Chapter 16
DECLAN
I walked away first.
It was the only responsible thing I had done all night.
If I stayed in that hallway with my fingers around Jace Holloway’s wrist, I was going to forget the event on the other side of the wall.
I was going to forget staff, sponsors, cameras, contracts, my job, my marriage, his girlfriend, the entire structure of the life I had built out of discipline and restraint.
I had built a career on reading pressure before it broke.
Tonight, I was the pressure.
The event room swallowed me back in with bright lights, clinking glasses, and voices stacked on top of one another.
A regional bank executive caught me before I made it ten feet.
He wanted to talk about youth outreach and community visibility and whether the organization might consider a summer clinic with their branding on the boards.
I nodded at the right times. I gave him real answers. When his wife joined us with white wine in one hand and a story about their son’s travel team, I remembered her name, asked which tournament he’d played in, and made the appropriate face when she mentioned a bad call in the semifinal.
My body knew how to be a head coach at a sponsor event.
The rest of me was still in the hallway.
Jace’s disbelief when I admitted jealousy. The flicker of heat right after, sharp and unguarded. The relief he had tried to bury because relief made it real. His wrist under my grip, the tendons shifting when he obeyed instead of pulling away.
Lower your voice.
He had.
Not because I forced him. Not because he was weak. Because he chose to give me that piece of control, and I had no business wanting it as much as I did.
We’re past pretending it’s only control.
I’d said that too.
Out loud.
The words kept circling back, stripping away every useful excuse I had been using for weeks. Jace did better with structure. True. His brain settled when expectations were clear. True. He trusted me to push without shaming him, to correct without making him feel like everyone else’s burden.
Also true.
Still not the whole truth.
Across the room, he came back.
He didn’t look at me right away, which was somehow worse than if he had stared me down.
He stepped through the doors with his suit jacket open and one hand dragging over his cuff, like he could smooth himself into place by force.
Milo lifted a hand from near the dessert table. Jace answered with a smile.
Not his real one.
The real one arrived too fast, too bright, all over his face before he could stop it. This one was practiced. Polished. The version that made sponsors feel interesting and cameras feel harmless. He used it on three people in less than five minutes.
Then Roman looked at him.
Vega leaned against a cocktail table with a glass he hadn’t touched much, wearing his usual expression of exhausted tolerance. Most people saw that face and assumed he was bored.
I had coached against Roman long enough to know better.
He clocked Jace’s late smile. The way Jace reached for a drink and changed his mind. The restless drag of his thumb along the seam of his jacket pocket.
Then Roman’s attention shifted to me.
I looked away too fast.
Mistake.
Roman saw that too.
“Tough room?” Tessa asked from my left.
I hadn’t heard her approach.
I turned. “Manageable.”
“Mm.” She had her tablet tucked against her ribs and an earpiece in one ear.
Her lipstick remained perfectly intact, which I’d started to suspect was less makeup and more classified technology.
“Alpine’s happy. The youth foundation is ecstatic.
Brooks almost baptized a councilman in cocktail sauce, but I handled it with grace and several napkins. ”
“Excellent work.”
“I’ll be putting that quote in my annual review.”
“You should.”
Her gaze moved over my face, not intrusive, just precise. Tessa Moreno didn’t ask pointless questions. She saved time by only asking the ones she already understood.
“You need anything?” she asked.
“No.”
“Convincing.”
“Tessa.”
“Right.” She tapped the edge of her tablet. “If anyone asks, the hotel group wants five minutes with you.”
“Send them over.”
“They found Benny instead.” Her mouth barely moved. “Consider it a gift.”
I looked at her.
She gave me a small, dry smile. “Try not to waste it.”
Then she left before I could answer.
I should have used the reprieve to clear my head. Instead, I found Jace again.
He was at the bar, one hand around a glass of water while a man in a gray suit talked at him with both hands.
Jace’s attention stayed locked on the sponsor’s face, polite and professional, but his fingers moved under the lip of the bar.
Index, middle, thumb. Pause. Again. A small, repeating pattern that had nothing to do with boredom and everything to do with holding himself together.
A server passed between us with champagne.
Jace reached for his water at the same time I reached for coffee from the service station. Fifteen feet separated us. No contact. No reason for it to matter.
It mattered anyway.
His eyes lifted.
For one second, the room became background noise.
Not in a clean, romantic way. There was nothing clean about wanting a player under my authority while my wife was in another city and his girlfriend was probably posting curated images of the event from three different angles.
It was uglier than that.
More honest.
He knew.
I knew he knew.
The thing between us had moved beyond private confrontations, beyond discipline dressed up as coaching, beyond the careful lie that this was only about helping him function. We had not named all of it. We had not said the worst, most dangerous words.
We had said enough.
Jace looked away first. His lips pressed together like he was biting back whatever reckless thought tried to escape.
Roman saw it.
Of course he did.
I watched him set his glass on the table.
The event thinned slowly.
Sponsors left in clusters, loud at the doors after too much free wine.
Hotel staff cleared plates with practiced efficiency.
Players drifted toward the elevators, ties loosened, shoulders slumped with the relief of their obligation ending.
Milo stole three cookies from the dessert display and told Brooks one was for later.
Brooks called him full of shit and took two anyway.
Jace should have gone with them.
He didn’t.
He stood near the windows with his phone in his hand, screen dark, thumb working along the edge of the case. Roman approached once. I couldn’t hear the exchange, but Jace shook his head. Not angry. Worn down. Roman didn’t press. He did look at me before he left.
This time I didn’t look away.
His stare held steady. A warning, maybe. Or a question he wasn’t ready to ask in public.
Then he walked out.
By eleven, the room belonged mostly to hotel staff and a few team employees packing up signage.
Tessa disappeared with the event coordinator, still discussing vendor timelines like it was a military operation.
Benny headed upstairs with two assistants.
The last of the sponsors finally stopped needing handshakes.
I should have gone to my room.
Olivia had texted an hour earlier.
Olivia: Dinner ran late. Exhausted. Call tomorrow?
I had answered like a decent husband.
Me: Of course. Get some sleep.
Then I had locked my phone and watched Jace refuse to leave.
When I took the side exit, I told myself it wasn’t because of him. It was quieter than the main doors. I needed five minutes without someone wanting an answer, a photo, a plan, a promise. If I went upstairs right away, I would lie in the dark and replay every wrong choice until morning.
The hotel business center sat beyond the conference rooms, tucked behind glass doors with unused computers and a printer humming to itself. Past it was a small lounge overlooking downtown, low chairs, dim lamps, tall windows catching the city in broken light.
Jace was already there.
He stood near the glass with both hands in his pockets, jacket thrown over the back of a chair. His reflection looked pale against the window. Drawn. Tired in a way that had nothing to do with hockey.
He didn’t turn when I entered.
“I didn’t follow you,” he said.
“I know.”
“You didn’t follow me either.”
“No.”
The silence between us had weight. Not awkward. Not easy. Too much truth compressed into a room too small to hold it.
I stepped inside and let the glass door close behind me. I didn’t lock it. I wasn’t going to pretend privacy was something we could steal and then call safe.
Jace glanced back. “If someone comes in?”
“Then we’re talking.”
“About what?”
I stopped near the chair with his jacket. “Not hockey.”
His mouth moved like he almost laughed. “That narrows it down to literally everything else.”
Then he faced the city again.
Traffic moved below us in red and white streams. His shoulders were tight. His hands stayed buried in his pockets, but I could see the movement through the fabric. Fingers flexing. Releasing. Flexing again.
“I think about you constantly,” he said.
No warning. No attempt to make it easier for either of us.
My throat closed around the first response and killed it.
Jace kept going before I could find another.
“Not in a fun way. Not like a thing I can use when I’m bored and then shove back in a drawer.
It’s at practice. At home. In the middle of conversations.
Vanessa will be talking about some brand trip, and I’m standing there trying to listen, trying really fucking hard, and my brain is running three tracks at once, and one of them is always you.
” He breathed out through his nose. “My dad asked how the new coach was working out, and I almost dropped a plate.”
I closed my eyes for one second.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel bad,” he said.
“It does.”
“Yeah.” His reflection shifted as he swallowed. “Same.”