Chapter 13
JACE
I made it through practice the way people survived bad weather. Head down. Teeth together. One instruction at a time.
The second I stepped back onto the ice, I knew every person in the building existed too loudly.
Skates cutting. Pucks hitting boards. Milo laughing at something Brooks said. Lowell asking for a reset. Roman’s blocker tapping the post. The hum of the lights overhead. My own breath inside my helmet, too hot, too fast, trapped against my face.
And Declan.
Not close. Not doing anything obvious. He stood near the boards with a whistle in his hand and a tablet tucked under one arm, looking exactly like he had looked before he put his hand on my neck and kissed me in the equipment room.
That was the problem.
Nothing had changed.
Everything had changed.
“Holloway,” he called. “Second group. Run it from the half wall.”
My stick slipped against my glove.
Not fully. Not enough to look like anything. Enough that Roman turned his mask toward me.
I skated into position and tried not to think about Declan’s mouth. I lasted half a second. Maybe less.
The drill started. I received the pass late, because I was listening for his voice instead of reading the ice. Milo had to adjust, Lowell nearly clipped my skate, and the whole route collapsed like wet cardboard.
“Again,” Declan said.
Just one word.
My body reacted like he had said it against my skin.
I hated myself so intensely for a second that the feeling came through as anger. Good. Anger I knew how to use. Anger had edges. Anger could push.
I snapped the puck back to Brooks. “Run it.”
“Maybe wait for the whistle, superstar,” Milo said, careful enough that it wasn’t a joke.
I hadn’t even realized Declan hadn’t blown it.
“Right,” I muttered.
The whistle came.
We went again.
This time I got the puck clean, turned hard, fed Lowell through the slot, and cut across on instinct. It was good. Sharp. The kind of rep that normally made me feel like my brain and body had finally found the same station.
Then I looked at Declan.
He was already watching me.
Not praising. Not smiling. Not giving anything away. But his thumb shifted along the edge of the tablet, one small movement, and my stupid brain grabbed it like evidence.
He remembered.
Of course he remembered. His tongue had been in my mouth twenty minutes ago. His hand had been around my neck. His hips had pressed into mine.
I nearly missed the next pass.
“Jesus,” Roman said from the crease. “Jace.”
“I know.”
“You sure?”
“Drop it.”
His mask hid most of his face, but not the pause.
We finished the drill badly. Not all of us.
Me. I finished it badly. I overcorrected, undercut Lowell twice, snapped at Milo when he didn’t deserve it, apologized too fast, then forgot what line we were on because the order had shifted and my head refused to let go of the closed door, the shelf rattling, the rough drag of Declan’s beard against mine.
This actually happened.
That thought kept coming back, not like a sentence, more like an alarm.
It happened.
He kissed me.
I kissed him back.
No, that wasn’t even right. I pulled him closer. I put my hand in his hair. I made a sound I couldn’t pretend was anything else.
The whistle blew, and everyone broke for water.
I stood there too long.
Roman skated over, mask pushed up now. “Bench.”
“I’m getting water.”
“No. Bench.”
“I don’t take orders from goalies.”
“Today you might want to.”
I looked past him, toward Declan. Mistake.
Declan was speaking to Benny by the boards, posture composed, shoulders square, expression focused. Normal. Completely normal. Only his eyes cut to me for half a second when Roman stepped into my space.
Not possessive. Not dramatic.
Aware.
My stomach dropped and tightened at the same time.
Roman followed my line of sight, then looked back at me. “Okay.”
“What?”
“Bench. Now.”
The low warning in his voice hit harder because Roman didn’t waste energy on dramatics. He saved that for divorces and shootouts.
I followed him because arguing would draw attention, and I had already used up all my normal for the day.
At the bench, he grabbed a towel and shoved it against my chest. “Wipe your face.”
“I’m sweating. That’s usually allowed during practice.”
“You’re pale.”
“I’m not pale.”
“You are, and your hands are doing that thing.”
I looked down. My fingers were opening and closing around my stick tape, over and over, tugging at the edge until it frayed.
I stopped. Immediately started bouncing one skate instead.
Roman sighed through his nose. “Something happened.”
“No.”
“That was too fast.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Jace.”
The way he said my name made my nerves spark. Too gentle. Too knowing. Too close to the truth without having any of the facts.
“I said nothing happened.”
“Then why are you playing like you forgot where the floor is?”
“It’s ice.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“I’m not being cute. I’m being annoyed.”
“Great. Use that to answer the question.”
I leaned closer, keeping my voice down. “There is no question. You decided there’s a crisis because I had a shitty practice.”
“You don’t have shitty practices like this.”
“I’m allowed one.”
“Not when you look like you’re about to crawl out of your own skin.”
That was too accurate. Too intimate in the wrong direction. He knew me too well, and right then I couldn’t stand it.
“Stop doing that,” I snapped.
His expression flattened. “Doing what?”
“Acting like you’ve got some special pass into my head because you’ve known me the longest.”
“I don’t need a pass when you’re bleeding all over the hallway.”
“I’m not your problem.”
“No,” he said. “You’re my friend.”
The word should have slowed me down.
It didn’t.
“My friend would back off when I ask him to.”
Roman stared at me for a second, and the hurt landed this time. Not big. Not theatrical. Just enough to make me feel worse.
Then his face closed.
“Fine,” he said. “But don’t confuse me backing off with me not seeing it.”
He skated away before I could fix it.
I watched him go, my chest tight and buzzing, and I had no idea whether I wanted to apologize, throw up, scream, or skate until my legs stopped belonging to me.
My phone buzzed on the bench where I’d left it tucked under my water bottle.
I shouldn’t have checked it during practice. I knew that. The rule was practically carved into the walls. Phones stayed away until we were done unless someone was dying or having a baby, and nobody in my life was scheduled for either.
But my brain had already latched onto the vibration.
I grabbed it before I thought better of it.
Vanessa: Are you still coming tonight? Need to confirm seats.
Then another.
Vanessa: Also can you please wear the black jacket, not the navy one. The navy photographs weird under warm light.
I stared at the screen.
Black jacket.
Seats.
Photographs.
A normal message from my normal girlfriend about a normal event in my normal life.
Guilt hit so hard I had to sit down.
Not because Vanessa had sent anything wrong. That made it worse. She wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t accusing me of anything. She was trying to plan a dinner she cared about and probably thought I cared about because I had pretended enough times that I did.
My mouth still felt raw from Declan.
I could still feel the echo of his hand on my neck.
Vanessa wanted me in the black jacket.
I typed, deleted, typed again.
Me: Practice running long. I’ll let you know.
It was cowardly. It was also true. That combination made me hate it more.
Her reply came fast.
Vanessa: Okay. I’ll tell them maybe.
Same words from this morning. Different knife.
I locked my phone and put it facedown.
When I looked up, Declan was watching me from across the ice.
Not obviously. Anyone else would have seen a coach scanning the bench during a water break. I saw the way his attention lingered on my hand, on the phone, on my face. Saw him put pieces together he had no right to want and every reason to understand.
For one second, his control cracked.
It wasn’t visible enough for the room. It was visible enough for me.
His mouth pressed into a hard line. His fingers flexed once around the whistle. Then he turned away and called the next drill like nothing in the world had changed.
I stood too quickly and nearly tripped over my own stick.
The rest of practice became an exercise in not looking.
I failed constantly.
Every time Declan spoke, my body sorted the tone before the words.
Instruction. Correction. Warning. Approval.
I responded before my brain could argue, and that made panic crawl up the back of my throat because this wasn’t theoretical anymore.
The authority wasn’t just something charged and weird happening under the surface.
I knew exactly what his hand felt like when it went from coach to man.
I knew what happened to me when he stopped asking and started directing.
I knew I would listen.
Not because I was weak. Not because he forced me.
Because some part of me trusted the shape of his control more than I trusted my own noise.
That realization scared me more than wanting him.
After practice, I stayed in the shower too long, then couldn’t remember whether I’d used soap, so I used it again. I put my compression shirt on backward, fixed it, lost my phone, found it under my towel, then forgot my socks until Roman silently tossed them at my chest from across the room.
I caught them.
He looked away before I could say anything.
That hurt worse than if he’d yelled.
Milo, sensing danger like a golden retriever near a thunderstorm, kept his mouth shut for once. Brooks hummed badly while tying his shoes. Lowell asked Benny about a stick curve with the focused desperation of a man trying to avoid family tension at Thanksgiving.
I dressed fast.