Chapter 5
Declan
It’s the morning after The Penalty Box, and I’m skating like my head’s still parked in that lot, consumed by the memory.
I’m standing in my crease, but I’m not really here.
I’m trapped in that goddamn booth. Talia’s thigh—a scorching line against mine. That phantom pressure is a brand I can still feel through my gear, searing my skin. The rough drag of her jeans against my own haunts me, the way she held herself rigid, pretending not to feel it.
I remember the moment I could have shifted, given her an inch of air—and the deliberate, possessive choice I made not to. I let her endure it. Forced her to bear the weight of my decision.
Now, the ice feels wrong. It’s early-morning practice, the arena choked with silence except for the shh-shh-shh of skates and the sharp clack of pucks ricocheting off the walls.
The halogen lights throw a sterile, cold wash over the surface, amplifying my unease.
A curl of shaved ice stuck to my pad won’t shake loose.
I kick my leg, knocking it free; it skitters away in a pale smear near the crease, a reminder of how easily I can lose grip on everything.
My focus fractures, slipping. I can't afford that.
A puck rings off the post and in.
A sloppy goal.
I slam my stick against the iron, disgust ripping through me. The vibration climbs into my palms, up my forearms—too soft to satisfy.
“You off your game, Reid?” Adrian chirps, skating past, a taunt laced with camaraderie that crushes beneath the weight of my obsession.
“Worry about your own end,” I snap, sharper than intended.
My glove feels heavy. My stick grip is slick, the new tape I wrapped this morning foreign against my palm. I roll the shaft in my hand, trying to re-center my grip like that’ll fix everything. It doesn’t.
I miss a save I could make in my sleep. The puck thuds into the back of the net. I’m tracking late, my reaction a split second behind.
I blame the ice, the lights, the new tape.
I blame everything but the reality—her.
The memory of her pressed against me clogs my lungs. The scent—peppermint and old books—invades my senses, its sweetness like poison. It hit me when she scraped her back across my chest to get out of the booth. One second of contact that felt like a fucking eternity.
My body remembers it too well. Muscles wired tight in all the wrong places, useless for the only job that matters.
Another shot.
I snatch it, but my eyes stray to the parking lot—the way she froze when she saw me. The way her voice sounded, thin and breathless, when she said, “I will.”
The sound of her lock clicking into place—thunk.
A third shot fires. I don’t see it. It’s past me before I move.
The whistle shrieks.
“Reid! Wake the fuck up! Your head isn’t in the game!” Coach Addison’s voice pierces me, the reminder of his warning a hot wire in my gut.
She’s off-limits.
Addison put a spotlight on her, and now I can’t look away. Now she’s a contamination, a spreading infection. A fracture in the wall that’s widening, threatening to collapse everything I’ve built.
I can feel his eyes drilling into the back of my mask. Each soft goal is another mark on a ledger I can’t afford.
I’m not stupid—there are strikes on my record, even if they’re invisible.
The team is loose, joking. The energy is easy, but I’m a storm, breathing hard through my mask. Every puck I stop now feels like a small, violent victory against the chaos in my head.
Control the game. Control the noise. Control everything.
But I can’t. I’m leaking. Pressure builds, a toxic flood behind the wall, and I know I won’t get through the day without something snapping.
The final whistle blows—a shrill, piercing sound that scrapes across my raw nerves.
I don’t skate off.
I just get off. My movements are stiff, angry. The walk back—pads heavy, clattering on the rubber mats—is another failed ritual.
I’m the first one through the door, desperate for sanctuary, but the noise is already there.
The locker room is humid, thick with sweat, soap, and damp gear. Music blares. Guys yell. Skates clang against metal.
I keep my head down.
This is my sanctuary. My stall.
My stick leans where I left it, propped against the bench leg like always. Waiting.
I’m methodical, trying to find my rhythm in the ritual.
I strip my gear, each piece laid out with obsessive care. I’m down to compression shorts and a sweat-darkened workout tee, skin still hot from the pads. I start cleaning, wiping down the pads, trying to exorcise her from my mind. I wipe away the phantom feel of her skin, her heat.
I check the glove lacing, pulling it tight, trying to re-tie my shredded focus.
Control. I need that control back.
I run the towel along the blocker seam twice, then a third time, until the stitching sits perfect under my thumb. It’s nothing, and it’s everything.
Rylan is holding court two stalls down, basking in attention like a predator.
“Place was packed last night,” he crows, peeling off his soaked jersey. “The Box was crawling.”
I tune him out.
Just noise.
“Saw Addison’s kid there,” he says, and his voice slices through my focus like a knife.
My hands stop.
I’m holding a wet towel, knuckles white around it.
Don’t bite.
“Who? Coach’s daughter?” someone asks.
“Yeah. Sitting there with Hale’s girl,” Rylan laughs, a sickening sound. “She’s hotter than I thought. Way hotter up close.”
Shut up.
I wipe down a buckle. My movements turn jerky, a quicksilver tension coiling tight in my chest.
He’s talking about her like she’s meat. Tainting her.
He looked at her. He doesn’t get to.
The only calm, quiet thing in this entire fucking place. He doesn’t get to look at her.
“She was sitting there all quiet, playing stuck up,” Rylan keeps going, his tone dripping with slime. “You know how it is. She looks like she needs to be loosened up. I bet she’s wild underneath all that ice.”
Don’t do it.
He’s just talking. He has no idea what he’s talking about.
She’s not “ice.” She’s a survivor. She’s braced for impact, a fortress forged from trauma.
He doesn’t get to see that.
“Dude, shut up, that’s the coach’s daughter,” Gio cuts in, his voice tight, the humor stripped away.
“So? Coach isn’t here.” Rylan is revelling in this, playing to the crowd. “I’m just saying. She transferred for a reason, right? I’d like to find out what Talia Addison is really like.”
The name.
Her name.
In his mouth.
He doesn’t get to say her name. He doesn’t even get to think it.
And then the final straw—
A split-second uninvited flash:
Rylan leaning in close. His mouth near her ear. His hands bracketing her body. Her going rigid just like that, shoulders creeping up toward her ears—
No.
Red slices across my vision.
The towel drops.
The ritual shatters.
I’m moving before I even register the decision.
Four steps. That’s all it takes.
My knee clips my stick as I lunge; it clatters to the floor, forgotten.
Rylan is still grinning when I grab the front of his jersey and slam him into the bank of metal lockers.
The impact is a deafening CLANG that silences the entire room. A moment frozen in time.
Someone kills the music mid-beat.
Laughter dies.
The echo of metal hangs in the air, heavy with tension.
His head hits the locker.
Good.
He gasps, eyes wild, feet dangling an inch off the floor.
I pin him there, my forearm pressed hard against his throat, cutting off his air. The rage is a clean, white-hot fire, burning everything else away.
It feels good.
It feels right.
This is control.
“Say her name again,” I hiss, my voice a dangerous whisper.
Rylan claws at my arm, face turning a dark, ugly red. He can’t breathe.
“Reid! What the fuck!”
“Let him go, man!”
Hands are on me, yanking at my shoulders, my arms.
I shrug them off. Flies.
My gaze cuts across the room.
Dante and Cole are watching.
They don’t move. Not for me. Not for Rylan.
Rylan makes a choking sound.
“REID! LET GO!”
Adrian’s voice. The captain’s voice. It’s the only one that slices through the rage. He shoves between us, hands on my chest, pushing. “Enough!”
I hold it for one more second, drinking in the panic in Rylan’s eyes.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
Then I release him.
He collapses to the floor, coughing, gagging, clutching his throat. I step back, chest heaving.
My hands tremble.
I killed the noise.
Finally.
The room is dead silent, except for Rylan’s wet gasps.
“You’re fucking insane, man,” he chokes from the floor. “Insane.”
“What the hell is going on in here?”
The voice cuts through the tension like a blade.
Coach Addison stands in the doorway, face a mask of cold fury.
His gaze slides over Rylan on the floor, then to me, breathing hard like I just played three overtimes.
His eyes narrow when they land on the bruising already darkening Rylan’s throat.
Something in his jaw ticks—not sympathy, exactly. A cold, hard look of calculation.
His eyes lock on me.
Heavy. Final.
“Everyone out,” he commands, voice dangerously quiet. “Now.”
No one moves.
“GET OUT. All of you. Except Reid.”
The locker room empties in a rush of nervous energy. Helmets thunk. Laces scrape.
Adrian gives me one last look—a cocktail of confusion and warning—before he follows the others out.
The door clicks shut, and the silence left behind is worse than the noise.
An accusation.
Coach Addison doesn’t yell. He walks toward me, slow, his footsteps echoing on damp tile. He stops a few feet away.
“You want to tell me what that was?”
I shake my head, still breathing heavy. My hands are fists at my sides.
“He was talking,” I manage.
“Yeah, I heard some of it,” Coach says, voice flat. “Rylan’s got a mouth. I know that. But talking gets a man’s head put through a locker now? Is that how we’re doing things?”
I stay silent.
I can’t tell him.
I can’t say her name.
Not now. Not here.
He exhales, a rough breath that sounds more tired than furious. “Reid, I’ve seen you take hits that would knock other guys’ teeth out, and you don’t even flinch. I have never seen you lose it like that.” His gaze sharpens, waiting for the reason, the truth he knows exists. “Did he cross a line?”
The question is a lifeline I refuse to take.
My jaw locks. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does if it has you trying to choke one of my wingers in front of the whole room,” he snaps back. “You don’t get to handle it that way. Not on my team. We talked, Reid. In the tunnel. I told you I trusted you.”
The word trusted lands like a body blow.
“I thought you were the anchor, the one I didn’t have to worry about.” His voice lowers, quieter but no softer. “You’re better than this.”
He thinks this is about me. He thinks I’m a psycho.
The irony thickens the air.
He has no idea I was defending her. No clue Rylan’s words were the real filth.
“Rylan will talk,” Coach says, rubbing a hand over his face, exhaustion seeping through his control. “The team saw it. You think this stays in this room? You just handed the board a reason to look at you. I can’t defend this.”
He studies me, waiting for me to crack, to offer something he can use. I give him nothing. To protect her. To shield her from the filth of Rylan’s words.
His shoulders firm. Decision made. “You’re benched next game.”
My stomach drops, even though I expected it.
“Coach—”
He shakes his head once. “I don’t have a choice.
I have to show I handled it. You sit. We cool this down, and then you earn it back.
But hear me, Reid.” His eyes pin me in place.
“You pull something like that again, I won’t be able to keep them off you.
I can’t save your spot if you become a liability. ”
He steps closer, invading my space.
“And another thing.”
My pulse spikes.
“I saw you at The Box,” he says. “I saw you sitting with Talia.” His gaze shifts from anger to something colder—protective.
“I don’t know what’s going on in your head today.
Maybe it’s the pressure. Maybe it’s something else.
But you’re volatile. I see it.” He lowers his voice, a warning shot.
“You keep a professional distance from my daughter. I can’t have you near her when you’re like this.
She’s dealing with enough without getting caught in your blast radius. ”
It’s not the threat I expected. It’s worse.
Because he’s right.
“Yes, Coach,” I grind out, the words tasting bitter on my tongue.
He holds my gaze one more long, heavy second before nodding once, accepting what I cannot offer.
“Get dressed,” he says. “Go clear your head.”
He claps my shoulder—a reminder of authority, but a connection too. Then he walks off, footsteps echoing down concrete, leaving me alone with the ringing silence. A weight settles on my chest, heavy and suffocating.
I’m dressed, bag packed. The truck is a cold sanctuary, silent and dark. I slide into the driver’s seat, lean my head back against the headrest, and close my eyes.
Benched.
The word echoes.
I failed him. I lost control. I lost my spot.
All because I couldn't stand Rylan's mouth on her name.
I look down at my right hand, resting on the steering wheel.
I flex my fingers. The knuckles stark white against the dark leather.
This is the hand that just pinned a man to a metal locker by his throat. The same hand that threatened to crush Rylan’s windpipe because he dared to speak about her.
My fingers curl into a fist, tight and shaking.
It’s the same hand I wanted to tangle in her hair last night. The same hand I rested on the roof of her car, an inch from her head, swearing to keep her safe.
The duality makes me sick.
And it makes me want it more.
Violence and protection bleed together until I can’t tell where the goalie ends and the monster begins.
My phone buzzes. A text from Adrian.
Adrian: You good?
I kill the screen, plunging the cab back into darkness.
Coach Addison trusts me. He asked me to protect her. And my first attempt at it gets me benched, makes me a threat. Makes me the problem.
I slam my palm against the steering wheel. Once. Twice. The pain is a dull thud, not enough.
He said keep a professional distance.
A new rule. A new line drawn.
I start the engine, the rumble a low, angry vibration.
I failed the coach. I failed my job. I put a target on my back.
And the worst part? The clean, sharp, good feeling of my forearm against Rylan’s throat.
I pull out of the lot.
Professional distance.
Fine.
But Rylan doesn’t get to look at her. He doesn’t get to think of her.
I’ll take the bench. I’ll sit.
But I’m not backing off. I’m just changing tactics.
The rage made me sloppy. It cost me my crease. I won’t make that mistake again. Coach wants professional distance? Fine. I’ll play from the shadows. I’m not backing down—I’m just going dark.