Chapter 14
DECLAN
For a few seconds, I stood at the far end of the hallway and let myself take that in.
He was early.
Not barely on time. Not skidding in with an excuse already loaded on his tongue.
Early. In team sweats, one knee bouncing so hard the heel of his sneaker tapped against the floor in a rapid, uneven beat.
His hair was damp, either from a shower or from dragging his hands through it until it gave up.
A coffee cup sat untouched on the chair beside him.
His phone was facedown on his thigh, one thumb hooked beneath the edge of the case, bending it back over and over like his hands needed a task or the rest of him would come apart.
He had done what I told him to do.
That should have been simple.
It was not.
My body remembered him before the disciplined part of me could get a word in.
His mouth against mine. His fists twisted in my jacket.
The sudden quiet in him when my hand closed around the back of his neck.
I had spent most of the night awake, staring at the ceiling while Tiny snored like a broken engine beside my bed, trying to decide which line I had crossed first.
Not whether I had crossed one.
That part was settled.
Jace looked up.
For one unguarded second, his face changed.
No smile. No performance. Just relief, raw and quick, before he shoved it down and dragged something more familiar into place.
“Morning.”
“You’re early.”
“Yeah.” His thumb worried the phone case harder. “Three alarms. Also didn’t sleep much, so it was either come here or stare at my kitchen wall until I lost my mind.”
I unlocked my office. “Come in.”
He stood too fast, grabbed the coffee, nearly walked off without his bag, then swore under his breath and hooked it over his shoulder. His movements had that scattered edge to them, every action half a second ahead of the thought that was supposed to guide it.
I pushed the door open and flicked on the lights.
The office was empty. Quiet. No enormous bull mastiff sprawled across the rug today, no hundred-and-sixty-pound obstacle pretending he belonged at the rink. Tiny was at home, probably sulking at the front window because I’d left before his second breakfast.
Jace noticed the absence immediately. His gaze went to the rug, then the corner near the bookshelf. “No Tiny?”
“Not today.”
“Oh.” He said it like he hadn’t meant to sound disappointed. “Right.”
“He’s not on staff.”
“Tell him that.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Then I shut the door.
The click changed the room.
Jace’s shoulders lifted. His eyes cut to the door, then to me, then away. This wasn’t the equipment office. We weren’t standing under bad fluorescent lights with a storm breaking open between us. It didn’t matter. His body remembered. Mine did too.
I kept space between us and set my tablet on the desk. “Coffee down.”
He looked at the cup like it had appeared in his hand by magic. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Bag on the chair.”
He did it.
“Phone on my desk.”
His eyes came up fast.
“It’s not a punishment,” I said. “You haven’t looked at a single thing on it. Your hand is just using it because it’s there. Put it where your hand can’t run the meeting.”
That got under his skin. I saw pride flare, then irritation, then the effort it took not to throw a comment back at me.
He placed the phone on my desk.
“Sit.”
He chose the chair against the wall, not the one opposite me. Back protected. Distance built in. I noticed. I didn’t call attention to it.
“Feet on the floor.”
His gaze dropped. One heel was already moving.
“Both feet, Jace.”
His breathing caught at my use of his name. Not much. Enough.
He planted both feet flat.
“Hands on your thighs.”
Color rose along his throat. His hands settled on his sweats, fingers spread, restless even in obedience.
The office went quiet except for the low hum of the building waking up beyond the walls.
“Look at me,” I said.
He did.
The exhaustion was worse head-on. His eyes were too bright, the skin beneath them shadowed. His mouth looked tense from holding back words, or maybe holding himself together. Everyone saw the arrogance because arrogance was loud and easy to label. This was quieter. Harder to look at.
“In for four,” I said.
He sucked in a sharp breath.
“Not yet. Wait.”
His body locked down.
I counted with two fingers against my thigh. “Now.”
He inhaled.
“Hold.”
His fingers pressed into his thighs.
“Out.”
The exhale left him unevenly. The second was better. By the fourth round, his shoulders had lowered a fraction, and the frantic tapping in his foot had stopped. Nothing in the room was safe exactly. There was too much between us for that. But some of the static around him eased.
“Did you eat?” I asked.
“Protein bar in the car.”
“That isn’t breakfast.”
“It had twenty grams of protein and tasted like drywall. That feels spiritually significant.”
“After this, cafeteria. Eggs. Something with actual food in it.”
His mouth twitched. “Yes, Coach.”
The title had weight now.
He heard it. I heard it. It moved through the room and found every place it should not have been allowed to touch.
I turned toward my desk, needing the practical shape of papers and schedules. “Tonight you’re attending the children’s hockey fundraiser at the Weston.”
His head came up. “No.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not on that appearance list. Milo and Brooks are doing it with Roman.”
“You were added.”
“By who?”
“Me.”
He stared. “Why?”
Because leaving him alone tonight would be a mistake.
Because I would wonder if he’d eaten, if he’d slept, if he’d gotten caught in his own head and driven around Denver until midnight with music too loud and nowhere to go.
Because I wanted him somewhere I could see him, and that was the kind of reason I had no business letting into the room.
“Because you’re the face of this team,” I said. “Because the youth program asked for you. Because you missed the last sponsor appearance.”
“I had a migraine.”
“You forgot. Tessa found you online three hours into a video game stream.”
His mouth opened. Closed. “That feels like a HIPAA violation.”
“That’s not what HIPAA is.”
“Tessa is still terrifying.”
“Yes.”
He scrubbed both hands down his face, then seemed to remember where I’d told him to keep them. He dropped them back onto his thighs without being prompted.
That quiet correction hit harder than defiance would have.
“I can’t do tonight,” he said.
“You can.”
“I’m not saying I have dinner plans. I’m saying standing in a ballroom for four hours while everyone talks at me and cameras keep popping off sounds like hell.”
The honesty in it slowed me down.
I should have adjusted. Offered an alternative. Sent him home with a list and a check-in time.
Instead, my voice lowered. “You won’t be there alone.”
His eyes held mine.
The words sat between us, too intimate for an office with a team logo on the wall and his phone on my desk.
I opened the event folder. “You arrive at six. Black suit. Tie. Tessa will give you talking points. You’ll sign jerseys, take photos with the kids, speak to two sponsor reps, and stay through the auction unless Tessa clears you earlier.”
Jace’s gaze dropped to my mouth for half a second and snapped away. “You’ll be there?”
“Yes.”
His fingers flexed on his thighs.
“No games tonight,” I said.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“Coach, there are always at least seven things I’m about to say. Most of them are terrible.”
“Tonight is public. Staff, players, sponsors, families. You keep yourself together.”
He gave a short nod. “And if I can’t?”
“Find me.”
The answer left my mouth before I could make it colder.
Jace looked at the phone on my desk, then back at me. “Okay.”
By six-thirty that evening, I knew I had made the right decision for the wrong reasons.
The Weston ballroom was packed with donors, youth hockey families, local media, sponsor executives, players in suits, wives, girlfriends, staff, and children in oversized Blizzard jerseys cutting between adults with miniature sticks they had been told at least twelve times not to swing indoors.
Jace was flawless.
That was the part that made it difficult.
He crouched to speak to kids at their level.
He signed jerseys, programs, a hat from another team, and one small girl’s cast while asking her how she’d broken her arm and listening like the answer mattered.
He smiled for photos. He thanked donors by name after Tessa murmured reminders near his shoulder.
He turned on the effortless charm people expected from him and gave the room exactly enough.
Not too much.
Not the truth.
I watched from across the ballroom and hated the pride that moved through me.
I hated more that I could tell he hadn’t touched the plate in his hand.
Roman noticed before the first hour ended.
He stood near the silent auction table with a glass of club soda, expression neutral, eyes not.
He looked from Jace to me and back again with the patient suspicion of a goalie tracking the puck through traffic.
Roman saw patterns other people missed. It was one of the reasons he had lasted this long in the league.
Jace laughed at something a kid said, then glanced toward me.
Brief. Automatic. Damning if anyone knew what to look for.
Roman’s attention sharpened.
Tessa appeared at my side with a clipboard tucked against her hip and the expression of a woman who had already solved four problems and had no patience left for a fifth. “Alpine Capital wants five minutes before the youth program speech.”
“When?”
“In about ninety seconds. Also, Holloway’s holding up, but he’s close to done.”
“I know.”
Her gaze cut to me. Fast, precise. “Of course.”
Before I could respond, a hand touched my arm.
I turned and found Vanessa Cole smiling up at me in a cream dress, polished enough to look lit from the inside. A sponsor badge hung from a gold chain around her neck.
“Coach Reid,” she said. “Good to see you somewhere without ice.”