Chapter thirteen #2
“You’re so like your dad,” she’d said finally, and there was something almost amused in her voice.
“He got in three fights in high school defending me from boys who thought Italian girls were easy. Broke someone’s nose.
Got suspended twice.” She’d reached over and taken my hand, careful of my knuckles.
“But remember your hockey. One day you’ll be a star player, and that boy will still be in the gutter.
And when I got home my mother had ignored my dad and my brothers being not so secretly pleased.
But Braxton wasn’t in the gutter. He was dead. He’d pissed off the wrong person at seventeen, and it hadn’t been answered with fists, it had been answered with a knife.
I could survive training with Kincaid. I could survive living across the hall from a man who was interested in me when I wasn’t interested back. I could survive whatever the playoffs threw at us next.
I just had to keep my head down, do my job, and stop wanting things I couldn’t have.
The problem was, I’d never been particularly good at that last part.
I woke up at five the next morning, thirty minutes before my alarm, because apparently my brain had decided sleep was optional when I had anxiety to process. I lay there in the dark for fifteen minutes, trying to convince myself to go back to sleep, before giving up and rolling out of bed.
The apartment was cold as the heating hadn’t kicked in.
I pulled on sweats and made coffee, standing at the window while it brewed and watching the city wake up below me.
Denver at dawn was different than Chicago—quieter, maybe, or just less familiar.
The mountains were visible in the distance, dark shapes against the lightening sky.
My phone buzzed. A text from Marco: How you feeling? Ma says you’re cleared to skate again.
I typed back: Yeah. First training session today.
The response came almost immediately: That’s great! You nervous?
I stared at that question for a long moment, trying to figure out how to answer it honestly. A little. Want to make sure I’m ready.
You’ll be fine. You’re tough. Love you.
Love you too.
I set the phone down and finished my coffee. Checked the time—six-oh five. I should eat something, but my stomach was doing things that suggested food was a bad idea. I settled for a protein bar and another cup of coffee, then grabbed my gear and headed out.
The hallway was quiet. Odin’s door was closed, no light visible underneath. I wondered what time he woke up, whether we’d start running into each other in the mornings, whether this was going to be as awkward as I was making it in my head.
Probably not. He seemed like a normal person. I was the one making everything complicated.
The drive to the arena took twenty minutes in early-morning traffic. The driver dropped me, and I grabbed my bag, making my way inside through the back entrance. The building was mostly empty at this hour, just a few staff members getting ready for the day, the cleaning crew finishing up.
The locker room lights were already on when I got there.
I dumped my bag on the bench in front of my stall and started changing into my gear, moving through the familiar routine with the efficiency of someone who’d been doing this since they were six years old.
Skates, shin guards, pants, shoulder pads, jersey.
Each piece going on in the same order it always did, muscle memory taking over where my brain was too anxious to function properly.
I was lacing up my skates when I heard footsteps in the corridor. Heavy, deliberate, the ones I’d learned to recognize over two months of watching him move.
Kincaid appeared in the doorway, already in his coaching gear—Dragons jacket, whistle around his neck, tablet in one hand. His eyes found me immediately, and something flickered across his face before settling into professional neutrality.
“Russo,” he said. “You’re early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” I admitted, then immediately regretted it because that sounded like I was nervous, which I was, but he didn’t need to know that.
“That’s normal before your first skate back.” He moved into the room, set his tablet down on one of the benches. “How are the ribs?”
“Good. No pain.”
“And the head?”
“Clear. Cinder okayed me yesterday.”
He nodded, studying me with intensity that made me want to look away. “Let’s get on the ice,” he said finally. “We’ll start with some basic drills, see where you are.”
I followed him out of the locker room, down the corridor to the rink. The building was still mostly empty, our footsteps echoing off the concrete. The arena felt different at this hour—bigger, somehow, without the crowd noise and the game-day energy. Just us and the ice and whatever happened next.
Kincaid stepped through the gate first, gliding across the surface with that effortless grace that came from decades on skates. I followed, taking a moment to adjust to the feel of it again after almost two weeks off.
“Let’s start with some basic skating drills,” Kincaid called, already setting up cones at center ice. “Figure eights, transitions, nothing complicated. I want to see how your ribs handle the movement.”
I nodded and started the drills, focusing on the familiar patterns. My body remembered what to do even if my brain was still catching up. Forward crossovers, backward crossovers, tight turns that made my ribs ache but didn’t stop me.
Kincaid watched from center ice, his eyes tracking every movement, and I tried not to think about the fact that we were alone in this building. That his attention was entirely on me for reasons that were completely professional and would never be anything else.
After fifteen minutes of skating drills, he called me over and handed me a stick.
“Shooting practice,” he said. “I’m going to feed you pucks. I want you to take the shot without thinking about it. No second-guessing, no hesitation. Trust your instincts.”
My instincts. Right. The same instincts that had gotten systematically dismantled by Antoine and then made me think my coach was interested in me in ways that were more than just one of his players.
But I took the stick and moved into position at the top of the circle. Kincaid was at the blue line with a pile of pucks, and when the first one came sliding toward me, I one-timed it without thinking.
It went high and wide, missing the net entirely.
“Again,” Kincaid called, already sending another puck.
This one I caught cleanly, but I aimed too carefully and it went straight into the goalie’s chest—if there had been a goalie.
“Stop thinking,” Kincaid said. “Just shoot.”
Easier said than done when every mistake felt like confirmation that I’d forgotten how to do this, that Antoine had been right about me all along.
But I tried. Puck after puck, shot after shot, and gradually something started to shift. My shoulders loosened. My hands found the right grip. The hesitation that had been plaguing me for months started to fade, replaced by muscle memory that predated all of this.
I scored. Then scored again. Then three more in a row that would have beaten any goalie in the league.
“There it is,” Kincaid said, and there was something in his voice that made me look over at him. “That’s what I’ve been waiting to see.”
My insides did something without permission at the approval in his tone, but I pushed it down. Professional. This was professional feedback from a coach to a player.
“Let’s work on your release,” he continued, skating over with more pucks. “You’re telegraphing slightly before you shoot. If you can eliminate that tell, you’ll be unstoppable.”
We spent the next hour drilling my shot from every angle, every position, until my arms were burning and my ribs were screaming and I’d put probably two hundred pucks on net.
Kincaid was relentless but patient, correcting small things—the angle of my blade, the timing of my weight transfer, the follow-through on my release.
And through it all, he never once made it feel like anything other than coaching. Never stood too close, never let his hand linger when he adjusted my grip on the stick, never looked at me like I was anything other than a player he was trying to improve.
Which was exactly what I’d told myself I wanted. Professional distance. Appropriate boundaries. No complications.
So why did it feel like something was being carved out of me with every perfectly neutral interaction?
By the time we finished, it was almost nine, and the rest of the staff would be arriving soon. I was exhausted in the best way—the kind of tired that came from working hard at something that mattered.
“Good session,” Kincaid said as we made our way off the ice. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Absolutely.”
“Get some food, get some rest. The ribs might be sore later.”
“Will do, Coach.”
He nodded and headed toward his office, and I made my way back to the locker room feeling both better and worse than I had two hours ago.
Better because I’d skated well, because my shot was coming back, because Kincaid clearly thought I was improving.
Worse because every minute of that session had reinforced exactly where we stood with each other.
Coach and player. Nothing more.
I showered, changed, and headed home through mid-morning traffic. My phone buzzed with a text from Max asking how training went, and I sent back a thumbs-up because I didn’t have the energy for more detailed explanation.
When my ride pulled up to my building, I sat for maybe a moment too long, staring at the concrete wall and trying to convince myself that this was fine. That I was fine. That I could handle seeing Kincaid every day, working with him, taking his coaching, and not wanting things I couldn’t have.
My phone buzzed as I got out. This time it was Nicky: Odin says you’re neighbors now? Small world.
I stared at that message, then typed back: Yeah. He moved into the apartment across from mine.
The response was immediate: That’s crazy! He’s a good guy though.