Chapter Twenty-One
Blood On My Hands
Shane
Present
A week into November, the season had my full attention.
Almost, anyway.
It was hard to let go of Ariana, and I realized I likely didn’t have the strength to actually do it entirely. But I did have the respect for her to leave her alone when she asked me to — and she had. Point blank.
She wanted me to stay away from Sweet Dreams unless she specifically asked for something. She warned me not to bring up the Sunday we’d spent together, even when all I’d tried to do was apologize. Basically, she’d stayed away from me, muttering excuses to leave the room whenever I entered it.
It ground on me like pumice stone.
I wanted to apologize. I wanted to have the chance to explain. But then I’d ask myself… explain what? Was I actually sorry for asking about her happiness?
No.
But I was sorry for upsetting her.
I was sorry for how I’d left her.
I was sorry I’d stayed away.
I was a sorry piece of shit, basically, but she didn’t want to hear it. And I couldn’t blame her.
So, like I always did, I threw myself into hockey.
It was easy to do. The season was fully underway, my schedule packed with travel and practices and games.
Currently, I was at the arena well after hours, which wasn’t anything new.
When everyone else had gone home — players, trainers, PR, even the janitorial staff — I stayed, eyes glued to the monitor in my office as I reviewed video from our last game.
Tonight, it was Ben Sandin who had my attention.
Daddy P’s hip had been acting up again — just enough to pull him from the last couple of games, which didn’t sit right with me.
I knew the hip was tender, but not tender enough for this.
He was doing the PT, staying on his regimen, taking what the docs gave him…
and still gritting through pain he couldn’t explain.
And so, Sandin had become less of a backup and more of a routine player for us.
I watched him guard the net on the screen, replaying the moment he missed a block I’d seen him stop a thousand times — in practices, in scrimmages, in the AHL, even here in The Show. It was muscle memory for him. A layup. A routine save.
But he didn’t make it.
I slowed the playback, rewinding and pausing as the puck flew in. I watched his eyes track it, watched him drop into the crease and slide his leg out perfectly.
And still… he missed. He didn’t slide wide enough, the puck slipping past the blade of his skate and right into the net.
The Detroit team swarmed in celebration. Sandin hung his head, grabbed his water bottle off the net, and took a long drink before resetting.
I searched for any sign of something — pain, hesitation in his push-off, a misread.
I found nothing.
I sighed, leaning back as the video kept rolling, though I wasn’t watching anymore. I didn’t know what the hell I expected to find.
He’d missed a block.
So what?
Daddy P had plenty of goals scored on him and I never poured over tape like this. Sometimes a puck goes in, even one that should’ve been stopped.
But I couldn’t shake the suspicion clawing at me. And it wasn’t just Sandin.
There was the rookie Nathan rostered when he put Wood on waivers — Ivan Baranov.
Annoyingly, the kid was playing like a damn all-star.
And that shouldn’t have annoyed me; I was his coach.
But it did. Because Nathan had handpicked him, and now that he was performing, Nathan looked like some all-seeing genius with prophetic hockey intuition. Everyone trusted him implicitly.
Baranov was quickly becoming someone we could rely on to score. Twice now he’d earned star of the game.
But he’d also fucked up when it mattered most.
When I finally pulled Carter Fabri after he’d been stuck on the ice for nearly four exhausting minutes against Toronto, thanks to penalty kill chaos that wouldn’t let him change, I sent Baranov over the boards.
Within twenty seconds, he lost the puck in our own zone, coughing it up right inside the blue line.
Toronto jumped on it instantly. And Sandin failed again.
We’d gone from up by three to tied with a team we should have walked all over, and then lost in a shootout after a scoreless overtime.
Was it a shit-luck game? Yeah. Did it happen? Of course.
But my something-is-off radar wouldn’t shut up.
I didn’t voice it. I reminded myself of everything I’d learned from my years in college and my decades of coaching — how life bleeds into performance, how even the most reliable guys have off nights. I checked in with my players, centered them, and did my job.
But inside, I was stewing. And I felt insane because everyone else seemed to be under Nathan Black’s spell.
Staff loved him. They thought he was a genius for shaking things up, giving us an edge Richard Bancroft had lost years ago. He was “fresh” and “fun” in their eyes, and they ate up everything he served.
Players respected him — even the ones I hoped would see through his shit. But Nathan had brought in sponsorships and more money, which meant better equipment, upgraded recovery systems, and new therapy amenities. Hard to hate a guy who gives you cutting-edge hydrotherapy and a cryo chamber.
And the fans practically worshipped him.
He’d launched the “fan of the game” program, sending PR out before puck drop to pick a lucky fan from the crowd outside — a crowd that grew bigger every game as people dressed up and camped out for their shot at rink-side seats and a spotlight during second intermission.
Then he opened one practice a week to the fans. Richard had always said it was too distracting — and he’d been right. But Nathan announced it at a press conference without telling a single damn person on staff. We just had to smile and pretend it was the plan.
Now I had weekly meet-and-greets when all I wanted was to prepare for whomever we played next.
It was good. All of it was good. The city was invested. We were in the news. We were being talked about. We had a winning record.
Which was why I wouldn’t voice my concerns out loud, and why I felt like I’d slipped into insanity. Because somehow, I was the only one who saw he was a snake dressed as a saint.
I pinched the bridge of my nose, letting out a long, calming breath as I squeezed my eyes shut against the headache building.
I had no actual reason to feel like Nathan was a problem other than the fact that he was with Ariana and I didn’t like it.
Basically, I was acting like a jealous fucking teenager, and yet no amount of common sense could snap me out of it.
A loud thump and subsequent rattling snapped my head up, and I whipped around with my heart hammering and my hand curled into a fist ready to fight.
Only to find Ariana standing with a giant box in her arms.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, a bit breathless as she tried to balance the box. She teetered again, this time the rattling amplified as her eyes shot wide and she saved the box before it tumbled to the ground. “I… I didn’t think anyone would be here.”
I hopped up, rushing to the door to take the box from her hands. It was surprisingly heavy, and I laughed a little as I grunted and carried it to the desk I’d just been sitting at. “No one should be at this hour. What the hell is in this box? Bricks?”
“The trophies for the Skate for Change event,” she said, her cheeks pink, hands hanging on her hips now as she caught her breath. “I accidentally had them shipped to our house instead of the arena. Classic ditzy move. They showed up earlier tonight and Nathan didn’t want them cluttering our…”
Ariana’s words faded, and she cleared her throat, smiling like she thought better of finishing her thought. My attention was stuck on the fact that she’d called herself a ditz.
She was so far from that, it was laughable. Why would she insult herself that way?
“Anyway, we needed them here, so I just thought I’d bring them up myself,” she said.
“At nearly midnight?”
She shrugged, and her eyes finally met mine. “Couldn’t sleep, so I figured now was as good a time as any.”
Time slogged when she looked at me like that, her diamond eyes piercing straight through my battered soul. She hadn’t looked at me in weeks, and I savored that gaze like it was a hard-earned championship title.
Why couldn’t you sleep?
I wanted to ask so badly, but I had a feeling by the way she watched me that her words weren’t an invitation to pry.
I let myself indulge in my greed instead, soaking in everything about her — the matching lounge set she wore, mustard yellow, the color bringing out the gold in her hair and setting off the blue in her eyes.
I wondered if yellow was still her favorite color.
The fabric hugged her curves and fell around her silhouette, the image one that had me flashing back to her in her dorm in college.
She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair was unkempt, like she’d literally rolled out of bed and thought, “Well, nothing better to do, so I guess I’ll just run this heavy ass box of trophies up to the arena. ”
She looked so damn cozy I had to stuff my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching for her just to see if she felt as soft as she looked.
Ariana’s cheeks burned a deeper shade of red the longer I looked at her, and I was ready for her to frown and snap at me and storm out of the room.
Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and cleared her throat. “What are you doing here so late?”
I shrugged, nodding to the screen that was still playing the Detroit game. “I’m always here late. Watching video.”
“You don’t do that in your office?”
“Sometimes I do,” I said. “Sometimes I need a change in scenery. Or a bigger screen,” I added with a grin.
“It doesn’t hurt your eyes to stare at this thing?” She pointed to the monstrous screen behind me.