Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
I’d forgotten how good hockey felt when nobody was keeping score.
Tony, the rink manager at Dunridge Skate, had asked me to run the summer camp back in the spring, and I’d said yes without thinking too hard about it.
It was only three days a week, nine to noon, for kids ages six through ten.
It covered the basic fundamentals—skating, passing, shooting.
Nothing fancy. It was the kind of camp Drew and I had done as kids, back when hockey was just for fun and not tangled up in the pressure of reviving a club team and then being the best.
Turned out, coaching twelve kids who could barely stop without crashing into the boards was becoming one of my favorite parts of my week, only second to my time with Ava.
“Coach Liam! Coach Liam, watch!”
I turned just in time to see Elias—a seven-year-old—attempt a hockey stop and spray ice directly into the face of the kid next to him. The other kid, a skinny redhead named Mack, sputtered and wiped his face with his glove.
“Sorry!” Elias yelled, not sounding sorry at all.
“Nice stop,” I called out, skating over. “But maybe aim the spray at the boards next time, yeah? We’re trying to make friends here, not enemies.”
Elias grinned up at me with a gap-toothed smile. “Drew Dumontier sprays people on purpose. I’ve seen him do it.”
Of course these kids all knew Drew. I’d discovered on day one that most of them were die-hard CFU hockey fans and knew all our names and our stats from last season.
“Drew Dumontier is also a menace. Don’t be like Drew.”
That got a laugh from a few of the parents watching from behind the glass. I caught one dad grinning behind the glass and nodded back before turning to the group.
“Alright, everybody line up on the red line. We’re doing passing drills.”
We were down one kid today, so eleven kids scrambled into something resembling a line, albeit a little haphazard, and I skated backward, watching their form as they paired up.
Most of them were decent—Dunridge and the surrounding towns produced solid skaters, even if this was just a recreational camp.
But my gaze kept drifting to the end of the line, where a girl named Joelle stood slightly apart from the others.
She was eight, quiet, and had barely spoken a word in the three sessions we’d had so far.
She could skate fine—better than fine, actually.
Her edges were clean and her balance was solid.
But every time I set up a drill that required partnering with another kid, she froze.
Everyone seemed nice enough to her, so I couldn’t decide if it was because she was anxious about the kids or something else.
Right now, she was standing with her stick flat on the ice, watching the other kids pair up until everyone had a partner but her.
I skated over to her. “Hey, Joelle. Need a partner?”
She shrugged, which I’d learned was her default response to almost everything.
“Tell you what.” I grabbed a puck from the bucket. “You and me. I’ll go easy on you.”
The ghost of a smile flickered across her face. “You don’t have to go easy.”
“Fair enough.” I dropped the puck between us. “Show me what you’ve got.”
She went for it, and immediately impressed the hell out of me with how sharp and accurate her passes were. Hell, they were better than half the boys on the ice. But she kept her head down, watching the puck instead of looking up, like she was afraid of making eye contact.
“Nice hands,” I told her after a particularly clean saucer pass. “You play on a team outside of camp?”
“No.” She collected the puck and passed it back. “My brother does. I just practice with him on the pond in the winter.”
“Well, your brother’s lucky. You’d make a solid linemate.”
She looked up at me with surprise in her eyes like she hadn’t expected to hear that. “You think so?”
“I know so. You’ve got great instincts. You just need to trust them.”
She nodded slowly, and when I called the group back together for the next drill, she skated into the cluster of kids instead of hovering at the edge. It was a small win but I’d take it.
I ran them through shooting drills for the last half hour, adjusting stances, correcting grips, and dodging the occasional wild shot that sailed nowhere near the net.
“Coach Liam, show us a slap shot! A hard one!” Elias called out.
A few of the other kids perked up, and I could see the parents shift closer to the glass.
“Alright. One shot. Eyes on me.”
I set a puck at the top of the left circle and took a breath, letting muscle memory take over. I wound up and ripped a slap shot that hit the top right corner with a crack that echoed through the arena. The crossbar was still vibrating when Elias lost his mind.
“That was so cool! Can you do that again?”
“That’s what practice gets you.” I tapped my stick on the ice. “Now line up. Your turn.”
What followed was eleven kids absolutely whiffing it, and it was the most entertaining half hour of my week.
Mack fell on his ass mid-windup. A kid named Theo somehow shot the puck backward, which was a special kind of skill, or lack thereof.
Joelle was one of the few who got solid contact with the puck actually making it to the net.
It was low and wide, but she’d connected clean.
“That’s it, Joelle.” I pointed my stick at her. “See? Trust those instincts.”
She ducked her head, but I caught the grin before she hid it.
By the time noon rolled around, my voice was hoarse from three hours of calling instructions across the ice, but I was buzzing with the kind of energy only hockey gave me.
“Good work today, everyone. Same time Thursday. And Elias—”
“I know, I know. Don’t spray people.”
“You got it.”
The kids filed off the ice toward their parents, and I stayed behind to collect pucks and stack cones.
The arena was quiet now—just the low hum of the rink’s cooling system and the scrape of my blades as I moved across the ice.
Summer sunlight streamed through the high windows, cutting golden bars across the rink, and for a minute I just stood there, breathing it in.
I loved being on the ice. I’d started playing hockey because Drew had talked me into it, but it had quickly become an addiction. There was nothing like the adrenaline rush of a game.
But the slow, easy pace of coaching wasn’t too bad either. It was exciting to see young hockey players learn the game, hone their skills or learn new ones, and fall in the love with the game the same way I had. It was exciting to play a small role in the next generation of hockey lovers.
I was collecting the last of the pucks when I glanced up at the stands and found Ava sitting three rows up from the glass.
Her legs were crossed and there was a brown paper bag on the seat beside her with the logo for Hugh’s sandwich shop, which was a local favorite.
She was still in her dance clothes—a loose tank and fitted dance shorts—with her hair pulled back in a braid and a pair of sunglasses pushed up on her head.
She lifted her hand in a wave, and my chest tightened with longing.
I skated over to the boards, stopping in front of her section. “What are you doing here?”
“You mentioned you forgot your lunch when we were texting this morning.” She held up the bag. “I don’t teach another class until tonight.”
“Ava, that’s a forty-five minute drive.”
“And yet here I am.” She raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to argue with me, or are you going to come eat your sandwich?”
I wasn’t going to argue. I couldn’t. I was too busy trying to breathe around the thing expanding in my chest—this warm, aching pressure that I didn’t have a name for.
I stepped off the ice and swapped my skates for my sneakers, then climbed the stairs and dropped into the seat beside her.
She reached into the bag and handed me a sub, and from the smell alone, I could tell it was Italian meatball, my favorite.
She handed me a couple of napkins like this was no big deal while I stared at her, wondering how such a small action could have such a large impact.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said.
“I know.” She took a sip of her drink. “But I wanted to.”
Simple as that.
She wanted to, so she did.
And that simple action had left me reeling.
I was just about to unwrap my sandwich when she handed me another package. I opened it up and stared at the extra pickles. Pickles shouldn’t make a man feel winded, but I was definitely finding it hard to breathe.
It was so stupid to want to lean over and kiss her senseless for remembering I loved extra pickles with my sub, even when I got a meatball sub which didn’t even usually come with pickles.
It was a small gesture but it meant everything.
And I couldn’t find the words or my voice, so instead I gave her a grateful smile and we dove in, eating our respective sandwiches in the silence of the empty rink.
“So tell me about the kids,” Ava said. “Anyone future Lumberjack potential?”
“Elias. He’s seven, has zero fear and absolutely no concept of personal space. He sprayed ice in another kid’s face today and cited your brother as his inspiration.”
Ava laughed. “Drew would be so proud.”
“Unfortunately, yeah. He would. There’s another kid though. Joelle. She’s really good, has great natural instincts, but she’s so quiet and guarded. I partnered up with her today, and I was pretty pumped that by the end she skated into a group on her own.”
“Yeah?” Ava smiled. “Look at you, Coach Farrell.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m serious. These kids are lucky to have you.” She bumped her shoulder against mine and then left it there.
I stared at the ice and didn’t say anything, because the way she’d said it—like it was obvious, or a fact—made it impossible to speak without giving myself away.
Ava saw someone I wanted to be. A man who showed up. Who stayed. Who was steady enough to be trusted with fragile things—kids on the ice, a woman’s heart, or even a future that didn’t have an expiration date.
I wanted to see him too. But every time I looked, all I saw was my father’s shadow, and I couldn’t tell if I was looking at who I was or who I was destined to become.