Chapter 8 #2
I looked at the mirror. Looked at my hands. Looked at the far wall, where there was a very interesting framed print of what appeared to be a fern.
I studied the fern.
“Grant.”
I looked back. Priya was holding the charcoal henley out to me with the patient expression of someone who had said my name at least once already.
“Sorry,” I said, and took the shirt.
I changed behind the screen in the corner, which I now appreciated more than I could reasonably explain, and spent approximately thirty seconds doing the mental equivalent of a cold shower.
This was fine.
When I came back out, the assistant had moved on to Hartley's torso—the slow, thorough work of making sure the oil caught light evenly—and Hartley had finally put his phone down and was looking straight at the mirror, jaw slightly tight, something unreadable moving behind his expression.
Then his eyes found mine in the mirror.
He didn't look away. Neither did I, for exactly one beat too long, before I crossed to where Priya was waiting to adjust my collar.
The problem announced itself quietly and inconveniently, the way these things always did when my body decided my brain's opinions were irrelevant.
I felt it the moment I stopped moving—a warmth, a heaviness, the early pull of arousal that had no business being here, in this room, in this context, at all.
I adjusted my jacket. Shifted my weight. Ran a quick inventory of everything currently wrong with the fourth line's defensive-zone coverage until the problem receded to something manageable.
It took longer than it should have.
Priya stepped back, looked me over, and nodded. “Good.”
“Coach looks good,” Hartley said, from behind me, and his voice was entirely neutral, which somehow made it worse.
“So do you,” I said, because lying would've been stranger, and also because apparently I had no functioning sense of self-preservation.
He was pulling the slate shirt on now, and I watched him button it without watching him button it, the way you learned to track peripheral motion on the ice—aware of everything, committed to nothing.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, which was not entirely true but was the only acceptable answer.
Theo appeared, did a final check on us both, made one small adjustment to Hartley's hair that he endured without complaint, and then pointed toward the door.
“Good,” he said. “Don't sweat through the shirts. Drink water. You're both going to be fine.”
Hartley glanced sideways at me as we walked out. There was something in his expression that he was keeping carefully neutral, a controlled blankness that I recognized because I was wearing the same one.
“Not a word,” I said.
“I haven't said a single word.”
“You're thinking very loudly.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then, low enough that it stayed between us: “Priya does that shoot with every team. It's just the job. Doesn't mean anything.”
I wasn't sure if he was reassuring me or himself.
“I know that,” I said.
“Right.” He pushed the studio door open. “Just making sure.”
June's voice calling from the studio interrupted the moment.
“Gentlemen? We're ready when you are.”
Taylor started with the easy stuff, and I was grateful for it.
I could handle this.
“Good. Now Jace, turn slightly toward Grant. Grant, relax your shoulders. You look tense.”
I tried to relax. The shoulders stayed where they were.
“Okay, let's try something more natural.” Taylor lowered his camera. “Jace, say something to make him laugh.”
“I don't think that's physically possible,” Hartley said immediately. “Coach doesn't laugh. He just has different degrees of not-frowning.”
I felt my mouth twitch despite itself.
“There!” Taylor started shooting. “That's exactly what I want. Keep talking.”
“Seriously though,” Hartley continued, “I've seen you smile maybe twice. Once when Volkov got hit in the face with a puck during practice, and once when Callahan fell over his own feet. You have a very specific sense of humor, Coach.”
“I smiled when we won the home opener.”
“That wasn't a smile. That was a slight decrease in scowling.” He turned to look at me fully, grin widening. “Admit it. You're dead inside.”
“I'm not dead inside.”
“Prove it. Smile. Right now.”
“I'm not going to smile on command like a trained seal.”
“See? Dead inside.” But he was laughing now, easy and unguarded, and I felt something in my chest loosen against my better judgment.
Taylor kept shooting, moving around us, adjusting angles, muttering approvals under his breath.
June was standing off to the side with her clipboard and her unreadable expression.
I still couldn't tell if she was pleased or quietly calculating how many more of these she could schedule before I started pushing back.
We moved through a few more setups in the clothes—some with the resistance bands and the pull-up bar Taylor's assistants wheeled out, some with hockey sticks against the ice-texture backdrop, the frosted white and blue that approximated the rink without actually being one.
Easier to breathe through. Familiar territory.
I knew what to do with a hockey stick in my hands even after fifteen years behind a bench.
Then Priya appeared with a quiet word to Taylor, and Taylor nodded, and that was apparently the transition I'd been trying not to think about since Priya had mentioned the shirtless series back in the dressing room.
Hartley pulled the slate shirt over his head without any particular ceremony and handed it to Priya, and Taylor's assistant moved in immediately with the amber oil.
I turned toward the backdrop and made a detailed study of the way the blue light gradients worked, which was genuinely interesting and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I couldn't be standing where I'd been standing a moment ago.
Taylor shot some solo frames first—Hartley with the stick, Hartley against the backdrop, Hartley doing the things he did naturally in front of a camera, which was apparently everything, effortlessly.
I watched from a careful distance, arms crossed, keeping myself useful by staying out of the way and maintaining the expression of someone evaluating technique rather than anything else.
It wasn't working particularly well, if I was honest with myself. And I was trying very hard not to be honest with myself.
The studio lighting had an opinion about Hartley's torso that it was expressing at considerable volume.
The oil caught every shift of muscle when he moved, every line of the body that had been built and maintained and pushed past its limits for over a decade of professional hockey.
He looked the way elite athletes looked when someone pointed a camera at them under the right conditions—less like a person than like a proof of concept.
I uncrossed my arms. Crossed them again. Studied the fern print on the far wall, which I was beginning to know intimately.
“Grant.” Taylor gestured me forward. “I want to get the coaching angle in some of these. The dynamic between you two.”
I walked over. Stopped at a distance I considered reasonable.
Taylor looked at the distance. Looked at me. Looked back at his viewfinder in a way that suggested he had thoughts about the distance.
“Closer,” he said.
I moved incrementally closer.
“A little more.”
I moved again. Hartley was looking straight at the camera, patient and professional, and I was standing near him—not touching, hands at my sides, maintaining every available inch of reasonable space—and I was very aware of the heat coming off his skin and the way the oil caught the light and the fact that this was a charity photoshoot for a children's hospital and I needed to think about literally anything other than what I was currently thinking about.
The fourth line's defensive-zone coverage. The gap between Rook's hip issue and his actual reported pain level. Whether the power play needed a full systems overhaul or just better execution of what we already had.
“Grant, you look like you're standing next to a live grenade,” Taylor said, not unkindly. “He's your player. You've coached him for months. Just be in the room with him.”
“I'm in the room with him.”
“Be in it differently.” Taylor lowered the camera briefly. “Put your hand on his shoulder. Coaching position. Like you're explaining something.”
I put my hand on his shoulder.
The skin was warm and faintly slick from the oil and I felt the muscle shift under my palm when Hartley adjusted his grip on the stick and I kept my expression completely neutral through what I can only describe as a significant act of professional willpower.
Taylor's camera clicked rapidly. “Perfect. Hold that.”
I held it for exactly as long as I needed to, then stepped back and put my hands in my pockets, which had the dual benefit of looking casual and keeping them somewhere that wasn't useful for getting me into trouble.
June had stopped making notes on her clipboard and was just watching us with an expression I didn't have the bandwidth to interpret right now.
“Beautiful,” Taylor said, checking the screen on his camera.
“One more setup and we're nearly done. I want something a little more dynamic—both of you with the sticks, full intensity, like the game itself.” He looked at me.
“And Grant, this one works better with you shirtless too. I want the physicality of the sport. The strength of it. The history in it.”
Every sensible instinct I had fired at once.
“I don't think that's necessary—”
“It's for the charity,” Hartley said quietly beside me, and there was something in his voice I couldn't fully read—steadier than usual, less like a dare and more like an offering.
“Kids want to see what hockey looks like. What the people who live it actually look like.” He paused. “Coaches who used to play included.”
I looked at him.