Chapter 25
DECLAN
Jace arrived at the rink seventeen minutes earlier than the buffer I’d been trying to drill into him for weeks.
I knew because I’d been in my office since six-thirty, video paused on my laptop, coffee cold beside my hand, and Tiny’s dog hair stuck to the hem of my black practice pants from where he’d leaned his entire massive body against me before I left the house.
Seventeen minutes shouldn’t have meant much.
It did.
Jace came through the staff entrance with his backpack hanging off one shoulder, hair still damp from the shower he’d taken at my place, hoodie crooked at the collar, phone already in his hand. He stopped just inside the door.
Not because he’d forgotten where he was going.
Because he was doing what I’d told him in the kitchen before we left separately.
Pause. Check. Then move.
Keys. Phone. Wallet. Practice bag.
He touched each pocket once. Not six times. Took one breath. Walked on.
It wasn’t a miracle. It wasn’t a cure. He’d have bad mornings again. He’d lose time. He’d forget something important because his brain had grabbed hold of the wrong thread and sprinted. He’d get overstimulated and short-tempered and ashamed afterward.
But this morning, his shoulders sat lower.
His mouth was quiet without being clamped shut.
When Benny Lasker came around the corner carrying a protein shake in one hand and a pastry bag in the other, Jace sidestepped him without making a comment about eating like a hungover raccoon.
Benny stopped, looked down at his bag, then after Jace. “Did Holloway just let my breakfast live?”
Milo Danvers appeared behind him wearing one skate guard despite being nowhere near the ice. “Maybe he’s sick.”
Benny stared at his foot. “Why are you wearing that?”
Milo looked down. “Preparedness.”
“You drove here.”
“Road conditions are unpredictable.”
“You look like a penguin who lost a fight with a Roomba.”
Jace glanced back. A small smile broke through. “That’s disrespectful to penguins.”
Then he kept moving.
Benny pointed after him. “Not sick. Still mean.”
I watched until Jace disappeared into the locker room, then made myself turn back to the laptop.
Professional.
Controlled.
Those words used to feel like the foundation under my feet. Lately they felt more like weight plates I had to carry around all day without letting anyone hear them clank together.
I didn’t follow him. Didn’t text. Didn’t let myself think about the smell of my shampoo in his hair or the way he’d looked in my bed that morning, half awake and warm and blinking like the world had finally slowed down enough for him to see it.
I hit play and watched our second line miss the same defensive rotation for the third time in one period.
Real life did not pause for private disasters.
By the time I made it to the coaches’ room, the rink had filled with practice-day noise.
Tape tearing. Music thumping through the locker room wall.
Equipment staff swearing because somebody had left wet gear zipped in a bag overnight.
Skates scraping rubber flooring. Grown men pretending exhaustion was a rumor invented by weaker species.
I stood near the whiteboard with the practice plan in my hand and listened.
Some days needed volume.
Today needed attention.
Jace laughed once on the other side of the wall, bright and quick, then stopped before it tipped into too much. Another detail I had no right to collect. Another thing I filed away anyway.
A few minutes later, the locker room door opened and Roman stepped into the hall. He saw me, nodded once, then turned toward the training room.
He looked bored.
That meant nothing.
Roman Vega could look bored while the building burned down around him. His face wasn’t where he kept useful information. He kept it in who he watched, who he fed, who he pretended not to worry about.
I gave him a minute, then stepped into the hall under the excuse of checking the ice schedule posted outside the equipment room.
The locker room door hadn’t latched.
Roman’s voice came first, low and close. “You got a second?”
Jace answered, “If this is about me being early, I’m accepting apology gifts.”
“It’s not.”
The room quieted in that particular way men did when they wanted plausible deniability.
“Come here,” Roman said.
A bench creaked. Footsteps shifted toward the back corner near the goalie stalls.
I should have left.
I didn’t.
Roman said, “You texted alive. Home safe.”
Jace didn’t answer.
“Interesting choice of words.”
A quiet exhale. “Yeah.”
“You want to tell me if Vanessa still thinks you’re together?”
“No.”
One word. Tired. Steady.
Roman let the silence sit.
Then he said, “Okay.”
Jace gave a short laugh. “That’s it?”
“What were you hoping for? Confetti? A commemorative puck? You ended a relationship. It sucks.”
“It does.”
“Did you do it decently?”
Jace’s voice dropped. “Not as decently as I should’ve done it two months ago.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
There was a pause long enough for the hallway to feel smaller.
“I told her there was someone else,” Jace said.
My fingers folded around the practice plan until the paper bent.
Roman answered after a beat. “And is there?”
Jace didn’t rush. That mattered more than if he had.
“Yeah,” he said.
The single word hit me hard enough that I had to look down at the floor.
Not because I doubted him.
Because hearing him say it to Roman made it less like something built out of locked doors and night air. It sounded real. Dangerous, but real.
Roman said, “Do I know them?”
Silence.
Then Jace, quieter and careful, “I’m not ready.”
Roman must have seen something in him, because his tone changed. Less dry. More human.
“All right.”
“You’re not going to push?”
“I’ve been known to evolve under pressure.”
“Since when?”
“Since my therapist started charging me when I bail.”
Jace laughed once.
Roman continued, “I’m worried about you. That’s different from thinking I’m owed every detail.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because when people care, you get this look like you’re searching for exits before they can make it your fault.”
“I’m not that bad.”
“You’re precisely that bad.”
Somewhere in the room, a locker shut. Milo said, “Ow. Who put an elbow pad in my skate?”
Benny answered, “The universe.”
Roman ignored them.
Jace said, “She was hurt.”
“She gets to be.”
“I know.”
“And you get to feel bad without turning it into a full-time identity.”
“Very wise.”
“I have depths.”
Gear rustled. No one spoke for a moment.
Then Jace said, “I didn’t want to keep lying to her.”
“That part’s good.”
“It doesn’t feel good.”
“Most necessary things feel like shit at first.”
A longer silence followed.
Roman added, “Whatever this is, I’m not asking today. But if it starts chewing up your head on the ice, or if you get weird off it and stop answering people, you give me enough to help. I don’t need the whole story. I need signals.”
Jace’s reply was rough around the edges. “Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“And if this person makes your life worse, I’ll hate them professionally.”
My breath caught before I could stop it.
Jace said, “They’re not.”
No hesitation.
Roman took that in.
“Then I’ll postpone hating them.”
Jace’s laugh came fuller that time, and it loosened something under my ribs that had been locked tight since last night.
I stepped away before I took more than I’d already stolen.
Back in my office, I shut the door and stood behind my desk with both palms planted on the surface until my breathing settled.
There was someone else.
They’re not.
I had no right to comfort from a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear. I took it anyway. Then I buried it deep enough that it couldn’t show on my face when I walked onto the ice.
Practice saved me for ninety minutes.
Not completely. Nothing did that anymore. But hockey demanded enough of me to leave less room for wanting. Whistles. Corrections. Twenty-three bodies moving at speed, blades under them, tempers riding close to the surface. A hundred details that actually belonged to me.
Milo knocked over a stack of cones during warmups and looked personally betrayed. “Bad setup.”
Benny coasted past him. “The cones are considering legal action.”
“Against me?”
“Against gravity for letting you happen.”
Jace skated by, pulled a loose puck to the toe of his stick, and flicked it into the net without looking.
“Show-off,” Benny called.
“Jealousy ages you,” Jace shot back.
Normal rink noise.
Normal team nonsense.
Normal men stuffing heartbreak, sore hips, bad sleep, strained marriages, and whatever else they carried into drills because the ice gave them somewhere to put it.
I kept my distance from Jace.
That was the job now.
I corrected Milo’s positioning. I stopped a drill to talk to the third pair about gap control. I made the power play rerun the same entry until they stopped treating structure like an insult.
Jace didn’t drift toward me. He didn’t make anything obvious. If anything, he worked harder at not reacting than he had at some of the drills I’d assigned him in October.
But I noticed.
The half second too long he looked after I blew the whistle.
His fingers tapping the top of his stick while I spoke to someone else.
The moment he missed his place in line because he was watching me demonstrate a rotation with Benny, then caught himself, swore under his breath, and skated hard before anyone called him on it.
Not fixed. Not peaceful all the way through.
Trying.
Near the end, we ran a transition drill built around decisions under pressure. Jace went too fast on the first rep, forced a pass through a seam that had already closed, and Roman smothered the shot like it had insulted his family.
“Again,” I called.
Jace circled back, jaw working, eyes on the far boards.
On the second rep, he held the puck one beat longer. Pulled the defender wide. Made the lane happen instead of pretending it existed. He slid the pass across to Milo, who somehow finished by redirecting it off his shin pad.