Chapter 10 Declan #2
He sits back. “I’m giving you your crease back because you’ve earned it on the ice and because now I understand why the bomb went off.
But you’re still on thin fucking ice with me.
You slip again, you don’t get to hide behind good intentions or my kid’s name.
You come to me next time. About Rylan. About anyone. About her.”
My throat feels tight. “Yes, Coach.”
Adrian’s voice from last week ghosts through my head—If you ever need help with him, with your old man, with Rylan, you don’t do it alone, you hear me? Two lifelines on the table now, and I’m still wired to white-knuckle everything myself.
“And Declan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you care about Talia at all—and I’m not blind, I can see you do—” his voice roughens, “you keep your control around her. She doesn’t need another man using his temper to mark territory. She needs quiet. She needs consistency. She needs to not be collateral damage in someone else’s war.”
My chest aches. “I know.”
And she doesn’t even know the whole story. All she hears in the halls is that I snapped, that I dented a locker, that I’m a freak. She gets the headline, not the context. In her head, I’m still the guy with his hand on someone’s throat.
He nods once, like that’s the only answer he’ll accept. “Get dressed. You’ve got thirty minutes before we’re on the ice. I want to see the goalie who reads angles, not the kid who sees red.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Dismissed.”
I stand. My legs feel weirdly light, like I stepped off a long bus ride. At the door, his voice stops me.
“Reid.”
I look back.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “you were right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
His eyes harden. “Rylan doesn’t get to say her name like that either.”
Something ugly and satisfied moves through me. I nod once. Then I leave.
The locker room goes quiet when I walk in. Not completely—music still thumps low, someone’s laughing in the showers—but the energy shifts. Heads turn. Conversations stutter.
I keep my gaze straight ahead. My stall is where I left it. Gear stacked neat. Stick propped in its spot, tape frayed at the top from my hands.
Adrian’s on the bench two down from me, bent over his skates. He looks up as I drop my bag. There’s a beat of silence. Then he punches my shoulder, not hard.
“Bout time,” he says. “Backup was giving me heartburn.”
Light laughter snaps the tension. Gio mutters something about “freak goalies” and “dramatic exits.” The room exhales.
“Coach talk?” Adrian asks, voice low.
“Yeah.” I reach for my underlayers. “I’m back.”
“For now,” Gio adds.
“Shut up,” I tell him, but there’s no heat in it.
The ritual slides over me as I dress—compression, pads, chest, mask. My hands shake once when I tape my stick, then steady. Tape, smooth. Tape, smooth. Stop it from breaking.
Adrian nudges my knee with his. “If your old man or Admin tries anything, you tell me,” he mutters. “I told you—I’m in.”
I grunt something that could be agreement. I don’t know how to hand someone else a lit match without burning us both.
When I step onto the ice, the cold rush is a hit straight to the bloodstream. The crease is where it always is. Six by four. My box.
I tap the left post.
Clack.
Right post.
Clack.
The sound rings clean. Not perfect—there’s still a hairline fracture under everything—but solid enough to hold.
“Let’s go, boys!” Coach’s whistle shrieks.
Shots come. I track, read, react. My body remembers what my head’s been trying to forget. Puck to pad. Glove save. Rebound controlled. Every stop is a small, defiant fuck you to the part of me that thinks I’m just a bomb waiting to detonate.
I’m not perfect. A couple get behind me I should have had. But the rhythm returns, inch by inch.
Control the game.
Control the noise.
Control everything.
Or fake it well enough to keep the net.
After practice, the hallway outside the locker room is a funnel of steam and noise. Guys peel off to the weight room, the training room, the showers. I move slower, bag over my shoulder, stick in hand, tape rough against my skin.
I’m almost to the exit when I feel it.
That prickle at the back of my neck.
Watching.
I look up.
She’s there.
Talia stands at the far end of the hall near the lobby doors, half-shadowed by the glass trophy case. Hoodie, leggings, campus ID lanyard looped around her fingers. Clara’s beside her, talking with her hands, clearly mid-rant about something.
Talia isn’t listening. Not really. Her eyes are on me.
For one suspended second, it’s just us in the corridor. The rest of the world blurs—Clara, the players passing between, the hum of the vending machine.
I see it hit her—the gear, the wet hair, the taped knuckles, the reminder of exactly what I did and who I am. Her fingers tighten around the lanyard. Her shoulders lift a fraction, then drop.
She looks away first.
The flinch is small, but I see it. My brain, generous bastard that it is, fills in the rest—fear, disgust, smart self-preservation.
Of course she doesn’t hold my gaze. Why would she?
In her version of the story, I’m still the guy choking a teammate; she never got the part where I did it because of her name.
It shouldn’t hurt like it does.
Clara follows her gaze, spots me, gives a small, guarded nod. Neutral. Not inviting. Not hostile. A warning: I see you. I see what you did. I’m watching how close you get.
Adrian bumps my shoulder as he passes. He doesn't look at me, eyes tracking Clara and Talia, but his voice drops low enough that only I catch it.
“Don’t.”
There’s a weight to the word. A suspicion. He knows me better than anyone—he knows I don't just ‘happen’ to be in parking lots at midnight. He suspects I’m already crossing the line Coach just redrew.
“I’m not,” I say. I know I’m lying.
Coach’s words slam through my head. She doesn’t need another storm.
I force my feet to keep moving. Past the lockers. Past the trophy case. Past the spot where her eyes flickered away.
I don’t say her name.
I don’t say anything.
As I hit the doors to the parking lot, I can see her reflection in the glass—small, hood up, turned toward Clara again. Trying to look like she wasn’t watching. Trying to be normal.
I step out into the cold. The air bites my lungs. My hands ache.
I want to turn back.
I want to walk down that hall, right up to her, and ask if she slept. If 4C slammed his door again. If she still hears the locker.
Instead, I walk to my truck.
I unlock the door. The thunk of the mechanism echoes in the quiet lot, a mirror of the sound I waited for in hers.
I get in. I sit there with the engine off, forehead against the wheel, the tape on my hands biting into the leather.
Coach gave me my crease back.
He also gave me a clearer leash.
Stay in the box.
Stay in control.
Stay away from her.
I close my eyes and see her anyway.
Her breath fogging the night.
Her eyes on me in the hallway, just for a second, before she looked away.
Want is a living thing under my ribs, pacing the cage.
For her.
For the calm she brings into the noise.
For the way she sits in the same silence without trying to fill it.
I put the truck in gear.
I tell myself I’m driving away for her sake. For Coach. For the team.
But the truth is uglier and simpler.
If I let myself close that distance before I’ve got a tighter grip on this monster in my chest, I won’t stop at almost.