Chapter 27
DECLAN
Jace left before sunrise.
Not because either of us wanted him to. Because the world still existed outside my bedroom, and the world had cameras, neighbors, delivery drivers, bored fans, and enough timing to ruin lives.
My alarm went off at five-ten. I stopped it before the second vibration.
Jace didn’t move right away. He lay on his side facing me, one hand shoved under the pillow, hair wrecked from sleep and my hands.
In the thin gray before morning, he looked both younger and steadier than he had the night before.
Tiny was sprawled across the bottom third of the bed, all four paws in separate directions, the destroyed duck tucked under his chin like evidence from a crime scene.
Jace opened one eye. “If I pretend I don’t hear that, do I still have to leave?”
“Yes.”
“Bad system.”
“Necessary system.”
He made a low, unhappy sound and rolled onto his back. The movement pulled a wince from him before he could hide it.
I was sitting up before he finished inhaling. “Sore?”
He covered his face with one arm. “Do not sound that concerned. I’m fine.”
“Jace.”
He lowered his arm enough to look at me. “I’m sore. Not hurt. Green. Just, you know, aware of yesterday’s choices.”
The words landed hot in my body and hard in my chest at the same time.
I reached over and brushed my thumb along his hip, careful, not making it sexual. “Shower first. Then coffee.”
“Do I get a medal for surviving?”
“You get ibuprofen and a travel mug.”
“Romance is alive.”
It was, unfortunately.
Not in the ways either of us had planned.
Not cleanly. Not in public. But it was there when he sat at my kitchen island in yesterday’s hoodie, bare feet hooked around the stool legs, hair damp and curling at the ends while I made coffee.
It was there when he squinted at his phone with the intense concentration of a man trying not to fall down a notification hole before six in the morning.
It was there when Tiny planted his massive head on Jace’s thigh and exhaled like his heart had been broken by the concept of departure.
“No,” Jace told him quietly. “I can’t take you with me.”
Tiny thumped his tail once.
“I know. Devastating.”
I set a mug in front of Jace and a small plate beside it. Toast. Peanut butter. Banana cut in uneven slices because I’d been watching him more than the knife.
He looked at the plate, then up at me. “You always feed people at dawn?”
“Only the difficult ones.”
“Selective program.”
“Eat half.”
He picked up the toast without arguing. That told me more than any promise would have.
We didn’t talk about Olivia while he ate. Not directly. Her flight time sat in the kitchen with us anyway, in the space between his travel mug and my hand on the counter. Seven-forty. Arrival. Baggage. The drive home. The door opening.
There were practical things to say. Be careful leaving. Text Roman if needed. Don’t engage online. Stretch after practice. Check in if your head gets loud.
I said most of them.
Jace let me.
When it was time, he stood by the back door with his bag over one shoulder and Tiny leaning into his legs hard enough to affect balance.
“I’m going to fall over,” Jace said.
Tiny leaned harder.
“He’s staging a protest.”
“He has no organizing skills.”
“Neither do I, but people still let me have opinions.”
I took Jace’s mug from him and set it on the counter so he wouldn’t spill it. His eyes came to mine, and the humor thinned. Morning filled the kitchen. Pale light. Cold tile. The low hum of the refrigerator. A man I had no right to kiss standing in my house like he belonged there.
I stepped closer.
He met me halfway.
The kiss was quick because it had to be. It still wasn’t casual. His fingers caught briefly in the front of my shirt, then released with visible effort.
“I’ll see you at the rink,” he said.
“At the rink, I’m your coach.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
His mouth bent slightly, tired but sincere. “I know, Dec.”
The name was quiet. Private. One last thing he left in the room before he opened the door.
I watched from the kitchen window as he crossed the yard, hood up, shoulders tucked against the cold. He didn’t look back. Good. He cut through the side gate and disappeared toward where he’d parked down the street.
Tiny stood beside me, offended and mournful.
“He’ll be back,” I said before I could stop myself.
Tiny looked up at me.
I put both hands on the edge of the sink and stared at the empty yard.
The words had sounded too much like faith.
By eight-thirty, I had watched the same forecheck clip four times without retaining a single useful detail.
My office door was shut. The practice plan sat in front of me, clean and organized, every minute accounted for. Breakout adjustments. Neutral zone reload. Second-unit power play. Conditioning at the end if the pace dropped. On paper, my day looked like it belonged to hockey.
In my head, Olivia’s suitcase rolled over airport tile.
I took a drink of coffee that had gone cold and forced myself through the clip again.
F1 pressure too shallow. Weak-side winger late. Defenseman hesitated instead of moving the puck.
There. Work.
I wrote the corrections down in block letters.
Then my eyes drifted to my phone.
No message from Olivia since the flight confirmation. No message from Jace either, which was good. That was the plan. No morning thread. No little proof of life every ten minutes. He had routines, I had responsibilities, and neither of us could afford to turn secrecy into a leash.
Still, I wanted to know if he was okay.
That was the part no system fully solved. Want made an undisciplined man out of me if I gave it too much room.
I put the phone face down.
Grant knocked once and opened the door. “You alive?”
“Unfortunately for everyone.”
He came in carrying a clipboard and an expression that said he had been awake too long and blamed society. “Video at nine?”
“Yes.”
“You look like you slept badly.”
I looked up. “Thanks.”
“Not an insult. Just a face fact.”
“I’m fine.”
“Sure. We all are. That’s why half this building runs on caffeine and denial.”
He dropped into the chair across from me and went over line notes. I listened. I answered. I made decisions. By the time we walked toward the locker room for the team meeting, I had my face back in place.
That was still something I knew how to do.
The players were loud when I entered, but not unmanageable. Benny had one foot up on the bench while Milo tried to tape the blade of his stick without removing a wad of old tape first.
“You have to strip it,” Benny said.
“I am adapting the base layer.”
“You’re creating a fossil.”
Milo glanced at me. “Coach, is innovation punished in this organization?”
“When it makes the equipment staff angry, yes,” I said.
Benny pointed at him. “Convicted.”
Jace sat two stalls over from Roman, tying his skates with more care than usual. Not slow. Deliberate. His phone was zipped in his bag instead of balanced on his knee. His shoulders weren’t loose, exactly, but they weren’t up around his ears either.
He glanced at me once.
No heat. No slip. Just acknowledgment.
Then his attention went back to his laces.
Good.
Painful, but good.
The meeting went cleanly. I kept it short. Three clips. Two corrections. One clear expectation.
“We’ve been chasing plays instead of arriving on time,” I told them, remote in hand, clip paused behind me.
“That’s not effort. That’s structure. We fix it today.
If you’re the second man, you do not admire the first hit.
You read off it. If you’re late, we run it again until late becomes embarrassing. ”
A few faces shifted. They knew that tone. Calm did not mean optional.
On the ice, practice had bite from the first drill. Not pretty, but engaged. Sticks down. Feet moving. Less chirping after the whistle than usual, which meant they were either focused or plotting mutiny.
Jace was focused.
Noticeably.
He missed one rotation early when Milo cut across the wrong lane and dragged two players with him.
A week ago, Jace might have snapped, might have thrown both hands up or tried to fix the drill by doing everyone’s job at once.
Today he stopped, took a hard breath, tapped his stick twice against the ice, and reset.
The second rep was sharp.
He held the middle. Waited for Benny to clear the lane. Fed a pass through traffic that hit tape like it had been magnetized.
“Again,” I called. “Same pace.”
Jace circled back without comment.
Roman watched him from the crease.
So did I, though I did it like a coach. Or close enough to pass.
At the boards during a water break, Benny squirted water toward Milo’s skate.
Milo looked down. “Was that necessary?”
“Yes,” Benny said. “Your tape job is dehydrated.”
“My tape job has character.”
“Your tape job has a terminal diagnosis.”
Jace took a drink and shook his head. “I can’t believe I used to think I was the problem in this room.”
“You are,” Roman said, gliding up. “They’re just background noise.”
“Rude.”
“Accurate.”
I blew the whistle before the exchange could grow legs. “Neutral zone. Groups of five.”
The professional distance between Jace and me held. I corrected his positioning once, no softer or harder than I would have for anyone else.
“Too deep,” I said as he coasted past the boards. “Trust the support.”
He nodded, breathing hard. “Got it.”
That was all.
No second meaning spoken out loud. No private look dragged into public. He went back to the line and fixed it on the next rep.
Still, the words stayed with me.
Trust the support.
If only life responded that neatly to correction.
After practice, the room settled into its usual post-ice chaos. Damp gear. Shower steam. Trainers moving in and out. Someone complaining about groin soreness with no dignity whatsoever.
I stopped near the corridor outside the locker room to talk with Grant about tomorrow’s travel schedule. Through the open doorway, I caught Roman’s voice.
“You seem lighter.”