Chapter 20
DECLAN
By the time the plane lifted off, I had read the same line in the postgame report nine times and retained none of it.
Across the aisle, two rows back, Jace sat by the window with his headphones on and his hood pulled up.
Roman was beside him, long legs stretched out, eyes closed, one hand wrapped around a coffee he had no intention of drinking.
The rest of the plane had settled into the usual road-trip exhaustion.
Low voices. Seat belts clicking. Someone laughing too loudly in the back until Benny told him to shut it down.
The soft mechanical hum that usually let me work.
I did not look at Jace.
I kept not looking at him.
That took more discipline than watching him would have.
There had been no private contact since he left my hotel room. Necessary texts only. Logistics. Bus time. Morning mobility. A reminder to the leadership group about video when we landed. I had typed nothing else and deleted more than I wanted to admit.
Did you sleep?
Are you green?
Did Roman ask questions?
Did you wake up with regret?
The last one stayed under my skin.
Jace had boarded quietly. Not withdrawn.
Not sulking. Just quieter than his usual, rough-edged electricity.
He had his bag zipped. He was on time. He answered Tessa when she asked him to record a short arrival clip for social, but he did it without the extra joke, without filling every second of silence.
When Milo tried to drag him into an argument about who controlled the locker room music after wins, Jace shrugged and said, “Not me today.”
Milo looked betrayed.
Roman looked at him for a long moment and said nothing.
I noticed all of it.
That was the problem. I noticed everything now, not as a coach reading a player’s habits, but as a man who had learned the sound Jace made when he came, the way his focus narrowed when an instruction gave him somewhere to put himself, the way his hands shook after he let go and the first place his mind went was guilt.
My phone lit up on the tray table.
Olivia: Land safe. Call later if you’re not exhausted.
I stared at it until the screen dimmed.
I should have felt only warmth. Concern. Familiar affection. Instead there was a hollow place inside my chest where a husband’s easy reply should have been.
Me: Will do. Long travel day. Hope Chicago settles down.
It was not cruel. It was not dishonest.
It was inadequate.
I turned the phone facedown and reached for the report again.
Jace shifted in his seat.
I knew because my attention went there before I permitted it.
His knee bounced under the blanket he had dragged over himself.
His thumb moved fast against the seam of his hoodie pocket, rubbing the fabric in a repetitive motion I had seen him use when he was trying to stay grounded.
He kept his head angled toward the window, but the glass reflected part of his face.
Eyes open.
Not sleeping.
Not looking back.
Then, briefly, he did.
One quick glance through the reflection, not even fully turned. His eyes met mine in the oval-dark window, distorted by sunlight and altitude. It lasted maybe a second.
Long enough for the hotel room to come back whole.
His open shirt. My hand around him. His voice rough with permission. The heat of him spilling over my fingers. The trust in the way he had lain under me afterward, dazed and quiet, waiting while I cleaned him up like care was as intimate as anything we had done before it.
I looked down first.
Not because I wanted to.
Because I was the one responsible for remembering where we were.
A plane full of players. Staff. My assistant coach beside me pretending not to fall asleep with his tablet still open. A franchise that had hired me to lead, not fracture the room with a secret I had no clean language for.
“Dec.”
Benny’s voice cut through the noise in my head.
I blinked and looked over. “Yeah.”
“You good with pushing video to tomorrow? Guys are cooked.”
“Yes.” I closed the report. “Recovery first. Short meeting after practice tomorrow.”
He studied me. Benny had known me long enough to see when I was locked behind my own face. Not enough to know why. “You look like you’re trying to solve world hunger with faceoff stats.”
“Feels about as productive.”
He snorted and went back to his tablet.
I leaned back and closed my eyes.
Control, I reminded myself, was not avoidance. It was not pretending desire vanished because I put rules around it. Control was choosing the order of necessary things.
Get home.
Get through arrival.
Let the team disperse.
Do not create an opportunity in public.
Do not seek him out.
Do not make him responsible for my lack of discipline.
The plane dipped through a bank of cloud cover on descent, and the cabin pressure changed.
A few guys stirred. Seat backs came up. Phones appeared before the wheels touched the runway.
The moment we landed in Denver, the usual reentry noise began.
Notifications. Plans. Rides. Partners. Kids.
Dogs. Real lives reattaching after forty-eight hours on the road.
I stood in the aisle and kept my attention on bags overhead, on movement, on making sure nobody left equipment behind.
Jace waited his turn instead of jamming into the aisle.
That should not have felt like a sign.
He looked tired. The kind of tired that lived under the eyes, not in the body. When he reached up for his bag, his hoodie lifted, revealing a strip of stomach above his waistband. My memory supplied skin under my hands. His breath catching.
I turned away.
At the arena, everything became easier for exactly seventeen minutes.
The building demanded tasks. Travel gear unloaded.
Staff moving equipment. Players collecting personal items from stalls.
Medical check-ins. Tessa chasing two guys for scheduled content with the grim efficiency of a woman who had no patience for millionaires who lost calendars.
I answered questions. Approved tomorrow’s adjusted schedule.
Spoke to our trainer about Brooks’s shoulder.
Signed off on a community appearance I would have to attend Thursday.
Jace moved through the room like he was trying not to take up space.
That bothered me more than the usual noise.
He joked once with Milo when Milo shoved a backpack into his chest and told him to stop being weird.
Jace laughed, but it landed flat. His fingers kept going to his phone, then away again.
He changed out of team travel clothes into sweats, shoved his dress shoes into his bag without looking, realized one had gone into the wrong compartment, swore softly, fixed it, then stood there like he had forgotten the next step.
I almost crossed the room.
I did not.
Nothing at work.
The rule had to mean something when it was inconvenient. Especially then.
Roman said something to him. Jace nodded. Roman watched him longer than necessary before grabbing his own bag and heading out with the veterans.
One by one, the room thinned.
Jace did not come to me.
I went into my office under the pretense of collecting notes I did not need. I left the door open because closing it would have been an invitation even if neither of us named it. I set papers into a folder. Checked my email. Rearranged the folder. Checked my phone.
Nothing.
Outside the office, footsteps passed. Voices faded. A stick clattered somewhere down the hall. The arena emptied in layers, each one making the silence sharper.
I expected him.
That was the first honest thing I let myself think.
I expected a knock. A text. A pause in my doorway with his hands in his hoodie pocket and that look on his face like he wanted direction but hated that he wanted it.
After what had happened in the hotel room, after the line we crossed and the rules we made, I expected Jace to seek the structure immediately.
Maybe because he needed it. Maybe because I needed proof he still wanted it.
He did not come.
The irritation was irrational and immediate.
It was not professional disappointment. It had nothing to do with his performance, his schedule, his compliance with team standards. It was personal. A hot, quiet scrape under the ribs that said he left without checking in.
I hated that reaction.
I hated that I had no public right to it and only a complicated private one.
I walked to the locker room doorway just as Jace disappeared down the hall toward the players’ parking lot, bag over one shoulder, phone in his hand. He was alone. He looked down at the screen, then shoved it into his pocket without typing.
For half a second, he slowed.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
As if he felt me behind him.
Then he kept walking.
I remained in the doorway until he turned the corner.
“Coach?”
I looked back. Tessa stood near the media room with a box of credentials under one arm and a coffee in the other hand. Her gaze flicked from me to the empty hall and back.
“Need something?” I asked.
“No.” She adjusted the box. “Just making sure you know tomorrow’s availability is moved to after practice, not before. I sent the update.”
“I saw it.”
“Great.”
She did not move right away.
Tessa was not intrusive. She was worse. She was observant and patient.
Finally she said, “Long road trip.”
“Yes.”
“Good win, though.”
“It was.”
Her mouth pressed into a line that might have been sympathy if she were less disciplined. “Get some sleep.”
“I will.”
She gave me a look that said she doubted it, then left.
I went back into my office, shut down my computer, and made myself leave.