look at me,” I said.
He did, furious and wrecked.
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“No. You’re surviving the next second. Breathe.”
His nostrils flared. “Don’t.”
I stepped closer.
He did not step back.
“Breathe in,” I said.
His jaw worked.
“In.”
He dragged air in, shallow and defiant.
“Again.”
“Declan.”
My name in his mouth without Coach attached changed the room.
I should have corrected it.
I should have opened the door.
Instead, I closed the distance, lifted my hand, and set it against the side of his neck.
Not hard. Not sexual at first. My thumb rested below his jaw, fingers wrapping to the back of his neck, the heel of my palm steady against the frantic beat of his pulse.
Jace froze.
Completely.
The helmet slipped from his hand and hit the floor with a dull crack.
The sound did not break it.
His breath caught, then slowed under my palm as if his body had been waiting for a command stronger than language. His eyes locked on mine. Bright blue, too open now, all the fight stripped back to something rawer.
The noise in him stopped.
I felt it.