Coach Reid studied me for a long second, then looked at the screen. He rewound the clip. Played it again.
The lane was there.
“Good read,” he said.
Two words.
Calm. Direct. No surprise in them. No backhanded jab about me being late or disruptive. Just good read, like he’d expected me to have one.
My chest did something weird.
I looked down fast and started clicking Roman’s stolen pen, then realized I didn’t have it anymore and was clicking nothing with my thumb.
After the meeting, everyone spilled toward the locker room with the restless energy of guys released from school. I shoved my notebook into my bag, found three loose tape balls, one receipt, no phone, then panicked for four seconds before realizing the phone was in my hand.
Normal. Very normal.
Roman waited by the door. He was thirty-one, divorced, and had the exhausted patience of a man who had seen every possible way hockey players could embarrass themselves. “You’re going to poke him.”
“I’m not going to poke him.”
“You’ve already picked up the stick.”
“I contributed.”
“You heckled.”
“I whispered.”
“You whispered with your whole face.”
I shouldered past him. “He’ll survive.”
“Will you?”
I didn’t answer because my phone lit up.
Vanessa: Dinner at 7. Please don’t wear the gray suit. It photographs weird.
Then another.
Vanessa: Also can you post the restaurant story before we get there? They comped the reservation.
I stared at the messages too long, the words blurring because three different responses tried to get through the same doorway in my head. Fine. Sure. Why does everything have to be content? I hate the navy suit. Did I pay my parking ticket? Don’t be an asshole. She’s working. This is her job. You said yes to dinner.
“You good?” Roman asked.
“Yeah.” I locked my phone. “Influencer diplomacy.”
He made a sympathetic noise. “Godspeed.”
Practice should have settled me. Usually, the second my skates hit ice, the noise narrowed. Lines. Speed. Edges. Breath. Bodies moving where they were supposed to move. Hockey was the one place my brain and body agreed on something.
Not today.
Today, I felt Declan Reid everywhere.
He didn’t yell. He didn’t perform. He watched drills from the boards with an assistant beside him and spoke only when he needed to. Somehow that made every correction land harder.
