“Did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I was reflecting on my craft.”
“You were being weird.”
“Pot, kettle, divorced goalie.”
He pointed at me. “Low blow.”
“Accurate blow.”
Roman watched me for another second, then let it go. “Eat lunch.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“I’m too young and handsome to be your father.”
“You’re neither.”
He left me with a middle finger over his shoulder.
When the locker room emptied, the hum of the ventilation seemed too loud. I sat on the bench with tape stuck to my thumb and replayed it.
Enough.
You can argue after you’ve done it correctly.
I should have hated it. Every other coach who tried to pin me down like that made me want to chew through the boards. Vanessa correcting my shirt had made me feel like a prop with a pulse. Brand people telling me how to stand made my skin crawl.
Declan Reid drew a line, and some part of me had leaned against it.
That was the part I didn’t know what to do with.
It wasn’t about being organized. It wasn’t about drill sheets or alarms or leaving parties on time. Those things helped, sure, in the way a railing helped when stairs were icy.
This was different.
For one second on the ice, he had stopped me, and I had not had to keep stopping myself.
I stared down at the tape wrapped around my thumb until the edge blurred.
Declan didn’t just make things clearer.
He made me quieter.
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
DECLAN
By seven the next morning, I had already watched the doors to the players’ entrance three times.
That was the kind of thing I noticed about myself because discipline was mostly repetition and honest accounting. If I drifted, I corrected. If I overfocused, I redirected. If I developed a habit that served no purpose, I killed it before it became part of me.
Watching for Jace Holloway did not serve a purpose.
