Chapter 17 #2
After practice, media was a blur of safe answers.
Yes, the road stretch was important. No, we weren’t looking past anyone.
New systems took adjustment. The room was full of microphones and lights and faces waiting for something useful, and I could feel myself slipping toward autopilot in a way that usually made me reckless.
Tessa caught me near the backdrop afterward. “You survived without saying anything that makes my life harder.”
“I live to serve.”
“You absolutely do not, but today I’ll accept the lie.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Vanessa again.
Vanessa: Tonight still okay?
I didn’t answer.
I told myself I would. After lunch. After meetings. After my brain stopped feeling like someone had opened too many browser tabs and one of them was playing music I couldn’t find.
That was a lie too, but a familiar one.
By the time we got back to the hotel, I was wrung out. Not in crisis. Not amber. Just tired in the heavy, irritated way that made every decision feel personal. I went to my room, showered, put on sweats, and sat on the edge of the bed with my phone in my hand.
Vanessa deserved an answer.
Declan deserved nothing and had somehow become the person I wanted to ask before making one.
That was the thing that scared me most.
Not the sex I kept imagining in flashes so vivid they made me grip the sink. His hand at the back of my neck. His voice telling me to open my mouth. The weight of him close enough to make my body forget everything it had assumed about itself.
Not even the fact that I wanted it from a man.
It was that I wanted him to tell me what came next and trusted that he would not use that against me.
I texted before I could lose my nerve.
Me: Can I ask for something?
Three dots appeared, disappeared, then appeared again.
Declan: Yes.
Me: Not fixing. Just an instruction.
His answer came fast.
Declan: Come to the service hallway by the west elevators in ten. Phone in pocket. Hands empty.
My body went hot and calm at the same time.
Ten minutes later, I stood in the narrow hallway near stacked banquet chairs and an ice machine that rattled like it was dying. My hands were empty. My phone was in my pocket. My heart was doing stupid things, but my feet stayed planted.
Declan arrived in a dark T-shirt and track pants, hair damp from a shower. No coach jacket. No tablet. No professional armor except the part of him that was always controlled.
He stopped two feet away.
“Color.”
“Green.”
“What did you need?”
The honest answer was too big.
I looked at the scuffed baseboard behind him, then made myself look back. “I don’t want to decide for a minute.”
His expression changed, not soft exactly. A recognition that went deeper than softness.
“One minute,” he said. “You can have that.”
My breath hitched.
He pointed to the wall beside me. “Back there.”
I moved.
“Shoulders against it.”
I obeyed.
“Hands behind your back. Hold your own wrist.”
The position did something to me immediately. Not restraint. I could let go whenever I wanted. That was why it worked. Choice wrapped around stillness.
Declan stepped closer, close enough that his voice didn’t need volume.
“You are going to stand here and breathe. You are not going to plan the next conversation. You are not going to answer texts in your head. You are not going to punish yourself for wanting guidance.” His gaze moved over my face like he was checking for cracks.
“For sixty seconds, the only thing you carry is the next breath.”
My eyes stung. I hated that. I hated it enough to blink hard and stare at his shoulder.
He didn’t call me on it.
“Start now,” he said.
I breathed.
The first twenty seconds were ugly. My thoughts kept bucking against the fence. Vanessa. Olivia. Game. Wrong. Want. Door. Hallway. His mouth. My hands behind my back. His voice.
Then something lowered.
Not disappeared.
Lowered.
The thing I craved wasn’t control. Not really.
Control was just the shape it took because shape was easier than chaos. What I wanted was the brief, impossible relief of not carrying every moving part alone. Of handing one minute to someone else and believing he would give it back intact.
Declan watched me understand it.
When the minute ended, he didn’t move away.
“Color.”
My voice came out rough. “Green.”
“Do you want more?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No joke.
His nostrils flared on one controlled inhale.
“Then tonight after the game, if your obligations are done and your color is still green, you will text me two words. Still green. Nothing else.”
Anticipation curled through me, slow and brutal. “And if I’m not?”
“Then you text the true color.”
“What happens then?”
“Then I answer that color.”
Simple. Direct. No promise of a reward he couldn’t safely give. No threat. No pretending either.
My fingers tightened around my wrist behind my back.
Declan noticed.
His voice dropped. “You want me to touch you.”
Heat climbed my neck. “Yes.”
“I’m not doing it in this hallway.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to wait.”
The words went straight through me.
My breath shook once. “Okay.”
“Not because I’m denying you to be cruel. Because waiting is part of the instruction.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”
“And because when I do put my hands on you again, I want you clear enough to know exactly what you’re agreeing to.”
That almost broke the last of my composure.
He lifted one hand, not to touch me, but to point toward the elevators.
“Go back to your room. Answer Vanessa before pregame meal. Honest enough not to be cowardly. Brief enough not to start a conversation you can’t finish today.”
The guilt returned, but it didn’t swamp me. It had a container now.
“Yes, Coach.”
A muscle moved in his cheek.
“Jace.”
I stopped.
For once, I waited instead of filling the silence.
“You did well asking for what you needed.”
The praise was quiet. Specific. Devastating.
I nodded because words were not available in any useful order.
Then I walked away with my hands empty, my phone still in my pocket, and the shape of his instruction wrapped around the rest of my day.
I wanted more.
Not because he took anything from me.
Because, for one minute, he hadn’t let me carry it alone.