Chapter 9
JACE
I got to the rink early enough to make it look intentional.
That was the plan.
Walk in calm. Coffee in hand. Notebook in bag.
No running through the parking lot with one sneaker untied and my hoodie inside out.
No asking Tessa what time anything was. No letting anyone see that my brain had spent the entire drive replaying three sentences from Coach Reid’s office like they were burned into the inside of my skull.
Sit.
Look at me.
Stop interrupting.
Normal words. Boring words. Words that belonged in classrooms and meetings and every locker room in the league.
My body disagreed.
That was the part I couldn’t get around.
I could explain the rest if I worked hard enough.
I liked direct communication because guessing sucked.
I liked knowing what a coach wanted because vague expectations made my head feel like a room with twelve TVs on at once.
I liked structure because without it, time turned into soup and I forgot to eat until my hands shook.
Fine. All true.
None of that explained why I had lain awake last night with my dick half-hard, furious at myself, thinking about the way Declan Reid’s voice had cut through my argument and made me shut up.
Not scared.
Not embarrassed.
Quiet.
I hated how badly I wanted that quiet again.
The players’ lounge smelled like coffee, tape, and whatever protein powder Milo was currently making everyone else regret. Roman sat at the table with his phone in one hand and a bagel in the other. He looked up when I came in.
“You’re early.”
“Observation is not a personality.”
“It is when done correctly.”
I dropped into the chair across from him and tried not to bounce my knee. Failed. Stopped it with my hand. Started tapping my fingers instead. Worse. Picked up my coffee and burned my tongue because apparently I could not be trusted with liquids.
Roman watched all of that.
“What?” I said.
“You look like you swallowed a whistle.”
“I slept weird.”
“You sleep weird every night.”
“Then maybe this is my face.”
“No. Your face is usually louder.”
Before I could answer, Milo came in wearing a beanie with a pom-pom on top and carrying three bananas.
Lowell followed him, frowning. “You can’t just take all of them.”
“They’re for the group.”
“You are the group?”
“I’m group adjacent.” Milo tossed one at me. I caught it against my chest. “Holloway, you look like you saw your search history projected on the scoreboard.”
I choked on coffee.
Roman’s gaze sharpened.
Lowell, innocent and doomed, said, “Why would that be bad? Unless there was something illegal.”
Milo stared at him. “Grant, buddy.”
“What?”
“Don’t ever change,” Roman said.
I peeled the banana because it gave my hands something to do. “You guys are obsessed with me.”
“Statistically,” Milo said, “you make it rewarding.”
Tessa passed through with her tablet and stopped just long enough to look at the four of us. “Whatever this is, finish it before cameras are in the building.”
Milo held up a banana. “Need one?”
“I would rather eat printer paper.”
She moved on.
Everything was normal. That was the problem. Everyone was normal, the room was normal, practice was normal, and I was sitting there with my body acting like I was waiting for a door to open.
When Coach walked in for the pre-practice meeting, I did not look at him right away.
I looked at my notebook. At the blank line under the date. At the edge of Roman’s bagel wrapper. At Milo’s stupid hat.
Then I looked.
Declan stood at the front of the room in black team gear, arms folded behind his back, beard trimmed, face unreadable. He did not search for me. He did not pause on me. His voice was even when he started talking about neutral-zone spacing and defensive support.
He gave the whole room less than eight minutes.
He called on Sokolov. He corrected Lowell. He told Milo to stop drifting below the hash marks unless he planned to start paying rent there.
He did not call on me once.
By minute six, I was irritated.
By minute seven, I was embarrassed about being irritated.
By minute eight, my notes had turned into a jagged mess of half words, arrows, and one aggressive underline under support first.
On the ice, it got worse.
Not because he ignored me. He didn’t. That would have been easier to hate. He watched me the right amount. He spoke to me when the drill required it. He gave me the same clean, boring coaching tone he gave everyone else.
That was somehow unbearable.
In the first regroup drill, I held underneath until the touch was earned. Perfect timing. Clean release. Tape to tape. Shot on net.
Nothing from him.
Not a nod. Not a “that’s it.” Not even a correction to someone else that indirectly proved he’d seen it.
My head went immediately stupid.
Did he not see it? He saw it. He sees everything. Maybe it was only fine, not good. Maybe I released half a second late. Maybe he’s deliberately not saying anything because yesterday I turned into a pain in the ass. Maybe he thinks if he gives me attention, I’ll make it weird.
I nearly missed the next whistle.
Roman glided by me on his way to the crease. “You planning to attend practice or just haunt it?”
“I’m here.”
“Your body is.”
“Helpful.”
“I try.”
The drill flipped. Milo took a pass, got too cute, and lost the puck. Coach blew it dead.
“Brooks,” he said. “Simple before decorative.”
Milo bent over his stick. “My entire brand is decorative.”
“Then rebrand.”
A few guys laughed. I did too, a beat late.
Lowell skated up beside me while we reset. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You look tense.”
“I’m not tense.”
“You snapped your tape off with your teeth.”
I looked down. There was tape in my glove. I had no memory of putting it there.
“Just thinking,” I said.
Lowell nodded like that made sense. “About the drill?”
“Sure.”
He brightened. “Because I think if I pull F1 lower, you’ll have more space to delay. But only if Milo doesn’t curl too early.”
“Hey,” Milo called from ten feet away. “I can hear slander.”
“Then stop curling early,” Lowell said, and immediately looked shocked by his own courage.
Roman made a low approving sound from the crease. “There he is.”
Practice moved on.
Coach kept giving me less.
Less explanation. Less reinforcement. Less attention than I had become used to, which was insane because it had only been a few weeks and most of that attention had felt like being dragged through a hedge backward.
Still, I felt the absence like an itch under my skin.
I hated waiting for correction. I hated wanting it. I hated that every time I completed a rep and got nothing, my brain started chewing through possibilities until I couldn’t tell if I’d done well or barely gotten away with something.
Then, during a basic low support drill, I screwed up.
Minor. Stupid. Not worth a benching. I rotated too high on the breakout because I was half-listening to Milo complain about his skate edge and half-tracking Coach’s position at the boards. The puck came around, Lowell expected me lower, and we had to reset.
I knew it the second it happened.
“Again,” Coach called.
My skin tightened. There it was.
We ran it again. I corrected the route. Clean. Efficient.
At the whistle, Coach pointed his stick toward the near boards. “Holloway.”
Not loud.
Not for the room.
Still, I felt every player not looking.
I skated over, stopping a few feet away. Close enough to hear him without anyone else catching every word. Far enough that no one could say anything about it.
He did not touch me. Did not lean in. Did not give me anything he wouldn’t give another player.
That almost made it worse.
“What was your first mistake?” he asked.
I opened my mouth.
His gaze stayed level. “Answer that question. Not the next three.”
I closed it again.
My fingers flexed inside my gloves. My thoughts scattered, then rearranged around the instruction like metal filings around a magnet.
“Rotated high before possession was secured,” I said.
“Why?”
“Got ahead of the play.”
“That’s the result. Why?”
I swallowed. “I was watching too much.”
“What were you watching?”
You.
Absolutely not.
“Spacing,” I said.
His expression did not change. I hated that too.
“Your assignment on that read.”
“Low underneath. Make myself available. Don’t leave Lowell guessing.”
“Correct. Do that.”
“That’s it?”
His eyes held mine. “Do you need more?”
Yes.
No.
I don’t know what I need, and that is starting to become a problem.
“No,” I said.
“Then go.”
I went.
My legs felt strange for the first three strides, too much energy and nowhere to put it. The next rep came clean. Then another. Then another. I stayed where I was supposed to stay until the play earned me. I did the thing he told me to do.
And under the satisfaction of getting it right, something else opened.
Not pride. Not relief.
Recognition.
I didn’t just like hearing him say it.
I liked knowing exactly where I stood.
That thought followed me through the rest of practice.
It followed me into the shower, where the water was too hot and the room too loud and everyone’s voices bounced off tile until I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.
It followed me while Benny asked if my skates felt right and I answered too sharply, then had to circle back two minutes later and apologize because Benny did not deserve my bullshit.
He accepted with a grunt. “You’re all feral after practice.”
“Still.”
“Yeah.” He shoved a roll of tape at me. “Take that before Brooks steals it and claims it’s for charity.”
In the locker room, Roman caught me before I could escape.
“Talk,” he said.
“No.”
“I didn’t ask for a TED Talk. I asked for one functional sentence.”
“I’m fine.”
“That sentence is banned.”
I shoved my hoodie into my bag, missed, picked it up, shoved it again. “I’m working through some stuff.”
“What stuff?”
“The kind where if I knew how to explain it, I’d be explaining it.”
Roman’s face changed a little. Less goalie, more friend. “Is Reid pushing too hard?”