Chapter 21
JACE
The problem with an off day was that nobody told my brain.
My body understood it. My legs were heavy from travel and the last game.
My shoulder had that deep bruise ache from taking a hit in the second period.
I slept late because my phone was across the room and I hated Declan for being right about that, then liked him too much for it, then hated myself for liking him too much before I even brushed my teeth.
No rink. No meetings. No video. No schedule printed and taped to my stall. Just a whole day sitting in front of me like an open tab I couldn’t close.
By noon, I had started laundry, forgotten laundry, reheated coffee twice, answered three texts from Harper, ignored six from Vanessa, cleaned half the kitchen, lost my keys, found them in the refrigerator, and stood in the shower for too long because the water noise gave my head something steady to hold.
Vanessa called while I was eating cereal over the sink.
I let it ring.
Then I felt like garbage and called her back before I could talk myself out of it.
“Hey,” she said, bright but tight. “You alive?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I was in the shower.”
It was not a lie. It just wasn’t the whole timeline.
“You’ve been in the shower for four hours?”
I closed my eyes. “No.”
“Jace.”
“I know.”
There was a pause, and I could picture her perfectly. Hair done even on a day off. Phone angled away from her face, probably pacing through her place in socks that cost more than my first hockey stick. Beautiful. Annoyed. Not wrong.
“We need to talk about Aspen,” she said.
My stomach sank.
Aspen had become this thing between us. Not a trip.
A symbol with a rental house and curated snow pictures and couples content she kept pretending wasn’t couples content.
She wanted a weekend away. She wanted us looking normal.
She wanted a conversation I had been dodging because every possible answer made me feel like the worst version of myself.
“Yeah,” I said. “We do.”
“Okay. So talk.”
I stared at the cereal going soggy. “Today’s not great.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t humor in it. “It’s your off day.”
“I know, but I’m fried.”
“You’re always fried lately.”
That landed because it was true.
I put the bowl down. Milk sloshed over the side and onto my counter. I grabbed a paper towel, wiped it badly, missed half of it.
“I’m not trying to avoid you,” I said.
“You are avoiding me.”
I leaned my hip against the counter and pressed my fingers into my forehead. “I don’t mean to.”
“That doesn’t make it feel better.”
“No. I know.”
She was quiet for a second. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Did I do something?”
Fuck.
“No,” I said too fast. “No, Ness. You didn’t.”
“Then what is this?”
I didn’t answer.
Because the answer was not a sentence I could give her while standing in my kitchen with milk drying on my counter and Declan’s last text still sitting in my phone like a hand on the back of my neck.
“I’m trying to figure some stuff out,” I said, which was cowardly and vague and sounded exactly like something I would hate if someone said it to me.
“About us?”
My throat tightened. “Yeah.”
Another silence.
“I deserve more than you disappearing in slow motion,” she said.
She did. That was the part that made it unbearable.
“I know.”
“When?”
I swallowed. “Tomorrow night?”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah.”
“No canceling.”
“I won’t.”
“And Aspen?”
I looked at the ceiling like there might be a better version of me hiding up there. “Let’s talk tomorrow before we decide.”
She exhaled. “Fine.”
“Ness.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry.”
This time her silence hurt worse.
“Me too,” she said, and hung up.
I stood there with the dead phone in my hand until my brain started throwing everything at me at once.
Vanessa’s voice. Olivia’s name. Declan’s hands.
Roman’s face when he said don’t make me stupid.
Tomorrow. Aspen. Laundry. Food. Did I eat?
Cereal counted, except it was still on the counter.
Practice tomorrow. Was it tomorrow? No, optional skate.
Wait, was there media? Tessa sent something. Where was the text?
My skin felt too tight.
The apartment was suddenly too much. The hum from the fridge. The wet patch under my sock where I had stepped in spilled milk. The phone lighting again with notifications I didn’t want to read. My own breathing annoying me.
I opened Declan’s contact.
Stopped.
The rule wasn’t no texting. It also wasn’t use him every time my life felt hard. I knew that. He had structure, but he wasn’t a panic button. He wasn’t there to make the guilt smaller.
Still, my thumb moved.
Me: Off day is too loud.
I almost threw the phone onto the couch after sending it.
His reply came four minutes later.
Declan: Shoes. Outside. Ten minute walk. No headphones.
I stared at it.
No color. No lecture. No asking me to explain every piece of the mess. Just an instruction, clean enough to follow.
I put on shoes.
Then I stood by the door because my hoodie wasn’t there. It was in the bedroom. No, kitchen chair. No, dryer.
Laundry.
“Are you kidding me?” I muttered.
I found a different hoodie on the couch, shook out a protein bar wrapper, put it on, and went outside.
The air helped.
Denver was cold in that dry, sharp way that made my lungs work differently.
I walked three blocks without headphones, which was basically medieval torture, but after the first minute I started hearing separate things instead of one giant wall of noise.
A car passing. A dog barking behind a fence. My sneakers on the sidewalk. My breath.
My phone buzzed when I was two blocks from home.
Declan: Better?
I should have been embarrassed by how much one word from him steadied me.
Me: Annoyingly, yes.
Declan: Good.
I stopped at the corner, staring at the screen.
Then another text appeared.
Declan: Tiny has been staring at his leash for twenty minutes. Park at seven if you want neutral ground.
My heart did something stupid.
Neutral ground.
Not the arena. Not a hotel. Not his house. Not my apartment. A place where he was not Coach standing behind a desk and I was not a player trying to pretend my body didn’t remember his.
Me: Is this Tiny inviting me or you?
Declan: He lacks thumbs.
Me: So romantic.
Declan: Seven.
I looked down the street, cold air pressing against my face, and felt want move through me without the immediate punch of sex. It was worse in some ways. Bigger. Less manageable.
Me: I’ll be there.
I was twelve minutes early and still felt late.
The park was on the quieter side of the neighborhood, wide paths cutting through patches of winter grass, lights spaced far enough apart to leave privacy without making it sketchy.
I parked two streets over because paranoia was apparently part of my cardio now, then walked with my hood up and my hands shoved in my pockets.
Declan was already there.
Of course he was.
He stood near the start of the trail in a dark jacket and jeans, one hand wrapped around Tiny’s leash.
Tiny saw me before Declan did. Or maybe Declan saw me and Tiny reacted because they were both ridiculous.
Either way, the dog let out a deep, wounded sound like I had personally abandoned him for years and came charging.
Declan braced.
“Tiny,” he warned.
Tiny listened in the sense that he did not knock me fully onto my ass. He only slammed his giant head into my stomach and shoved between my legs, tail whipping hard enough to cause property damage.
“Hey, buddy.” I laughed despite myself, scratching both sides of his neck. “Yeah, I know. Terrible. I left you with this guy.”
Declan approached at a slower pace. “This guy feeds him.”
“Low bar.”
“He also prevents him from eating socks.”
I looked at Tiny. “Do you need preventing?”
Tiny sneezed on my hoodie.
“Answer received.”
When I straightened, Declan was close enough that the cold seemed to shrink around us. Not touching. Not making it obvious. Just there, solid and familiar in a way that made my chest ache.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I am tired.”
“Vanessa?”
I glanced away.
He didn’t fill the silence.
That was one of the dangerous things about him. He could wait without making it feel like a trap.
“She wants Aspen,” I said. “And a real conversation. I said tomorrow.”
Declan nodded once. “Are you going to have it?”
“Yeah.”
The answer surprised me by being true.
“I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say,” I admitted. “But I can’t keep doing this thing where I answer just enough to delay the next question.”
“No,” he said. “You can’t.”
It should have irritated me. It didn’t, maybe because he didn’t say it like a verdict. He said it like he respected me enough not to soften it.
We started walking.
Tiny insisted on taking the middle of the path, which meant Declan and I had to walk on either side of him like we were escorting a drunk celebrity.
The absurdity helped. So did the fact that outside the rink, Declan’s silence felt different.
Less tactical. More like he was giving the world room to exist.
“Did you grow up with dogs?” I asked.
“No. My mom was allergic. My brothers and I lobbied for one every Christmas anyway.”
“How many brothers?”
“Two. Owen and Nate.”
“I knew that.”
“You knew their names. Not them.”
Fair.
“What are they like?”
Declan’s mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “Owen’s a firefighter. Loud. Funny. Thinks every silence is an invitation to be a problem. Nate’s quieter. Owns a small construction company back east. He’s the one who fixes everyone’s houses and refuses payment, then complains nobody respects his time.”
“Sounds like Harper.”
“Your sister?”
“Yeah. She’s twenty-one and terrifying. University student. Thinks I’m an idiot.”
“You are, sometimes.”
I looked at him. “Wow. On my off day.”
“You brought her up.”
Tiny stopped to investigate a frozen pile of leaves with the intensity of a bomb squad. We stopped with him.