Chapter 16 #2
That was the part that cut deepest. He wasn’t careless. Impulsive, yes. Messy when overloaded. Too fast when emotion got ahead of him. But not careless. He knew there were people attached to us. He knew wanting something didn’t erase the damage of taking it.
“I’m losing objectivity,” I said.
He turned then.
“I know when you’ve eaten. I know when you’re close to overload.
I know which tone gets through and which one makes you shut down.
I notice who touches you before I notice who’s open on a breakout in film.
” My voice stayed low, but that didn’t make any of it less damning.
“That’s not acceptable from your coach.”
“No.”
“I control your ice time. Your development. Your discipline. I have authority over your career.”
“I know.”
“And you respond to that authority in ways I have no right to want.”
His breath changed.
There it was, stripped of the hallway and anger and jealousy. No confrontation to hide behind. No adrenaline to blame. Just the truth standing between us in a quiet hotel lounge after midnight.
Jace took one step toward me.
Not a challenge. Not one of his impulsive lunges toward chaos.
Deliberate.
That was worse.
“You know what happens when you tell me what to do,” he said.
Every disciplined part of me tightened.
He swallowed. “Not drills. Not systems. I mean when you say sit, and I sit before I decide if I want to be pissed about it. When you tell me to breathe, and my body tries even if my head is still a disaster. When you tell me to put my phone away and eat. Or stop talking. Or look at you.” His voice dipped. “You know.”
“Yes.”
The word came out rougher than I intended.
Jace’s shoulders loosened by half an inch, like confirmation hurt less than being left alone with his own read of the room.
“I thought it would freak me out more,” he said.
“It does freak you out.”
“Yeah. But not enough to make me want to stop.”
My hand closed over the back of the chair. “Jace.”
“I hate needing stuff,” he said, faster now, but not spiraling.
Pushing through before he lost the thread.
“I hate feeling like I’m being managed. I hate when people talk to me like I’m one missed appointment away from being too much trouble.
I know I’m not easy. I know I make things harder than they need to be sometimes.
But I’m not a kid. I’m not stupid. I don’t need someone to take over my life because they think I can’t handle it. ”
“I’ve never thought that.”
“I know.” The fight went out of his voice. “That’s why this is hard.”
I stayed where I was because if I moved, I didn’t trust what I would do.
He noticed my grip on the chair. His gaze dropped to my hand, then came back to my face. There was no arrogance in him now. No performance. Just a man standing too close to the edge of something and asking if I saw it too.
“So what happens if I don’t let you pretend this is only because I’m overwhelmed?”
The printer behind us clicked once, then finally went silent.
I answered because he deserved that much.
“I stop pretending.”
His inhale was small, but I saw it.
Then, abruptly, he said, “Red, amber, green.”
I stared at him. “What?”
“The colors.” He dragged a hand through his hair, making the top stand in every direction.
“I looked some stuff up. Not enough to become obnoxious about it, probably. Maybe enough to become mildly obnoxious.” He grimaced at himself.
“Point is, people use colors. Red means stop. Green means keep going. Amber means slow down or check in because something’s off and I might not be able to explain it fast.”
The blunt practicality of it landed hard.
He wasn’t trying to make this beautiful.
He was trying to make it safe.
“You looked that up?”
His cheeks flushed, but he held my gaze. “Yeah.”
“When?”
“After the locker room.” His mouth tightened.
“After I realized I didn’t know what the hell I was asking for, only that I kept wanting it.
I started reading, then lost the article, then somehow ended up watching a guy restore a table for twenty minutes.
But I found enough.” He rubbed his thumb against his palm. “I don’t want either of us guessing.”
I felt the floor under me and the drop beneath it at the same time.
“Red, amber, green,” I repeated.
“Simple enough for both of us.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen stayed dark. His thumb hovered over the side button, not pressing. “Then tell me to put it down.”
The room tightened around those words.
“That isn’t a game.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His eyes stayed on mine, bright and tired and completely present. “Yes. That’s why I’m asking.”
I should have ended it there.
I should have told him to go upstairs. Shower. Sleep. Meet the team in the lobby in the morning with coffee in hand and the mask back on. I should have let daylight make cowards of us.
Instead, I looked at his hand.
His fingers were tense around the phone, but not because he wanted the phone. He was waiting. I could see the work of it in him, the effort not to fidget, not to fill the silence, not to throw out a joke and wreck the pressure before the pressure got under his skin.
He had offered me the choice.
That mattered.
“Put it on the table,” I said.
Immediate.
Jace placed the phone facedown on the small table beside him, then straightened. His attention returned to me like a tether pulled tight.
The simplicity of it moved through me with more force than it should have.
It should not have felt more intimate than touching him.
It did.
There was no accident here. No collided tempers. No postgame adrenaline. No excuse that could be folded into coaching. I had given an instruction that had nothing to do with hockey, nothing to do with his performance, nothing to do with the team.
He obeyed because he wanted to.
Because I wanted him to.
Jace looked shaken by that.
I wasn’t any steadier.
“Hands out of your pockets.”
He pulled them free.
“At your sides.”
His fingers flexed once, then settled against his thighs.
“Feet still.”
His right foot stopped moving.
The room became exact. Not quiet, exactly. More focused. Breath. Distance. The dull shine of his phone facedown on the table. The city beyond the glass, irrelevant and bright.
I stepped closer.
I did not touch him.
“Color?”
His throat moved. “Green.”
Consent. Awareness. Choice.
Not a scene stumbled into because we were too hungry to think. Not me taking what had not been offered. Jace wasn’t helpless in this. He wasn’t being dragged by something he couldn’t name. He had gone looking for language because he wanted to understand what he was giving me before he gave it.
“Look at me.”
He did.
The noise in him hadn’t vanished. It never would. Structure would not cure his ADHD. Desire would not make his mind linear. I could not command away the racing thoughts, the time blindness, the overload, the sleep he chased and missed.
But right now, his focus had somewhere to land.
“If I tell you to go upstairs,” I said, “you will.”
Pain crossed his face before he got control of it.
“Yes.”
“If I tell you not to text me again tonight, you won’t.”
His lips parted, then closed. That one cost him more.
“I won’t.”
“And if I tell you to stay?”
His answer came lower. “I’ll stay.”
My control thinned enough that I could feel everything beneath it. Every bad idea. Every image I had refused to let form. His knees on hotel carpet. My hand in his hair. His mouth open, not with a smart remark for once, but because I had told him exactly what to do with it.
I stopped myself there.
Barely.
I stepped close enough to see the pulse working in his neck.
“I’m not going to touch you tonight.”
His eyes shut for a second.
Disappointment moved through him first. Then relief, quieter but just as real. When he opened his eyes, he nodded.
“Okay.”
“You’re going to take your phone. You’re going to your room. You’re going to shower, drink water, and sleep.”
His mouth almost tilted. “That sounds like a team memo.”
“It isn’t.”
He understood.
The almost-smile disappeared.
I let one breath pass between us.
Then I gave him the order I had wanted to give since I saw him standing alone by the window.
“Text me when your door is locked.”
Jace absorbed it with his whole body.
Not because he needed it explained.
Because he didn’t.
The instruction was personal. Protective. Possessive enough to be dangerous, controlled enough to remain a boundary instead of skin.
His obedience this time was quieter.
He picked up his phone. His fingers brushed the table once before closing around it. He collected his jacket from the chair and draped it over his arm.
At the glass door, he paused and looked back.
No polished smile. No arrogance. No careless mouth trying to outrun what he felt.
Just Jace, seen too clearly to pretend he wasn’t affected.
“Green,” he said again, softer this time.
A reminder.
A promise.
Then he left.
I stayed in the lounge and watched the city until my phone vibrated eight minutes later.
Jace: Door locked.
A second message followed before I could answer.
Jace: Water too.
I looked down at the screen for a long time.
Then I typed the only thing I trusted myself to send.
Me: Sleep.
His reply came almost immediately.
Jace: Yes, Coach.
I closed my hand around the phone and understood, with a clarity that offered no mercy, that wanting him was no longer the most dangerous part.
The dangerous part was that he wanted to be guided.
And I wanted to be the man he trusted with the command.