Chapter 12
Drew
Road miles have a way of sorting a team.
Two hours out of L.A., sun slanted through the bus windows, dust floating in the light like we were dragging half the highway with us.
Jester worked a running commentary from three rows back, Tank slept with his hood up and one earbud dangling, and Carter hadn’t stopped jiggling his knee since we left.
“Breathe, DC,” Miguel said, quiet enough that it sounded private even with twenty bodies around. DC was the nickname some of the guys called Carter—Devin Carter.
Miguel sat across the aisle from me, travel guitar on his knee, thumb brushing a lazy pattern over the strings. Not a song—just enough sound to pull the air into a rhythm.
Carter tried to laugh. “I’m fine.”
“You’re vibrating,” Jester called. “If that seat levitates, I’m switching.”
“It’s his first road swing with us,” JB said from the front. “Let him vibrate a little.”
Carter flushed, then stared out at the hills. “It’s not the bus. My folks said they’re streaming the games. Sometimes that… gets in my head.”
Miguel dipped his chin. “Pick one thing for tonight. One. Not five. Not a list. Just one.”
“Backcheck, don’t fly the zone,” Carter said immediately, like he’d been rehearsing it.
“That’s two,” Miguel said, mouth curving. “Pick.”
“Backcheck.”
“Good.” Miguel’s fingers found the low E again. “Then when your brain tries to juggle, say it again.”
Carter nodded, knee slowing. Maybe it was the music that was settling him.
Sam leaned into the aisle, voice mild in a way that it never quite was. “Or you could just score early and we can all relax.”
Justin, our twenty-two-year-old center, flicked a peanut at him. “He’ll score when you actually pass it to his stick, Sammy.”
Sam smirked and retreated. I let it pass. Eighty percent of coaching is choosing which fires you actually need to stamp out.
The bus smelled like diesel and coffee and a dozen different brands of gum.
The window glass buzzed against its rubber frame.
I watched the team arrange itself into habits—Tank’s hoodie and nap, Jester’s chirps.
And Miguel… close enough that I could hear the soft drag of his thumb on nylon, close enough that his quiet steadied more than Carter.
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t have to.
Some people take the room with volume. He used gravity.
“Giants will try to outskate us wide,” I said to JB, keeping my voice low. “Let’s tighten the neutral zone and make them come through bodies. PP meeting in the hotel conference room at four.”
“Copy that,” he said, scribbling the reminder on his pad. “You want Tank with Jester to start or split them?”
“Start them,” I said. “Trembley rides right. Carter left. Justin centers. Keep Sam in the extra slot.”
He nodded. “You going to tell him or do I?”
“I’ll do it.” I glanced back down the aisle. Sam had his earbuds in now, head tipped back, probably pretending sleep. “Later.”
San Diego’s arena rose up from the flat sprawl like a shed someone overbuilt, palm trees marching along the lot line.
We rolled to the loading dock and the bus sighed in relief.
Inside, the air sharpened to cold metal and scraped rubber.
The locker room was smaller than at home—two tight rows of stalls, overhead fluorescents humming. The first skate would come fast.
“Drop your bags,” I told the team. “We’ve got an hour to the morning twirl. Don’t be cute—hydrate, stretch, then tape. Meeting at four. Trembley, Carter, get your special teams packets from JB.”
Miguel’s shoulder had behaved since Lily worked it after the Calgary game, but I watched him anyway as he set his guitar down and began the slow armor of layers.
He didn’t glance my way, but there was a tiny shift—the kind that said he knew I was watching, even if he pretended not to.
His mouth stayed relaxed, his movements unhurried. Some days I could read tension in the smallest twitch; today, he gave me nothing.
*****
I’d been sitting in the hotel lobby, killing time before the afternoon meeting, a legal pad open on the table beside a half-finished coffee. Travel days always scrambled my head; sometimes putting things on paper helped straighten the lines.
The elevator chimed, and Miguel stepped out in a team hoodie and a pair of sneakers, hair still damp from a quick shower. He clocked the notes, the pen, the coffee going cold beside me.
“Homework?” he asked, low.
“San Diego,” I said. “They get reckless when they’re short-handed. If we stay patient, there’s room to work.”
He leaned his elbows on the back of the opposite chair. “You want me in that meeting?”
“Yes.” I didn’t bother dressing it up. “You see things from the crease the packets can’t teach.”
His mouth did that almost-smile again. “You tell Carter that, he’ll explode with happiness.”
“Then don’t tell him,” I said. “Just show up and make him feel like he figured it out himself.”
He laughed under his breath—quick, warm, gone. Not the locker room kind. Closer. I felt it more than heard it.
“Shoulder?” I asked, eyes flicking to the place Lily had worked last week.
“Good.” He rotated the joint once, no hitch. “She said if I stop trying to win the weight room every time we travel, I might even keep it that way.”
“Listen to Lily,” I said. “She’s smarter than both of us.”
He tipped his head. “Debatable, Coach.”
“Not really,” I said, and he grinned like he liked that answer.
We stood there a beat too long for two men who were supposed to keep things moving.
I remembered watching him during and after the anthem last week—how the spotlight hit his face, how proud he looked, and how alone he seemed under all that noise.
Something about it had caught me off guard.
He wasn’t just one of my players in that moment.
He was a man who carried something I suddenly wanted to understand.
Someone I wanted to know beyond the rink, beyond the mask and the pads.
Someone I shouldn’t have been thinking about this much.
That same feeling stirred again now, quieter but just as insistent, threading through the space between us.
I cleared my throat, breaking whatever that was. “Four o’clock,” I said. “Don’t be late.”
He grinned, eyes catching mine for a beat. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
*****
Game one in San Diego wasn’t pretty. It didn’t have to be.
We clogged the middle, forced them to shoot through legs, and let Miguel see the puck clean.
Tank hammered their winger on the half-wall halfway through the first, Jester cleared the crease like a bulldozer, and Carterpicked his one thing—which earned him a seat-bump from Justin on the bench—and did it with a stubbornness I hadn’t seen from him yet.
Backchecked. Again and again. He didn’t need a goal to matter.
We won 2–1. In the handshake line, the Giants’ eyes were flinty. They’d want the split.
Back in the room, Lily met Miguel at his stall, palms firm over his shoulder blade, fingers testing. I hovered and pretended I wasn’t. She flicked a glance up at me that said what I already knew—minor tightness from the travel, not injury. I let my breath out slow.
“You’re fine,” she told him. “Ice and bands. Then go sleep like a human.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and the corner of her mouth lifted. Mine did too, before I caught it.
Game two bit back. San Diego’s speed blew wide on us early; we chased the first ten minutes and looked heavy through the middle frame. Miguel kept us from falling down a well. We tied it late, then gave one up on a deflection with ninety seconds left. 3–2, Giants. The split.
Miguel’s jaw worked once and then went still, like he’d already filed the loss where it belonged. He was good at that. Better than I was, most days. Lily checked the shoulder again—no drama, only maintenance.
Outside the arena, the air smelled of salt and cooling asphalt.
The guys filed toward the bus in twos and threes, trading tired chirps that sounded more like habit than celebration.
Tank thumped Carter’s shoulder; Jester swore next time the universe owed him a goal.
Trembley said nothing, which fit him fine.
Miguel was last up the stairs. He caught my eye for half a second—no words, no nod, just that steady, unreadable look that somehow felt like its own language.
On the ride back, conversation ebbed around us: Justin arguing a faceoff call, JB jotting lineup tweaks beside me.
Across the aisle, Miguel sat angled toward the window, the city blurring past in streaks of sodium light.
One hand drummed an idle rhythm on his knee, the kind you play when you’re running something over in your head.
“You played clean tonight,” I said quietly. It came out unexpectedly soft.
He turned, one brow lifted. “You watching everyone that close?”
“Just the ones who make it look easy.”
A hint of a smile touched his mouth. “It’s never easy, Coach.”
I wanted to ask what he meant but didn’t. The silence that followed wasn’t awkward—it just hung there, alive with things better left unsaid. I closed the notebook that had been open on my lap and watched the reflection of him ripple in the bus window until the city lights swallowed it.
When we reached the hotel, the team scattered toward elevators and vending machines. I pulled Sam aside long enough to tell him he’d be sitting out the next game. His jaw tightened, but he nodded and moved on.
Miguel lingered by the lobby doors, half-turned like he hadn’t decided whether to head up yet. The night clerk was typing behind the desk, the faint smell of lemons and printer paper floating in the air.
“Good work tonight,” I said.
He gave a small shrug. “Could’ve been cleaner.”
“Maybe. Still got the win.”
His smile was brief but real. “Yeah. Still got the win.”
We stood there longer than we should’ve, two men built for motion pretending there was somewhere else to be.
“Bus at ten,” I said finally.
“Ten,” he echoed, voice low.
In the elevator mirror, my reflection looked a little too thoughtful for midnight. I told myself it was the fatigue. But when I reached my room, the first words that came to my head weren’t strategy.
Sleep. Breathe. Stop pretending it’s just hockey.
Chapter 13
Miguel
By the time I climbed onto the bus, most of the guys were half-asleep or halfway through a bag of chips. Tank was snoring loud enough to scare wildlife, Jester filming it with a grin. The only empty seat was beside Coach. Figures.
I slid in, careful not to brush too close. Six hours of shared space with a man who smelled faintly like cedar and clean laundry wasn’t something I needed my body to notice—but it did.
For a while, I kept quiet. The highway hummed, Carter muttered over a replay on his phone, Trembley stared out the window like the answer to life might be written in the dark. Coach had a folder open on his knee, pen tapping absently against the cover.
When Tank’s snore hit a new gear, I laughed before I could stop it.
Coach’s mouth curved. “Poor Trembley’s rooming with him.”
“Couldn’t pay me enough,” I said.
The joke landed soft, and silence followed—not heavy, comfortable in that way only road quiet can be.
I watched the reflection of streetlights flicker across his profile and, before I could stop myself, said, “You know, I’ve known you five years and never asked—why coaching? Most guys hang up their skates and head for TV booths or analyst gigs. You could’ve done that easily.”
His pen stilled. For a moment, he didn’t move, just watched the highway slide by through the window.
“Because I wasn’t ready to be done,” he said finally. “When playing ended, I thought I could walk away. I couldn’t. Coaching was the only thing that felt close enough to matter.”
“Close to what?”
He gave a small shrug. “To the game. To the rush of it. The noise. The smell of the rink. The way everything else disappears once the puck drops. Behind a desk, I’d just be pretending I was still part of it.”
Something in his voice caught—not dramatic, real. Like it came from a place still sore when pressed.
Still, the words had opened something. Maybe that’s why my next question slipped out before I could think better of it.
“You ever wonder if some people just never make it up there?”
He turned slightly. “You mean the show?”
“Yeah.” I rubbed a thumb along the seam of my jeans. “I’ve been playing for ten years. Straight from high school to the Grizzlies. I’ve seen guys get called up for a week, a game—sometimes just because someone tweaks a groin. I can’t even get that maybe call.”
Coach didn’t rush to answer. He just watched me for a second, the kind of look that made you feel like he was measuring more than your stats.
“You’ve thought about quitting?” he asked finally.
“Once in a while.” I gave a small shrug.
“Sometimes I tell myself I should have gone to college… but it’s not like I’ve got the money for that.
I don’t even own a car. But then again, I try to picture what else I’d do—and I can’t.
Hockey’s what I’ve got. What I am. But sometimes it feels like the league already decided who gets to climb out. ”
He nodded slowly, like he’d been there once. “Ryan Bennett was about thirty-two when he got his call,” he said. “You skated beside him for years—you know that.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “He never stopped believing he’d get there.”
“Exactly.” His tone was quiet but sure. “You’ve got four years till then. More skill in-net than half the guys up top, and more discipline than most. It’s not about who gets seen first; it’s about who keeps showing up after everyone else gives up.”
That sat heavy for a while, but not in a bad way. Like weight you wanted to learn how to carry better.
I swallowed, voice low. “You really think it still could happen?”
“I think you’ve earned the right to keep trying,” he said. Then, softer, “And even if it doesn’t, what you do here matters, Rodriguez. More than you think.”
The words lodged somewhere deep. I couldn’t answer, not right away. The bus hummed, the night stretching around us like a held breath.
The words hit somewhere deep, the kind of place you don’t realize is hollow until someone fills it. I stared at the aisle lights flickering along the floor, trying to find an answer that didn’t sound small.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe that,” I said finally. “But… thanks for saying it.”
He didn’t say anything more, just gave that small nod that passed for a whole paragraph in Coach-speak.
The silence after wasn’t uncomfortable—just the kind that makes you realize you’re still thinking about what was said.
I reached for my phone, needing something to do with my hands, something that wasn’t looking at him too long.
I scrolled until I found something—Spanish guitar, the kind that fills the air without asking for attention.
“Here,” I said, holding out one side of my earbuds. “Better soundtrack than Tank’s chainsaw.”
He raised a brow, hesitating for a half-second.
“Don’t worry,” I added with a faint smile. “I’m borderline obsessive about keeping them clean.”
That earned a small huff of amusement, and he took it. The music filled the quiet between us, soft and slow. Our shoulders didn’t touch, but the same melody threaded through both of us like we were breathing in sync.
Coach leaned back, eyes half-shut, and the corner of his mouth softened in a way I hadn’t seen before. His fingers tapped lightly against his knee, syncing with the beat.