Chapter 35
DECLAN
Jace held the phone like it had turned into something dangerous.
His sweats sat crooked on his hips. His hair was wrecked from my hands. His mouth was still a little swollen from mine. Ten minutes ago, he had been warm and loose against me, breathing slow for once, his brain quiet enough that I could feel him sink into the stillness.
Now Cal Holloway was on the other end of the line, and the quiet had teeth.
I stayed near the counter.
Not crowding him. Not leaving him alone.
Tiny ignored all unspoken boundaries and wedged himself against Jace’s legs, enormous head tipped up, drool threatening the kitchen floor.
Jace swallowed. “No, Dad, I’m okay. I’m not hurt. It’s not that.”
Cal’s voice came through as a low murmur. I couldn’t make out the words, only the shape of them. Steady. Rough. Familiar in the way Jace talked about him, like a man who had spent years holding the world together with duct tape, overtime shifts, and stubborn love.
Jace’s free hand drifted down. His fingers found the hem of my T-shirt where it hung near his knee. He pinched the fabric between two fingers and held on.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s serious.”
I braced my palm against the edge of the counter and made myself stay put.
This was Jace’s call. Jace’s father. Jace’s truth to tell.
He dragged in a breath, then said, “I broke up with Vanessa.”
A longer pause.
His fingers tightened on my shirt.
“Yeah. A little while ago. I should’ve told you sooner, I know. I just didn’t know how to explain it without making it sound like some bullshit excuse.”
Cal said something.
Jace nodded, even though his father couldn’t see him. “She’s angry. She has a right to be. I hurt her. I wasn’t honest with her, not all the way.”
The words cost him. I saw it in the hard blink, the way his shoulders lifted like he expected a hit and intended to take it.
Then his eyes came to mine.
No running in them now. Fear, yes. Guilt, yes. But not panic. He was choosing to stand in the wreckage instead of sprinting from it.
“I met someone else,” he said.
The kitchen seemed to shrink around the three of us.
Tiny sneezed.
Jace’s mouth twitched, barely, then flattened again. “No, I didn’t plan it. I know that sounds useless. I’m not trying to make it clean. It wasn’t.”
Cal’s reply was too quiet to catch.
Jace looked down at the dog pressed to his shin. “Yeah. I know character matters. I know.”
My stomach pulled tight.
I had spent most of my adult life trying to be the kind of man who did not make messes other people had to clean up. I had failed at that spectacularly. The worst part was not being able to claim ignorance. I had known every line as I crossed it. So had Jace.
That did not make what existed between us less real.
It made the truth heavier.
Jace rubbed at his forehead with the heel of his hand. “It’s a man.”
He said it quietly, but not like an apology.
The silence on the other end stretched long enough that Jace stopped breathing.
I watched his hand on my shirt. Watched the color drain from his knuckles.
Then Cal spoke, sharper than before.
Jace’s face folded with sudden emotion. “No. No, Dad, I’m not hurt. I’m not scared of him. That’s not what this is.”
Another burst of sound from the phone.
“Dad,” Jace said, and it cracked through the middle.
Cal kept talking.
Jace covered his eyes. A rough little laugh slipped out of him, broken at the edges. “I know you don’t care that he’s a man. I mean, I hoped you wouldn’t. I didn’t know how you’d react. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
He listened.
The tightness in his shoulders eased by degrees.
“Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I should’ve known you’d ask if he was good to me first.”
I looked away.
Not because I didn’t want to hear it. Because the look on Jace’s face was too private, too young and adult at once, a son receiving proof that the floor under him was still there.
Cal didn’t lecture. Not from what I could tell. He asked questions in that clipped, practical way Jace had inherited when he was scared enough to stop joking.
Jace answered all of them.
“Yes, I trust him.”
A pause.
“Yes, he knows about my ADHD. Not just the parts people laugh at.”
Another pause.
“No, he doesn’t treat me like I’m broken.”
His fingers loosened on my shirt, then gripped again.
“He helps,” Jace said. “Not in a fixing me way. He just stays when I get hard to be around.”
I had to close my hand into a fist against the counter.
Then Cal asked something that made Jace’s expression change.
His shoulders went up again.
“Because it’s complicated,” Jace said.
Cal’s voice sharpened.
Jace winced. “He’s my coach.”
No soft way to say it. No angle that made it smaller.
The phone went quiet.
Jace stared at the floor while his father spoke. His face moved through defensiveness first, then shame, then the hard acceptance of somebody hearing exactly what he already knew.
“I know,” he said. “We’re not pretending that part doesn’t matter. We talked to attorneys. Both of us. We’re going to disclose it before someone else finds out.”
Cal spoke again.
“Ownership. Management. The people who need to know first.” Jace rubbed a thumb across his eyebrow. “No, not the whole team tomorrow morning. Jesus, Dad.”
Another pause.
“Olivia knows there’s someone. She doesn’t know it’s me. Vanessa doesn’t know it’s him.”
The guilt in that sentence landed between us.
I felt it. I deserved to.
Cal’s reply came softer. Jace’s face changed with it. His mouth pressed tight, and for a second he looked like the boy from the photos in his dad’s house, too much responsibility in his eyes and a hockey stick in his hands.
“I hate that I hurt people,” he said.
Cal answered.
Jace let out a shaky breath. “That is not as comforting as you think it is.”
Another reply.
This time Jace laughed for real, small and wet. “Yeah, okay. Maybe it isn’t supposed to be.”
He listened for a while.
Then his gaze found me again.
“I love him,” he said.
The words were not new.
He had said them to me in the dark. Against my mouth. Half asleep once, like the truth had slipped through before his guard could catch it. I had said them back with my hand over his racing heart and meant them so much it had scared me quiet afterward.
But hearing him say it to his father did something different.
It took the private thing between us and gave it air. Weight. Consequence. It was not a confession whispered into my skin when no one else could hear. It was Jace standing in front of the man who had raised him and telling the truth even though the truth came with damage attached.
My throat went tight.
Jace knew exactly what he had done. His eyes stayed on mine.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t dress it up.
Cal said something, and Jace blinked fast, pulled back into the call.
“I know love doesn’t erase the rest,” he said. “I know. That’s why I called.”
He went quiet for almost a full minute.
When he spoke again, his voice was low. “What would you do?”
Whatever Cal told him, Jace absorbed it like instruction. Not easy instruction. Necessary.
He nodded once.
“Tell the truth early,” he repeated. “Don’t make people chase it and then ask them to trust me.”
A pause.
“Don’t let guilt make every decision.”
Another.
“Make sure I’m not letting him take all the damage because I’m scared.”
My chest hurt.
Jace’s eyes lowered to his bare feet. “Yeah. He would. That’s kind of his thing.”
Cal said something that made Jace snort.
“I’m standing right here, so if you’re calling me an idiot, at least commit.”
Another murmur.
Jace’s mouth twitched. “He is big, yes. Bigger than me. Why is that your follow-up question?”
Cal apparently had his reasons.
Jace rubbed his forehead again. “Please don’t threaten an NHL head coach over the phone.”
A pause.
“No, I’m not putting him on so you can use your disappointed dad voice.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled.
Then Jace sobered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
Cal answered immediately.
Jace went quiet.
All the restless motion drained out of him.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I know I’m still your kid.”
The silence that followed was full.
Jace nodded after a moment. “I’ll call Harper. Not tonight. I can only survive one Holloway emotional audit per evening.”
Cal said something.
“Yes, I’ll eat. I did eat. Declan cooked.” A beat. “Yes, vegetables. More than one. Everybody can relax.”
Tiny shoved his nose under Jace’s hand.
Jace scratched automatically between his ears. “I love you too, Dad.”
He ended the call and kept staring at the screen.
Neither of us moved.
Tiny, recognizing the emotional vulnerability of the room, rested his massive head in Jace’s lap and exhaled like he had personally resolved the crisis.
Jace looked down at him. “You are not subtle.”
Tiny’s tail thumped the cabinet once.
I crossed the kitchen.
Slowly. Giving him time to tell me no if he needed room.
He set the phone on the counter with careful fingers. “You heard.”
“Enough.”
“The bad parts or the terrifying parts?”
“The true parts.”
His laugh was thin. “That’s not a category I enjoy.”
I stepped between his knees. He was sitting on the edge of the counter, still half dressed, still flushed, but the softness from before had been replaced by something stripped down and sober.
His hand came up and pressed flat to my chest.
“I know I’ve told you,” he said. “But saying it to him felt different.”
“It was different.”
His fingers curled against my shirt. “I didn’t want you to think it meant less because it wasn’t some perfect moment.”
I covered his hand with mine. “Jace.”
“I know. I know you know. My brain is doing that thing where it opens seventeen tabs and every one of them is playing a video of me ruining my own life.”
“I don’t need perfect.”
His eyes searched my face.
I said it plainly, because that was what he needed. No performance. No pretty line to hide behind.
“I love you. In this kitchen. With your father on the phone. With consequences coming. None of that makes it smaller.”
His breath caught.