Practice Makes Perfectly Unhinged
Bennett
I’ve seen men try to outwork their problems. Try to outrun them.
Try to bury them under routine and rules and discipline.
It never works. Because the thing about pressure is, it doesn’t disappear.
It builds. Quietly. Patiently. Until it finds somewhere to break through.
And if you’re unlucky, it breaks through in front of everyone.
Playlist: “Human” by Rag’n’Bone Man
The shower doesn’t fix anything.
Neither does the drive to the rink or the silence of an empty locker room. I run drills alone on the ice for an hour anyway. Movement is control. Control is survival. If I can just get through practice, this morning will fade into a bad day. A momentary lapse.
Not the complete unraveling with Gisele’s hand in mine while the whole town watched.
My jaw tightens. I push harder into the next drill, skating until my lungs burn and my legs scream and my brain finally goes quiet.
It doesn’t last.
The first guys start trickling in around two. I hear them before I see them—the usual noise of skates and gear bags and conversations that die the second they spot me through the glass.
Not a good sign.
I finish my lap, coast to a stop at center ice, and wait. Watch them file into the locker room. Watch them not look at me.
Definitely not a good sign.
By the time I push through the door to join them, the room’s already humming with that particular energy that says everyone knows something and no one wants to be the first to bring it up.
Shep’s in the corner with his phone out, which is normal.
What’s not normal is the way he shoves it into his bag the second he sees me.
“Captain.” He gives me his usual thousand-watt grin, but it’s off by a few degrees. “How’s the, uh... how’s the day going?”
“Fine.”
“Good. Great. Stellar.” He’s talking too fast, which means he’s hiding something. “We were just—”
“I saw the clips.”
The room goes silent.
“Whoever posted that video runs bag skates for a week.” I keep my voice flat, controlled. “We’re not discussing it. We’re not making jokes about it. We’re moving on. Copy?”
Nobody answers. They’re all looking at each other with that expression I’ve seen a thousand times on a thousand faces—the one that says the boss is clearly not okay but nobody wants to poke the bear.
I hate that look. It means they don’t trust me. Which means I’ve already lost them, even if they don’t know it yet.
“I said copy.”
A scattered chorus of agreement, none of it convincing.
“Good.” I turn toward my locker, reaching for my gear. “Full practice in fifteen. We’re running the power play sequence until it doesn’t look like we’ve never seen a puck before. We don’t have time for this. Not this late in the season. Last night was unacceptable.”
“Bennett—” That’s Boone, my brother, using the tone that means he’s about to say something reasonable and supportive, and I don’t want to hear it.
“Fifteen minutes.”
I shut my locker harder than necessary. The sound echoes off the concrete walls like a gunshot, and every pair of eyes in the room track me as I push back through the door and onto the ice.
First mistake: thinking I could outwork this.
Second mistake: thinking they’d let me.
Practice starts exactly on time because that’s how I run things. Every drill mapped out, every minute accounted for, every transition planned to eliminate the empty space where problems grow.
The team lines up. I run them through warm-ups, then straight into passing sequences that we should be able to execute in our sleep. Basic stuff. Foundational.
They’re sloppy.
“Tighter.” I blow the whistle, resetting them. “Heath, your stick’s too high. Holden, stop anticipating the pass and react to it. Again.”
They run it again. Still sloppy. Heath’s pass goes wide. Holden drops an easy reception. Someone—I don’t even catch who—completely misses their positioning and crashes into the boards. Practice starts on time. Warm-ups. Passing sequences. Basic stuff we should be able to do in our sleep.
They’re sloppy.
“Tighter,” I bark, resetting them. “Again.”
It gets worse. Tension spreads through the lines. They’re not watching the puck—they’re watching me. Waiting for me to snap.
I skate into the formation. “This is foundational. Why does it look like your first day on skates?”
Shep shifts. “We’re trying, Cap.”
“Full contact drill,” I snap. “Blue line. First man back with the puck sits out bag skates.”
The drill dissolves into chaos within thirty seconds—bad collisions, crossed sticks, elbows flying. I blow the whistle hard.
“What the hell was that?”
“You said full contact,” Heath mutters, skating back to reset.
“Full contact, not assault. There’s a difference. Figure it out or—”
The door at the far end of the rink opens.
I know who it is before I even turn around. Know it from the way Shep’s face lights up, the way the energy in the room shifts, the way my entire nervous system goes on high alert like it’s been waiting for exactly this moment.
Gisele walks through the door, and every instinct I’ve got shifts off the ice and straight to her.
She’s wearing jeans, some kind of flowy top that probably costs more than my gear bag, hair still pin-straight and perfect despite everything. She’s carrying a coffee cup and wearing an expression that says she’s here for a show and fully intends to enjoy it.
She doesn’t come onto the ice. Just leans against the boards near the bench, settles in, and watches. Like she’s got nothing better to do. Like disrupting my practice is just another Tuesday errand between foils and blowouts.
The team watches her watch.
I watch the team watch her watch.
And then I have thoughts. Inappropriate thoughts. Dammit.
Nobody moves.
“Did I say we were done?” My voice sounds wrong even to my own ears. Too tight. Too controlled. “Reset. Blue line. Go.”
They go, but the energy’s different now. Lighter, somehow. Less tension, more... amusement. Shep keeps glancing toward Gisele, waiting for permission to make a joke. Even Boone fights a smile.
The next drill goes marginally better. Then the next.
Because if Franklin’s right—if this is what slipping looks like—I don’t get to let it happen.
I push them harder, call out every mistake, refuse to let the presence of a woman leaning against the boards change anything about how I run my practice.
It changes everything.
I’m hyper-aware of her. Every time I turn my back on the boards, I can feel her gaze like a physical pressure against my spine.
She’s not doing anything. That’s the worst part. She’s just standing there, sipping her coffee, watching me lose grip on a practice that should be routine.
“Captain’s getting a little intense today,” Shep stage-whispers during a water break, loud enough for half the rink to hear. “You think it has something to do with his street-sitting adventure or the woman who dragged him off of it?”
“Sawyer.” I don’t turn around. “Bag skates. Now.”
“Worth it.”
He grabs his stick and starts skating laps while the rest of the team pretends they’re not laughing. I can feel my pulse in my temples, can feel the control I’ve built my entire life around slipping further with every passing second.
This is fine. This is manageable. I just need to get through practice, reestablish authority, and—
“You know,” Gisele’s voice cuts across the ice, casual and devastating, “for someone who insists nothing happened yesterday, you’re doing a really good impression of a man who’s pretending nothing happened yesterday.”
The team stops.
Shep stops skating.
I stop breathing. The only sound is the hum of the overhead lights and my heartbeat jackhammering in my ears.
“Excuse me?”
She pushes off the boards, arms crossed, that infuriating almost-smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “ The yelling. The punishment drills. The dictator vibe. You really think that reads ‘I’m fine’?”
“I’m running practice the way I always run practice when Coach Duff can’t be here.”
“You’re running from what happened.” There it is. The part I can’t outskate. She shrugs like she hasn’t just stripped me bare in front of my entire team. “Same thing you always do when things get too real. Tighten up, push harder, pretend control equals okay.”
The silence is absolute. Not even the ice-making equipment dares to make a sound.
Wolfe—who for all intents and purposes—is mute, doesn’t say a word. Go figure.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. I should shut this down. Should tell her this isn’t the time or place. Should reassert command and get back to the drill we were running before she walked in and detonated everything.
But she’s looking at me with those honey-brown eyes that have always seen too much, and I can’t think of a single response that doesn’t prove her point.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.” She takes another sip of her coffee. “That’s why you’ve got your hand in your hair and your jaw doing that thing it does when you’re two seconds from losing it.”
My hand is, in fact, buried in my hair. I yank it down.
The team watches this with interest. Shep has completely abandoned his punishment laps and sags against the boards, mouth hanging open.
“We should all probably be taking notes,” he whispers to nobody in particular. “This is historical.”
“Sawyer, I swear to—”
“Bennett.” Gisele cuts me off, her voice softer now but no less pointed. “I’m not here to rescue you. I told you yesterday. I’m not going to smooth this over or pretend it didn’t happen or let you retreat back behind your walls until the next time you crack.”
“Then why are you here?”
She smiles. It’s not comforting.
“To watch you realize you can’t outrun it this time.”
The words hit like a check into the boards—hard enough to rattle, hard enough to leave a bruise.
Because she’s right, and we both know it.
I’ve been trying to outrun this since I peeled myself off that asphalt.
Trying to muscle my way back to normal, to control, to the version of myself that holds everything together through sheer force of will.
But the team’s already seen the cracks. The whole town has. And Gisele LaRue is standing in my arena, in front of my players, making it very clear that she has no intention of letting me pretend those cracks don’t exist.
“Practice is over.” I hear myself say the words without deciding to say them. “Cool down, stretch, get out. We’ll pick this up tomorrow.”
Protests immediately. Confused looks. Shep actually raises his hand like we’re in elementary school.
“Cap, we’ve only been at it for forty-five minutes. The power play sequence—”
“Tomorrow.”
I skate toward the bench, toward the exit, toward anywhere that isn’t here with her eyes on me and my team watching me unravel in slow motion. My legs feel foreign. My chest is too tight.
But before I can make it off the ice, Gisele steps into my path.
“Nope.” She doesn’t touch me, but she might as well have. The force of her presence stops me cold. “You don’t get to end practice early and call it control. That’s avoidance. Different thing.”
“Move.”
“Make me.”
We’re standing close enough that I can smell her—floral and sharp, underneath the coffee and the cold rink air. Close enough that I can see the determination in her eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw.
She’s not going anywhere.
“What do you want from me?” The question comes out raw, unfiltered. Not the captain voice. Not controlled. Just... me.
“I told you.” She holds my gaze, steady and unflinching. “Participation. Real engagement. Emotional honesty that doesn’t resemble sitting in the middle of a street because you don’t know how to ask for help.”
“And you think showing up to my practice and humiliating me in front of my team is going to accomplish that?”
“I think nothing else has worked.” She shrugs. “So yeah. We’re trying something new.”
Behind her, the team files off the ice—slowly, reluctantly, several of them literally skating backward so they don’t miss a second of whatever this is. Shep actually waves at me as he goes, like this is the best entertainment he’s had in months.
Traitor.
When I look back at Gisele, she’s still standing there, arms crossed, completely unmoved by the fact that she just dynamited my authority in front of twenty professional athletes.
She looks proud of herself.
“This isn’t how you help someone,” I say, low enough that only she can hear.
“You’re right.” Gisele nods, completely unbothered. “This is how you help someone who’s spent years refusing to be helped. You don’t give them an out. You don’t let them control the narrative. You show up whether they want you to or not, and you make it impossible for them to hide.”
My hand finds its way to the scar above my eyebrow. I yank it back down.
“I’m not your project, Gisele.”
“No.” She steps closer, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in her eyes. “You’re my friend. You’ve been my friend since we were kids. And I’m done watching you destroy yourself from the inside out because you’re too proud to admit you’re struggling.”
The word friend lands wrong. Has always landed wrong, when it comes to her.
“So what happens now?”
She smiles—not the sharp one from before. Softer. More dangerous.
“Now? You go home. You get some sleep. And tomorrow, you show up at my salon at nine sharp.”
“Why?”
“Because Operation Soft Boy has officially begun, captain.” She pats my chest once, right over my heart. “And you’re going to learn to feel things whether you like it or not.”
She turns and walks toward the exit, leaving me standing alone on the ice with my stick in my hands and my entire worldview crumbling around my ears.
The door closes behind her.
The silence is deafening.
I have the sudden, terrible feeling that Gisele LaRue is about to become a complication I can’t coach my way out of.
And the worst part?
Some traitorous part of me is looking forward to it.
I’m completely screwed, and I know it.