I pressed down and his posture shifted. Looser. Better. The gear muffled most of it but not the warmth, not the way his whole frame responded to being guided rather than corrected.
I stepped back, putting distance between us that I needed more than he probably realized. “Feel the difference?”
He nodded, not looking at me. “Yeah.”
“Good. That's what relaxed feels like. Remember it.” I fed him a puck. “Now show me your grip.”
He adjusted his hands, and I skated around to his side. His bottom hand was still too tight and his knuckles were white against the tape. I could see the tendons in his wrist from here, the controlled strain in his forearm.
“Loosen up. You want control, not a death grip.”
He tried. Still too tight. It had worked itself into muscle memory — holding on because no one was coming to catch him if he didn't.
“Here.” I moved closer, reaching for his stick. “Let me?—”
Our hands brushed when I adjusted his grip. His fingers were warm even through the gloves, and for half a second neither of us moved. I was aware of the specific pressure of his hand under mine, the way he didn't pull away.
I repositioned his bottom hand, forced his grip to loosen, and stepped back. “Try that.”
He took a breath and reset. Better. His hands looked more natural. Less like he was hanging off a ledge.
We fell into a rhythm — me feeding, him shooting, the mechanical simplicity of repetition. No talking. Just the sound of skates on ice and pucks hitting the net and our breathing in the cold air. I watched his body find the motion gradually, the way a player looks when they stop fighting their own instincts. Fluid. Dangerous.
After maybe fifteen more shots, I stopped.
“Better?”
“Yeah. Better.”
We stood there in the silence of the empty rink. He was flushed from the work, chest rising and falling, and he was looking at me with an expression I didn't have a clean category for — gratitude, maybe, but underneath it a kind of careful attention that I felt more than I could explain.
I looked away first.
“Next shift,” I said, voice coming out rougher than I intended. “Whatever happened before doesn't matter. All you have is right now.”
He nodded slowly. The mask was still down, just slightly. Just enough.
“Thanks, Coach.”
He skated away. I stood there watching him go, and the weight of what I'd just understood settled in my chest like stones that weren't moving anytime soon.
CHAPTER 5
OFF ICE
JACE
Idrove to Queen West and parked three blocks away from my actual destination like I was conducting a heist, then pulled on the disguise I kept in my trunk for exactly this purpose. Black beanie pulled low. Sunglasses even though it was overcast. A hoodie from a university I didn't attend. The goal was to look generic enough that people's eyes would slide right past me.
It worked about sixty percent of the time. Better odds than going out as myself.
The place I'd picked was a coffee shop that’s also a bookstore tucked between a vintage clothing store and a Thai restaurant, small enough to feel intimate but busy enough that I wouldn't stand out. The bell chimed when I walked in and warm air hit me immediately, thick with the smell of coffee and old paper. There were maybe a dozen people scattered around, most of them on laptops or reading, doing whatever people did when their entire identity wasn't wrapped up in a sport.
I ordered a black coffee because anything fancier felt like trying too hard, then wandered toward the back where the bookshelves were. Fiction. Poetry. History. Cookbooks. I pulleda random book off the shelf and pretended to read the back cover while actually scanning the room to see if anyone had clocked me.
So far, so good.
I found a corner table half-hidden by a bookshelf and sat down with my coffee, opening the book I'd grabbed without really looking at the title. Something about urban farming. Good enough. I could pretend to be interested in urban farming for an hour.
