“There!” Taylor started shooting. “That's exactly what I want. Keep talking.”
“Seriously though,” Hartley continued, “I've seen you smile maybe twice. Once when Volkov got hit in the face with a puck during practice, and once when Callahan fell over his own feet. You have a very specific sense of humor, Coach.”
“I smiled when we won the home opener.”
“That wasn't a smile. That was a slight decrease in scowling.” He turned to look at me fully, grin widening. “Admit it. You're dead inside.”
“I'm not dead inside.”
“Prove it. Smile. Right now.”
“I'm not going to smile on command like a trained seal.”
“See? Dead inside.” But he was laughing now, easy and unguarded, and I felt something in my chest loosen against my better judgment.
Taylor kept shooting, moving around us, adjusting angles, muttering approvals under his breath. June was standing off to the side with her clipboard and her unreadable expression. I still couldn't tell if she was pleased or quietly calculating how many more of these she could schedule before I started pushing back.
We moved through a few more setups in the clothes—some with the resistance bands and the pull-up bar Taylor's assistants wheeled out, some with hockey sticks against the ice-texturebackdrop, the frosted white and blue that approximated the rink without actually being one. Easier to breathe through. Familiar territory. I knew what to do with a hockey stick in my hands even after fifteen years behind a bench.
Then Priya appeared with a quiet word to Taylor, and Taylor nodded, and that was apparently the transition I'd been trying not to think about since Priya had mentioned the shirtless series back in the dressing room.
Hartley pulled the slate shirt over his head without any particular ceremony and handed it to Priya, and Taylor's assistant moved in immediately with the amber oil. I turned toward the backdrop and made a detailed study of the way the blue light gradients worked, which was genuinely interesting and had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I couldn't be standing where I'd been standing a moment ago.
Taylor shot some solo frames first—Hartley with the stick, Hartley against the backdrop, Hartley doing the things he did naturally in front of a camera, which was apparently everything, effortlessly. I watched from a careful distance, arms crossed, keeping myself useful by staying out of the way and maintaining the expression of someone evaluating technique rather than anything else.
It wasn't working particularly well, if I was honest with myself. And I was trying very hard not to be honest with myself.
The studio lighting had an opinion about Hartley's torso that it was expressing at considerable volume. The oil caught every shift of muscle when he moved, every line of the body that had been built and maintained and pushed past its limits for over a decade of professional hockey. He looked the way elite athletes looked when someone pointed a camera at them under the right conditions—less like a person than like a proof of concept.
I uncrossed my arms. Crossed them again. Studied the fern print on the far wall, which I was beginning to know intimately.
“Grant.” Taylor gestured me forward. “I want to get the coaching angle in some of these. The dynamic between you two.”
I walked over. Stopped at a distance I considered reasonable.
Taylor looked at the distance. Looked at me. Looked back at his viewfinder in a way that suggested he had thoughts about the distance.
“Closer,” he said.
I moved incrementally closer.
“A little more.”
I moved again. Hartley was looking straight at the camera, patient and professional, and I was standing near him—not touching, hands at my sides, maintaining every available inch of reasonable space—and I was very aware of the heat coming off his skin and the way the oil caught the light and the fact that this was a charity photoshoot for a children's hospital and I needed to think about literally anything other than what I was currently thinking about.
The fourth line's defensive-zone coverage. The gap between Rook's hip issue and his actual reported pain level. Whether the power play needed a full systems overhaul or just better execution of what we already had.
“Grant, you look like you're standing next to a live grenade,” Taylor said, not unkindly. “He's your player. You've coached him for months. Just be in the room with him.”
“I'm in the room with him.”
“Be in it differently.” Taylor lowered the camera briefly. “Put your hand on his shoulder. Coaching position. Like you're explaining something.”
I put my hand on his shoulder.
The skin was warm and faintly slick from the oil and I felt the muscle shift under my palm when Hartley adjusted his grip on the stick and I kept my expression completely neutral throughwhat I can only describe as a significant act of professional willpower.
Taylor's camera clicked rapidly. “Perfect. Hold that.”
