Chapter 15 Off Day #2
My jaw tightened slightly. “You went looking for old game footage?”
“Coach, you had 47 goals and 38 assists in your final full season. You were good. Like, really good.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Why didn't you ever mention that?”
“Because it's not relevant.”
“Bullshit it's not relevant. You played eight seasons in the league, made the All-Star team twice—”
“Once.”
“—and you act like you were some depth player who barely got ice time.” He bumped my shoulder lightly. “You were a first-line center, Grant. You were a playmaker.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the direction this was going. “That was a long time ago.”
“Not that long. What are you, forty-one?”
“Yes.”
“There's a video of you scoring a hat trick against Montreal. The commentators went insane.”
I remembered that game. Remembered every detail of it—the ice, the crowd, the way the puck felt coming off my stick. “You watched that?”
“I watched all of them. Well, all the ones I could find.” He was grinning now, enjoying this. “You had great hands. And your vision—the way you'd find guys in the slot—”
“Jace.”
“I'm just saying, you were hot shit, Coach.” He paused. “Also, you looked good in your old team's jersey. The tighter fit really worked for you.”
I felt heat creep up my neck. “Are you seriously—”
“What? I'm appreciating hockey history.” His grin widened. “It's educational.”
“You're insufferable.”
“You like it.” He wasn't wrong. “So what was it like? Being that good?”
I considered the question. “Honestly? It felt normal. You don't think about being good when you're in it. You just think about the next shift, the next game. Trying not to fuck up.”
“Did you love it?”
“Yeah.” The answer came easier than I expected. “Yeah, I did. Every second of it, even the hard parts. Maybe especially the hard parts.”
“What was the best part?”
“The moments when everything clicks. When you make a pass you shouldn't be able to make, and your winger buries it, and you just... know. Know you did something right.” I paused. “The worst part is when that stops happening. When your body can't do what your brain knows it should.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Is that what it felt like? At the end?”
“Yeah. Like being fluent in a language and then suddenly forgetting words.” I shook my head. “Frustrating doesn't even begin to cover it.”
“But you found coaching.”
“I did. Took a while to realize I could still be part of it, just differently.” I glanced at him. “Turns out I'm better at seeing the game than playing it now.”
“You're good at it. Coaching.” His voice went quieter. “You're good at seeing things other people miss.”
“Is that your way of saying I notice when you're spiraling?”
“Maybe.” He smiled. “Or maybe I'm saying you're good at your job. Take the compliment, old man.”
“Old man?”
“You're fifteen years older than me. That's basically ancient.”
“Careful, Hartley. I can still make practice hell for you.”
“You already do that.” He paused. “Besides, I like older guys. More experience.”
I nearly choked on my coffee. “Jace—”
“What? I'm just stating facts.” His grin was absolutely wicked now. “You know, for the research.”
“We're in public.”
“I know. That's what makes it fun.” He looked entirely too pleased with himself. “So, any other highlights I should know about? Secret hat tricks? Overtime winners? That time you definitely checked someone into next week?”
“There may have been a few of those.”
“I want details.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know you. All of you. Not just the coach who yells at me for lazy positioning.” He paused. “I want to know what you were like when you were my age. What made you fall in love with hockey. What it felt like to be that good.”
The honesty in his voice caught me off guard. “It felt like flying,” I said finally. “Like nothing else mattered except the ice and the puck and the perfect play.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Every day.” The admission surprised me. “But coaching—being able to help guys like you find that feeling—it helps.”
“Guys like me?”
“Talented. Stubborn. Pain in my ass.”
He laughed. “You love it.”
I did. God help me, I really did.
We ended up at Pike Place Market. The crowds were thick even on a weekday morning, tourists and locals jostling for space between the fish vendors and produce stands.
We wandered through slowly, and I caught Jace smiling at the absurdity of it all—the guys throwing fish back and forth, the flowers stacked in impossible arrangements, the chaos that somehow worked.
“You want to get something?” I asked, nodding toward one of the produce stands.
“Like what?”
“I don't know. Apples. Oranges. Something that makes us look like normal humans doing normal things.”
He laughed, and the sound made something in my chest loosen. “You think buying fruit is going to make us look normal?”
“Worth a shot.”
We bought apples—small, tart ones that the vendor swore were the best in Washington—and kept walking. The waterfront stretched out ahead of us, grey water meeting grey sky, and we found a spot near the railing to stand and eat.
“Can I ask you something?” Jace said after a moment.
“Depends on the question.”
“Your playing career. You said it ended early. What happened?”
I took a bite of apple, buying myself time. “Knee injury. Cartilage damage. Wore a brace for my last two seasons, tried to keep playing through it.” I shrugged. “But the knee kept getting worse. Lost my speed. Lost my edge work. Became a liability instead of an asset.”
“How old were you?”
“Thirty-one.”
He winced. “That's young.”
“Yeah.” I looked out at the water. “Felt like the end of the world at the time. Everything I'd worked for, gone. Had to figure out who I was if I wasn't a player.”
“Is that when you started coaching?”
“Eventually. Took me about a year to accept that I was done playing. Tried to have a normal life for a while—got married, got a real job, pretended I didn't miss the rink.” I smiled without humor. “Lasted about six months before I realized I was miserable.”
“What changed?”
“Got offered an assistant coaching position in the AHL. My wife—ex-wife—told me to take it. Said she'd rather have me happy and absent than miserable and present.”
“That why you got divorced?”
“Part of it. Hockey was always going to come first for me. She knew that. I knew that. Eventually we both accepted it and moved on.” I took another bite of apple. “She's happier now. Remarried. Has a kid. Lives a normal life.”
“You ever regret it?”
“The divorce? No. We weren't right for each other.” I paused. “The career? Sometimes. Not the coaching part—I love coaching”
“What happened to him after? The player.”
“He got traded to a team across the country. Last I heard, he washed out of the league within two years. Couldn't handle the pressure.” My jaw tightened. “I tell myself it wasn't my fault. That he had problems before I came along. But I still wonder if I made it worse.”
Jace reached out and his fingers brushed against mine where they gripped the railing. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to feel the warmth.
“We should keep walking,” I said, because if we stood there any longer I was going to do something stupid like kiss him in broad daylight.
We found a bookstore tucked into a side street—one of those independent places with narrow aisles and books stacked floor to ceiling. Jace disappeared into the fiction section while I browsed sports memoirs, and for twenty minutes we existed in separate spaces doing separate things.
It felt normal. Easy. Like we were just two people who liked books and coffee and each other's company.
When we met back up at the front, Jace had a paperback in his hand—some thriller with a dark cover.
“Impulse buy?” I asked.
“Maybe. You?”
I held up the memoir I'd grabbed. “Research.”
“You're such a coach.”
“You say that like it's a bad thing.”
Jace paid for our books even after I told him no but he was stubborn. Outside, the clouds had thickened and the air smelled like rain.
“Want to find somewhere with a view?” Jace asked.
“Yeah. I know a spot.”
We took an taxi up to Kerry Park, and the view was exactly what I remembered—the Space Needle rising up against the skyline, Mount Rainier visible in the distance even through the clouds, the city spread out below us like something out of a postcard.
We stood at the railing and just looked.
“It's weird,” Jace said after a while.
“What is?”
“This. Being here with you. Feeling... normal.” He glanced over. “I keep waiting for something to go wrong.”
“Nothing's going wrong.”
“Not yet.”
His shoulder brushed against mine as we turned back to the view, and we both froze.
Neither of us moved away.
“We're being ridiculous,” he said quietly.
“Yeah.”
“We spent last night with your cock inside me, and now we're flinching because our shoulders touched.”
I felt my face heat. “When you put it like that—”
“It's absurd.”
“Completely absurd.”
We looked at each other, and suddenly we were both laughing.
A couple of tourists glanced over at us, probably wondering what was so funny about the view, and that made us laugh harder.
“Jesus,” Jace said finally, wiping his eyes. “We're a mess.”
“Yeah. We really are.”
But for the first time in days—maybe weeks—it didn't feel like a bad thing.
We made it back to the hotel not long after that. The team was scattered around—some guys playing cards in the corner, others on their phones, a few arguing about where to get dinner.
Rook looked up as we passed and nodded once. No questions. No judgment. Just acknowledgment.
We headed up to our room, and the silence felt heavier the moment the door clicked shut behind us.
I spent the next hour answering emails and reviewing footage at the desk, but my mind kept drifting back to the day. To the way Jace had looked at the waterfront. To the sound of his laugh in the bookstore. To the warmth of his shoulder against mine.