Chapter 14
ADAN
A week had passed. Seven days since I’d kissed Nils in his living room, since he’d kissed me back like he’d been thinking about it as much as I had, since everything between us had changed in the space of a few seconds.
Seven days of him acting like it had never happened.
Seven days of him keeping his distance—painfully so.
Seven days of me wondering if I’d made a mistake by telling him, if I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
I slammed my locker shut harder than necessary, the metallic clang echoing through the mostly empty space. Most of the team had already left after practice, but I’d stayed behind to work on drills that should have been getting easier, not harder.
“You okay?” Tank asked from across the room, pulling his street clothes out of his locker. “You’ve been in a shit mood all week.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been playing like garbage, and that’s not like you.”
He wasn’t wrong. My positioning had been off, my shot selection questionable, my timing completely fucked. All the technical improvements I’d made over the past two months seemed to be evaporating, and I knew exactly why.
Nils had stopped coaching me. Really coaching me.
Oh, he still showed up to our sessions, still called out instructions from across the ice, still went through the motions of individual training. But the hands-on corrections, the physical adjustments that had been making such a difference in my game—all of that had disappeared.
He wouldn’t touch me. Wouldn’t even get close enough to demonstrate proper technique the way he used to. Instead, he’d stand ten feet away and describe what I was doing wrong, leaving me to figure out the corrections on my own.
“Maybe you should talk to Coach,” Tank suggested, sitting down to tie his shoes. “Your individual coaching doesn’t seem to be working as well as it was.”
“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just working through some technical adjustments.”
“If you say so. But you might want to figure it out soon. We’ve got Syracuse next weekend, and they’re gonna be gunning for us after what happened last time.”
Tank left, and I sat alone in the locker room trying to process the fury that had been building all week.
It wasn’t just the coaching—though that was bad enough.
It was the way Nils looked through me during team practices, the careful distance he maintained whenever we were in the same space, the complete absence of the easy friendship we’d been building.
I’d lost him. Not merely as whatever we might’ve been to each other, but as the coach who’d been helping me become a better player. The person who’d made me believe I could actually make it to the NHL.
And that was unacceptable.
By the time I reached my dorm room, I’d made a decision. I couldn’t keep going like this, pretending everything was normal while my game fell apart and Nils acted like I was any other player on the roster.
“Going somewhere?” Tank asked as I grabbed my jacket.
“Out.”
“Adan—”
“I’ll be back later.”
During the drive to his apartment, my anger only intensified. Every missed correction from the past week, every moment he’d kept his distance when he should’ve been helping me improve, every careful avoidance of eye contact—it all fueled the rage burning in my chest.
I didn’t knock when I reached his door. I pounded on it, hard enough that the sound echoed through the hallway.
“Adan?” Nils’s voice came through the door, surprise clear even through the wood. “What are you doing here?”
“Open the door.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“Open the fucking door, Nils.”
A pause, then the sound of locks being undone. The door opened to reveal Nils looking exactly as shocked as he’d sounded, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt like he’d been settling in for a quiet evening at home.
“We need to talk.” I pushed past him into the apartment.
“Adan, this really isn’t appropriate—”
“Don’t.” I spun around to face him. “Don’t give me that professional-boundaries bullshit. Not after what happened last week.”
He closed the door but stayed near it, like he was ready to flee at the first opportunity. “What happened last week was a mistake.”
“Was it? Because it didn’t feel like a mistake when you kissed me back.”
“It was a momentary lapse in judgment—”
“Stop lying.” The words came out louder than I’d intended, my frustration boiling over. “Stop pretending like you didn’t want it as much as I did.”
“What I wanted is irrelevant. I’m your coach, you’re my student, and I crossed a line that should never have been crossed.”
“Fine. You crossed a line. But that doesn’t give you the right to completely ignore me for a week.”
“I haven’t been ignoring you—”
“Bullshit!” I was shouting now, all the anger I’d been holding back for seven days exploding out of me. “You’ve been treating me like I have the plague. You won’t get within ten feet of me during training, you won’t correct my positioning, you won’t even look at me during team practices.”
“I’ve been maintaining appropriate professional dist—”
“You’ve been acting like a coward!”
That got a reaction. His face flushed, and something flashed in his eyes that looked like anger. “I am trying to protect both of our careers,” he said, his voice tight with control. “I am trying to ensure that one moment of poor judgment doesn’t destroy everything we’ve both worked for.”
“Well, congratulations. Your protecting is destroying my game anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been playing like shit all week because my coach suddenly decided he’s too good to actually coach me.
” I stepped closer to him, close enough to see the guilt that flickered across his expression.
“Do you have any idea how much my technique has suffered without your corrections? How many mistakes I’m making that you used to help me fix? ”
“I’ve been providing verbal instruction—”
“Verbal instruction is garbage compared to hands-on coaching, and you know it. You’ve spent all these weeks teaching me that positioning is everything, that tiny adjustments make huge differences. And now you’re too afraid to touch me to make those adjustments.”
“Adan—”
“I’m regressing. Every day, I’m getting worse instead of better. And for what? Because you kissed me back and now you feel guilty about it?”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It is that simple!” I was close enough now that he had to look at me, close enough to see the conflict in his eyes. “I told you I know we can’t be together. I get it. Professional boundaries, potential consequences, all of that. But I never said I was willing to lose you as my coach too.”
“You haven’t lost me as your coach.”
“Haven’t I? When’s the last time you corrected my stance during a drill? When’s the last time you showed me proper positioning instead of describing it? When’s the last time you coached me the way you were coaching me a month ago?”
He was quiet, and I could see him struggling with the truth of what I was saying.
“I need you,” I said, my voice cracking slightly. “I need my coach back. I need the person who believed I could make it to the NHL, who was helping me get there. I can’t do this without you.”
The anger in his expression softened into something that looked like pain. “I was trying to do the right thing.”
“The right thing would be finding a way to coach me without letting what happened between us ruin everything.” I felt tears threatening and fought them back.
“I’m losing everything, Nils. The coaching that was making me better, the friendship we had, the person who understood my game better than anyone else. ”
“I never meant for that to happen.”
“But it did happen. And you need to fix it.”
For a long moment, we looked at each other. I could see the war happening behind his eyes—guilt and professional obligation battling against something that looked like genuine care.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “You’re right. I let my guilt about crossing professional boundaries affect my coaching, and that wasn’t fair to you.”
“So what do we do about it?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to figure something out. I can’t keep playing like this, and you can’t keep avoiding me like I’m going to attack you the moment we’re alone.”
“I don’t think you’re going to attack me.”
“Then why won’t you get near me during training?”
He was quiet for another long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “Because I don’t trust myself around you.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Every time I’m close to you, every time we have physical contact during coaching, I remember what it felt like to kiss you. And that makes it very difficult to maintain professional focus.”
“So you’d rather ruin my game than deal with being attracted to me?”
“I’d rather not compromise either of our positions any further than I already have.”
“What if I told you that avoiding me is compromising my position more than anything else you could do?”
“Adan—”
“I’m serious. I need you to coach me. Really coach me. And if that means you have to deal with being attracted to me while you do it, then that’s what you have to do.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because—” He stopped, running his hands through his hair in frustration. “Because I care about you too much to risk destroying your future over my own feelings.”
The words hung in the air between us, more honest than anything he’d said since I’d arrived.
“You care about me,” I said.
“Of course I care about you. More than I should, more than is appropriate, but yes. I care about you.”
“Then stop punishing both of us for it.”
“I’m not punishing—”
“You are. You’re punishing me by withholding the coaching I need, and you’re punishing yourself by avoiding something that made you happy.”
“It made me happy for thirty seconds. Then it made me feel guilty for seven days.”
“What if it didn’t have to?”
“What do you mean?”