Jace’s laugh came fuller that time, and it loosened something under my ribs that had been locked tight since last night.
I stepped away before I took more than I’d already stolen.
Back in my office, I shut the door and stood behind my desk with both palms planted on the surface until my breathing settled.
There was someone else.
They’re not.
I had no right to comfort from a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear. I took it anyway. Then I buried it deep enough that it couldn’t show on my face when I walked onto the ice.
Practice saved me for ninety minutes.
Not completely. Nothing did that anymore. But hockey demanded enough of me to leave less room for wanting. Whistles. Corrections. Twenty-three bodies moving at speed, blades under them, tempers riding close to the surface. A hundred details that actually belonged to me.
Milo knocked over a stack of cones during warmups and looked personally betrayed. “Bad setup.”
Benny coasted past him. “The cones are considering legal action.”
“Against me?”
“Against gravity for letting you happen.”
Jace skated by, pulled a loose puck to the toe of his stick, and flicked it into the net without looking.
“Show-off,” Benny called.
“Jealousy ages you,” Jace shot back.
Normal rink noise.
Normal team nonsense.
Normal men stuffing heartbreak, sore hips, bad sleep, strained marriages, and whatever else they carried into drills because the ice gave them somewhere to put it.
I kept my distance from Jace.
That was the job now.
I corrected Milo’s positioning. I stopped a drill to talk to the third pair about gap control. I made the power play rerun the same entry until they stopped treating structure like an insult.
Jace didn’t drift toward me. He didn’t make anything obvious. If anything, he worked harder at not reacting than he had at some of the drills I’d assigned him in October.
But I noticed.
The half second too long he looked after I blew the whistle.
His fingers tapping the top of his stick while I spoke to someone else.
The moment he missed his place in line because he was watching me demonstrate a rotation with Benny, then caught himself, swore under his breath, and skated hard before anyone called him on it.
Not fixed. Not peaceful all the way through.
Trying.
Near the end, we ran a transition drill built around decisions under pressure. Jace went too fast on the first rep, forced a pass through a seam that had already closed, and Roman smothered the shot like it had insulted his family.
“Again,” I called.
