“Red, amber, green,” I repeated.
“Simple enough for both of us.”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen stayed dark. His thumb hovered over the side button, not pressing. “Then tell me to put it down.”
The room tightened around those words.
“That isn’t a game.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His eyes stayed on mine, bright and tired and completely present. “Yes. That’s why I’m asking.”
I should have ended it there.
I should have told him to go upstairs. Shower. Sleep. Meet the team in the lobby in the morning with coffee in hand and the mask back on. I should have let daylight make cowards of us.
Instead, I looked at his hand.
His fingers were tense around the phone, but not because he wanted the phone. He was waiting. I could see the work of it in him, the effort not to fidget, not to fill the silence, not to throw out a joke and wreck the pressure before the pressure got under his skin.
He had offered me the choice.
That mattered.
“Put it on the table,” I said.
Immediate.
Jace placed the phone facedown on the small table beside him, then straightened. His attention returned to me like a tether pulled tight.
The simplicity of it moved through me with more force than it should have.
It should not have felt more intimate than touching him.
It did.
There was no accident here. No collided tempers. No postgame adrenaline. No excuse that could be folded into coaching. I had given an instruction that had nothing to do with hockey, nothing to do with his performance, nothing to do with the team.
He obeyed because he wanted to.
Because I wanted him to.
Jace looked shaken by that.
I wasn’t any steadier.
“Hands out of your pockets.”
He pulled them free.
“At your sides.”
His fingers flexed once, then settled against his thighs.
